Forty straps ago

It was about forty straps into Monday night that I realized I am my own underpaid sweatshop. Are there any organizations that prevent people from forcing themselves to work twelve hour days hunched over a couple of machines for a dollar an hour? The hunt for a good sewing contractor has begun. I cannot run a store, make half the merchandise for the store, be a mom, a wife, a writer, a window display artist, a homesteader, and also a human being. This whole "having it all" business is B#$@ S*&%. I've always known that. It's never been my goal to "have it all". The only reason we finally started the store (and wearing so many hats) is because it was the best opportunity that presented itself. There was no income anyway, why not build a chance for an income on our own terms? Plus we could then fool everyone into thinking we are really brave cool people.

All of you who said running a store is tough: you were right. In a way. It's tough, but it wouldn't be even remotely as tough if I wasn't the mastermind behind the main theme and product in the store. The mastermind as well as the master mind's underpaid slave. It would also be easier if we were a confirmed success already and paying bills. We're doing WAY better in our new location. Probably five times better than ever before. Yet, we are in no way even close to paying the bills in this month, the busiest retail month of the entire year. Our overhead has increased exponentially, so it will be interesting to see how we progress. All I'm saying is, it's difficult to run a store on hope. Which is what everyone does in the beginning.

It's been suggested to me by my friend Anna (who works at Third Street Boooks) that I keep a record of my daily sales to compare it to next year. Which is brilliant! I can keep a ledger like a real store owner! I think I need to ask Linda or Scylla to let me peek at their books to see how they set it up and what kind of ledger works best for this type of record keeping. Do you think they will? That's kind of revealing what an idiot I am. Plus, a store's books are pretty private. But I must say that both of them have been very helpful and supportive of me and I wouldn't be surprised if one or both of them would give me some pointers on this whole issue.

It's not like I'm a snaky corporation trying to infiltrate their businesses to orchestrate a hostile take-over.

So, finding sewing contractors and going through the process of developing a good relationship with one is quite a journey in patience and details. This is what I was born for. (I mean other than to survive, eat, reproduce, etc.) Since I was thirteen I had planned on being in the fashion industry. (As a chain smoking bulimic designer, of course. Not as a fat, beer swilling, apron maker.) In some ways this is the most natural step in the world. Just as developing new products, draping and drafting new designs puts me in my element. Being a seamstress has never been a pleasure to me. Sample sewing is fine. However: production sewing, custom sewing, alterations...oh jesus...don't even get me started on how much I dread, DREAD any kind of alterations...these activities are not my element. I can do them, I have the skills. But having the skill for something is not the same as enjoying having your teeth pulled out with a rusty wrench one at a time.

I spent a lot of time yesterday evaluating what my goals are. Philip isn't so much a goals guy, this is mostly my job. His main goal is pretty simple: to make more money than we spend, to make more fine art, and to trade in his current wife for a more romantic version. (Just kidding) (Sort of). Do I hope to be running a store for the rest of my life? Do I wish to run a store for a few years while developing a strong wholesale business? What do I want to come of this business we're building? And what is my exit strategy? (They tell you in business to always plan your exit strategy in the beginning, which is very counter intuitive.)

I would like to build a wholesale business with all of the products we develop ourselves. I would like it to become big enough to put money aside against the future. To pay off debt and invest in a commercial building somewhere in this area. I want the store to be successful enough to pay for itself and for someone else to work in it most days. I don't want to be tied to a store for the rest of my life. I want to be a housefrau again. And then, if either of my businesses do well enough, eventually I would probably want to sell them.

I'm more interested in growing food, making food, canning food, sewing things for my house and friends, and tending my chickens, and writing. But this whole foray into business needed to happen. It's been percolating in my blood my whole life. Life keeps stirring it up. I've been developing businesses in my brain as long as I can remember. It feels like this all needed to happen for reasons more obscure than just to make an income where there wasn't one. Perhaps it's a question of personal growth, or making important contacts, or maybe it will be lucrative enough to allow other things to happen. Or maybe it will fail and the failing will lead us to the next step in our lives that can't be seen as yet. Life is often like that.

Here in our house we have trouble dealing with too much paperwork, too much chaos, disorder, chores, and obligations. We were realizing yesterday that in some ways we've put ourselves in the worst possible position for our mental health. Owning a business creates quadruple the paperwork that your average life doles out. It multiplies every time you blink your eyes. Philip and I are people more suited to an anachronistic existence. Which is funny to say since we rely so heavily on our technology. We love modern convenience but hate the million wires, pipes, papers, and breakdowns that inevitably accompany modern life.

So our business isn't the goal itself for us. It's a means to an end. It satisfies our entrepreneurial spirits, it feeds our product developing creativity, and it will hopefully provide us with enough money in the future to allow us to simplify in a way that is suitable for people with an intense inability to process too much stimulation and complications. He needs to make fine art, and I need to write. In the end, those are the true goals. Obviously, being good parents ranks pretty high there too, but being a parent is more like an ongoing intense project than a career goal.

Does all of that make our business less pure? Less attractive? I'm passionate about almost everything I do, but does not wanting to be a store owner for my whole life, or not wanting to have a business at all for my whole life somehow tarnish the efforts we're making now? It better not, because we are putting everything we've got into this current adventure. I've put my back into it and it's putting my back out. We are working long days, both in the store and at home. Our house has been coming second for six months. Yard work doesn't exist here. It's all about the kid and the business. It's one hell of a trip.

Now I must go shower, put on my same old togs, and get my fragile back down to the store to bend over the machines again. There are eleven aprons waiting to be sewn. And in spite of all my motivational speeches, they won't sew themselves.