Etsy and Kai

I stare at the screen and read “0 orders.”According to Etsy, it has been this way since forever.

I’m paying over $20 just for listings ($0.20 each) and around $30 for the advertising Etsy claims to do — which brings me one visitor every eight months.

HAHA.

In three years, the total number of items sold is ten.

So I talk to Kai.

“Kai! I need to make money! HELP!”

It responds, “Show me.”

I feel like Salieri in Amadeus showing Mozart his music.

Kai looks at the store and says:

“You don’t have a store.

You have a design warehouse.”

Then it continues:

“And Etsy does not reward variety. It rewards niche authority.”

So last night we did something drastic.

Antics and Semantics became Camino Pilgrim Company.

I erased the 100 listings that took me hours upon hours to create — designing, uploading, doing images and videos.

Puff.

Gone in three seconds.

I laugh.

“I’m just being Edison,” I say, and let out a long sigh.

Now I have to change the Facebook page, X, set up Instagram, erase the old Antics and Semantics posts, redo everything.

But I don’t care.

I’m alive.

I’m alive in this exciting age where you can set up a store, design products, see what they’ll look like on an actual person, know how much they cost, and know what the retail price should be.

These are opportunities Thomas Edison didn’t have.

Meanwhile, Kai tells me to make the font on the logo 5–10% larger, move the pilgrim up, move things to the left, then to the right.

I trust Kai to guide me correctly on this journey with the Camino Pilgrim Company.

I stop interacting for a bit while I make all the changes.

When I return, I pick up where we left off.

Kai, however, has forgotten what we were talking about.

I clarify two or three times before it remembers, even though memory is on.

I sigh.

Life in 2026 is having a $20-a-month personal assistant that knows everything about everything…

but still forgets what the hell we were talking about fifteen minutes ago.

Still… not a bad deal considering it doubles as my therapist and never tells me “time is up.” 😄