Friday, January 10, 2014

2013: Year in Review

Where to start?  This has been quite the year for me, so I'll start at the beginning.  In January, I turned 49 and thought about the fact that I had been trapped in a cubicle for 30 years, doing a job I was very good at but disliked quite a bit.  Mostly it was the place I was working, but really, it was sitting and typing for lawyers generally, every day, for 30 years.  I wanted to get out before I did something that would cause me to spend another 30 years in an even smaller cubicle.

In April, I gave 2 weeks' notice at my job, causing them all to discuss, quite publicly, that I had either lost my mind, had a secret job I wasn't telling them about, had a rich man on the side (which would be a surprise to both me and my husband) or again, I was just crazy.  I let them think I was crazy, and I left.

Since April, I've done 17 separate craft shows, plus my usual 2-week event at my local arts league.  Wow.  I hadn't actually counted the events until just now.  17.  Even I'm a little impressed.

I've sewn my fingers to the bone, blown a puppy's worth of fuzz out of my sewing machine, cut up more clothes than I've ever worn, gone through 2 20-lb. boxes of polyfill stuffing, was nice to people I wanted to smack, and, surprisingly, made some money while I was at it.

I also had one hell of a good time, learned a lot - about Etsy and online sales generally, about craft shows and dealing with people, about what sells, what doesn't and what I want to make anyway.  I've made some good friends, online and off, who I would never have met outside of trying to get my business up and running.  I've learned a lot about myself, too, just how hard I can work, and how I can smile sweetly when people who should know better ask me if I'm "working yet" or "enjoying myself" at home.

All that being said, I'm looking forward to what 2014 can bring.  I've been making new items for the shop every day this month, trying to rebuild my Etsy inventory after the holidays.  I've been reorganizing my workroom so that I can actually now find my entire cutting table, and once it warms up a little, I'm going to be clearing a space in my attic to store inventory for both my handmade and vintage Etsy shops, because the rest of the house is now beginning to look like a junk shop.

Which tends to make people ask the question, "What do you do when you're  home all day?"

Certainly it's not cleaning the house.

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