Jul 2, 2017

Maybe it’s just a short phase or maybe it’s the transition of an era, but I’ve thought about my business a few times since baby Henry was born and I haven’t been much bothered about it. It’s not that I don’t care about it or that I don’t genuinely enjoy sharing that part of myself and using that skill set, it’s just that there are other things that matter to me more. 

The night before I went in for the scheduled c-section I was lying in bed awake and made a kind of spur-of-the-moment decision to put the shop on vacation mode. Sure, it might mean missing a sale and, sure, if something sold I could send Bryan down to package it up and ship it out, but was that really what I wanted? No. 

What I really wanted was to be completely focused on our family and this important transition time. What I wanted was to be fully focused on our new baby. You can sell stuff anytime, but there are only so many days you get to sit and soak in all the goodness of your own sweet brand new baby. They’ll never be this small and soft again; they only get bigger. I didn’t want to look back with regrets. 

As it is right now, I can’t even walk down the stairs to my basement studio, so I’m not sure yet when the shop will re-open, but I confess I’m in no big hurry to do it. Our baby is here and our oldest is home from school for the summer and our toddler starts preschool in the fall. It’s a golden time for us and I want to really enjoy it. 

Anyway, I think I’ll re-open the shop in a couple weeks when I’m feeling better, but I just don’t feel that hurry I’ve felt in the past to sell and do more more more. My inventory isn’t like food that would go bad if it sat on the shelf for a bit. I’d love to open the shop back up when I’m ready and just sell things slowly. I started it as a hobby and I’d love for it to stay that way. I still want to spend most of my time hanging out with the kids and going to museums and parks. I can’t say that makes for a great business model, but I do think it’d make for a pretty great life.