Saturday 12 September 2015

$54 day

Here I am, sitting in the shop.  It's the first weekend of the year when one could conceivably leave the house in a t-shirt. The sky is vast and blue and the air is ripe with possibilities and the smell of jasmine.  It's impossible to be in a bad mood.

Where are the customers?  Oh, they are probably milling around the park, drinking beers on picnic blankets with their friends, beaming at their partners and reveling in the sun on parts of their body that have been covered all winter long.  They are strolling down High Street, noticing things that have popped up unbeknownst to them during the winter's hibernation.

Sometimes my days of business ownership are like this.  I can't control what anyone does, but I can show up every day and consistently be my amazing self.  I will sit and people watch, I've already seen three outfits that I sold walk by the shop.  I will get a rush at 2:45 (I close at 3 on Sundays), someone will bring in a giant bag bursting with treasures to sell, or I will meet a new customer who raves about Mutual Muse and how excited she was to happen upon the store.  If I had given up earlier in the afternoon, I would miss these things.  The collection of these small wins is what builds a business.
Sundays are a bit of an enigma; sometimes they are very busy and sometimes they are very slow.  The last time I thought, maybe I'll just close the shop on Sundays (which is totally normal here), I had a record-breaking day.

Every one of my friends (and myself) are currently in transition periods. There's nothing anyone can do about it other than to hold on to your loved ones, learn what you can from your experiences, and hopefully turn the chaos into positive actions and outcomes.  Journalling is just about the only habit I've been able to maintain through the craziness of opening the shop; I reflect on what works and doesn't, how I felt, what I did about it.  I write down compliments from people I admire so I have evidence when I'm feeling down that everything really does have a forward motion.


My view from the shop:



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