I think this is the most appropriate word to describe my month. The truth is in the job that I do with painting, staging, and blogging, I need to be alone to focus. This is not what life had in store for me this month. It has been raining so I can't paint outside and my studio is separate from my house. Now normally it is great to have a separate studio, but not when the kids are home with me. I don't feel comfortable leaving them alone in the house while I am in the studio painting. We also have had a variety of sickness rotating around our family and then came the craziness of the holidays. Also, am nearing the end of the year so I have been keeping my inventory lean {not a lot of painting projects going on} for tax purposes.
At first I really embraced the pause.
This year I opened a shop, crazy! I needed a pause.
I needed time to reflect on my success and learn from my failures.
The funny thing was when I sat back and relaxed {not constantly painting and bringing in 20 pieces of painted furniture to the store every week} I sold better!
December was my second highest furniture sales in all of 2012.
I also realized I can't stock my area of the the store by myself. I have a small group of really talented painters consigning with me. I am still very very hands on with my store vision but I can't do it all.
The truth is I started not to enjoy my job. I put too much pressure on myself. I needed to realize that I might not do this job forever so I needed to appreciate it now!
It is a bit daring to take a pause. In this fast pace world if you pause, you might as well fall off the map. If you don't keep up you lose relevance {crazy but true}. I watched my blog stats dive and I had to be ok with it.
I have no idea what 2013 has in store for me. While most people have a million goals to expand their businesses, I have the opposite. I am going to focus on what I am good at, painting furniture. I guess I should clarify my last statement. I am open to doing more, I am patiently praying and waiting for open doors. If they don't open I will keep working hard, it might just mean I am right where I am supposed to be.
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