:: up up creative / aper + pink studio: BEFORE ::

you know you've been busy when it's march and you're just getting around to even looking at the before and after pictures you took of the studio you moved into around new year's day.

i still need a day or two to go through the after pictures and set up a real, honest studio tour, but i'll tease you mercilessly with the before shots.

yes, the whole room was brown. dark, hershey's bar brown. and there were two layers of brown carpeting covering what we hoped was a cement floor (but which turned out to be an old asbestos tile floor). those racks and things filling the room were eventually removed -- they belong to my landlord.

(slightly blurry photos courtesy of my old iphone. wish i'd had the new one.)

:: but but but ::

i'm doing much better these days. thanks for your kind words and your patience these last few weeks.

i'm back with just a small update on life/business, just a dipping of the toe into the blogging waters. i'm sure i'll be swimming laps again in no time.

but here's the thing: i wanted to tell you how well the aper + pink launch went, and how well things continue to go on that front. i've got a small stack of print orders sitting here on my desk and have sent out a good number of orders already in the last few weeks, and the feedback has been awesome.

i mean, i knew it would be. the whole reason i even conceived of aper + pink was because i knew that what i was producing in-house was better than the stuff i had seen anywhere. but it's been so reassuring, and so gratifying, to hear the great feedback from customers.

i'm sitting here almost a month into things wondering, now, what my next step should be. do i let things grow organically? do i reach out to new audiences and potentially open the floodgates? i have so many ideas and the desire to be bold and grow, but there are always so many buts.

surely i've shown in the past that i'm not one to let the buts stop me. but still. scary.

:: attacks ::

when i wrote last weekend about how work hasn't been helping me through my anxiety lately, i think i may have suggested somehow that my anxiety is itself work-related.

it is definitely not.

it's the result of a series of very personal crises that all occurred in the span of approximately a week.

i never used to have these sometimes weeks-long debilitating anxiety attacks. before i had kids i would get the occasional short-lived irrational panic surge that might course through my veins for maybe 15 minutes tops.

now i get anxiety that inhabits me and lives inside here for weeks. this is my third bout with this in less than four years, and the fact that it keeps happening both scares me and pisses me off.

the frustrating thing about it is that it really does come in these little explosions, all at once and with no warning. an event will trigger the initial anxiety attack and suddenly my entire body will be flooded with stress that feels like poison. slowly over days i lose the ability to eat, and then to sleep. i can't be around my kids. i become unable to function. twice now i've even had to go on sedatives to help me get through the toughest part.

but when the attack finally wanes, i'm fine. fine-fine-fine. fine for a while.

some women hate their thighs, or their hips, or their stomachs. some hate the backs of their arms or their profiles in a photograph.

this anxiety is the thing i hate about myself. i hate that it's in me. i hate that i can't control it. i hate that it makes things so difficult for my husband and my kids and all the relatives and babysitters who help us out. i hate that i have to be medicated for it. i hate that it's probably hereditary. i hate that it makes me feel weak. that it makes me avoid stress. i hate that it makes me uncomfortable with my family. i hate that when i'm in the middle of it i feel like i will never-never-ever get out of it. i hate that even if it's not caused by my children, they're a part of it. i hate that it makes me avoid them.

what if this continues to happen to me three times every four years? what if it starts to happen more often? what if one time the anxiety does settle in and never leaves?

these are the things my frenzied brain wonders, of course. my calmer self knows that the previous bouts have ended and so will this one. it knows that each time this has happened i've learned something about my anxiety from it.

but still: it's scary.

:: not work ::

i have had a truly rotten, awful week. the kind of awful that you can compare to other kinds of awful and it still seems bad. the kind of awful you can't ignore. the kind that feels like it's causing instantaneous ulcers.

it has me alternately weeping on my husband's shoulder, bawling in the car, and staring into the middle distance dazedly.

i'm having trouble making myself eat, which is a weird thing that happens to me when too much of this kind of fight-or-flight stress courses through me.

and usually, my work is something that helps me get through those times. like knitting and watching crime shows, working is usually something that kind of backburner's the anxiety so that i can feel normal for a bit.

this week, though, work's not working. it's not helping. i don't want to do it.

i want to curl up in a snuggle with my little boy. i want to read harry potter (it's my first time through - we've just started the first book). i want to watch felicity on netflix. i want to be quiet. i want to listen to music. i want to sit next to my husband without talking. in fact i want him around more or less constantly.

i want to shut my computer and leave it shut, unless maybe i need to open it to turn on the next episode of felicity. i get to the studio and don't want to be here.

and i'm not sure what to think about this. i'm not sure what it means, if anything, that all i want to do right now is not work.

obviously it's not a choice to put work aside. i've got orders to fill, clients waiting on me, emails piling up higher than a young boy's falsetto. i have orders to print (that's what brought me in to the studio today, when what i really wanted to do was curl up with my head on my hubby's lap on my in-laws' couch and watch the DIY channel, hearing my kids playing nearby but without them disturbing me).

i've built this thing, this business, to need me and my frequent attention, but i haven't yet figured out how to negotiate the times when i don't want its incessant calls to action.

have you?

:: aper + pink is here ::

i officially took the aper + pink website from localhost to a live web server on sunday.

i only told brian.

sunday night, we went through it and i made sure everything had transferred OK and all, and just basically did a few tidying up kinds of things.

my plan was to send an email on monday night to the folks who had helped me develop the business idea and flesh out its details over the last two months, then to announce the official launch here today (tuesday).

before i had even sent my pre-launch email, i had two orders for sample kits.

by this morning, about ten hours after i sent that pre-launch email, i got an email saying that my order-form account was full and i would need to upgrade.

already?! in less than 48 hours live, and only ten hours after i had even told anyone about the site being up, i had exceeded my one-month allotment of form submissions.

point taken, my friends. you've been waiting eagerly. and i'm so so glad.

so without further ado, i give you: http://aperandpink.com

there you'll find pricing, set-up guidelines, file templates, FAQs, etc. you'll also find an online order form.  i know that at various points in the development of this site -- and this business! -- i promised a full-on e-commerce site. i discussed all of that here and here so i won't bore you with it again.

in the end, i came up with a simple but sort of elegant solution that should streamline the process for customers and for me. it should make things run smoothly, which is all i really want for aper + pink.

the printing is fancy; the behind-the-scenes needs to be utilitarian.

so now go, check it out and let me know what you think. oh, and one more last thing. ha! i was lucky enough to get the shop listed on jessica hische's print-shop directory website inkerlinker. i'd love it if you'd go visit my listing and click on "like" or whatever. that would be pretty cool.

thanks, all, for helping me build this and providing so much feedback along the way. i'm excited.

:: getting close ::

i'm getting close. i've got my paper and envelopes. i've priced everything, even sample kits. i've just (finally) finished creating all of the (many, many, many!) file submission templates. i'm still down one printer (did i mention that? COME ON UNIVERSE! seriously?!), but i've just finished testing software i need to make my "prepress" life easier.

and the website is coming along pretty nicely, although i've just noticed that it's pictureless, which is weird. i've figured out a decent order-processing solution that meets somewhere in the middle of "order via email" and "order via a full-service e-commerce website" - a solution that allows for easy ordering and, absolutely most importantly, easy linked-to-the-order file upload.

i'd really just like to open shop right now, but i've still got a few things to get ready. wonder if i can get it done for a valentine's day launch?

i will be closed the last week of february (i know, weird timing) so i really do need to push things along or else i won't be launching until march.

whaddaya think? next week? can we do it?

:: confluence ::

oh, i'm brooding tonight, wondering why on earth i insist on doing things in the most difficult way possible.

it's hard to exactly explain, though it's easy to point to what put me here. today brought a series of small events, the confluence of which have given me much to think about. the five events were:

1. getting my snapfish and minted 1099s
2. finishing the irritating job of calculating the dollar-value of my inventory for 2011 year-end (which will be used to calculate COGS (cost of goods sold) on my income taxes)
3. getting an email reminding me that my sales tax will be due soon
4. one of my printers dying
5. being notified by my new landlord, who also rungs a digital print shop, though with a different customer base but also a lot more years' experience, is about to sublet even more of his own space as a cost-cutting measure. he's downsizing his employee base and renting out probably half of his space. he's got dozens of printers, many of which sit unused. 

i'll do my best to explain.

so.

the work i do for minted and snapfish, which my 1099s attest is rewarded financially, requires nothing but couple thousand fonts, a computer, and some design software. it does not require me to file sales tax, do inventory, calculate COGS, buy, repair, and replace printers, or stock paper and envelopes. it doesn't even require me to go out and find customers, or to keep customers happy.

there's always the chance that one of those (major) companies will go bust, or that my work will no longer appeal to their customers, etc. but damn! DAMN! i spend less than 10% of my time on this work. i should just multiple that by ten and i'd be ALL SET. so little overhead. so little payout. why am i not doing that???

the answer, i guess, is that there's something that happens to me when i see other people running successful creative businesses, abuzz with activity, bursting with energy, busy with employees. i want that. i want to make that happen and to stand in the middle of it.

i got an email from the CEO of minted this past december in which she recounted the busy holiday seasons of minted's first years in business -- the year that they realized they were about to hit through-put capacity and had to immediately pull any advertising they could possibly still pull, for one. the year they had to call in their husbands, friends, and family members in order to get everything out the doors.

it sounded like completely wonderful chaos. and i do NOT like chaos.

but its hard to see lots of businesses around me in S-O-S. kodak, for one. my landlord, who maybe isn't in S-O-S exactly but who is definitely in pare-down mode. 

now more than at any other time, even more now than when i shelled out all those big bucks to exhibit at nss let year, i'm standing at the edge of a chasm and i'm about to jump, and while i feel confident that i'll make it to the other side of this particular span, i've got to admit that i can't see what's lurking on the other side.

and with things like COGS and sales tax and dead printers that are more expensive to repair than to replace, i guess it's only natural to take a moment before jumping. and with 1099s showing me the alluring options on this side of the chasm, i suppose i'd be crazy not to be muddled tonight. brooding.

it would be wisest of me to stand here on this side. not only wisest, but possibly healthiest (from a wellness standpoint) and also best (from a mom standpoint). these are things i really believe, not just things i'm supposed to say. i really truly believe that if i could just find a way to stay happy here on this side, i'd be better off. healthier. happier. 

but i can't shake the allure of spanning the chasm. 

i can't stop wanting to be one of the few who takes the leap.

so i guess we all know i'll probably jump.

:: demystifying daycare, a plea ::

i had some helpers with me this week since the babysitter was sick (only emily is pictured here, but evan helped too) and it made me remember that i have a question that i'd like to ask everyone. everyone anywhere. i would like about 1000 comments on this post because i'm interested in ALL of the options. 

in the box, out of the box, near the box. this is an invitation for brainstorming.

my kids are in an awesome in-home daycare. but for a list of reasons that is important but not really right for delving into here on the blog, things are going to have to change with the daycare situation and because this change will more or less coincide with evan heading off to kindergarten in the fall,  I NEED TO KNOW WHAT TO DO ABOUT IT.

how do you make half-day kindergarten + a younger sibling not yet old enough for pre-school (emily misses the cut-off by days and won't be able to go to preschool until she's a teenager, or so it seems) + a growing self-owned business that requires regular if not 100% full-time daycare?

i mean, on the one hand a nanny seems like the way to go, so evan can come home after school and i can be at work and emily can be taken care of all the while.

but we've tried the nanny situation before and maybe it's just us or something but nannies get sick a lot and then i get mad because inevitably they get sick when brian has court or some such trivial thing and so i have to be the one to ditch work and figure out how to still get the stuff done and have fun with the kids and not resent anyone or anything.

plus i like the idea of them being around other kids because again, maybe it's just me but i find that running a business and being home part time with the kids is not the recipe for tons of playdates. i think we probably end up with like fifteen playdates a year.

but i'm not even sure i have a grasp on what our other options are. here's my list. please add to it in the comments and feel free to (please do!) share your thoughts on making it all work.

OPTIONS:

1. a school-like daycare where the kids are separated into classrooms by age or whatever. this would separate emily and evan.
2. another in-home daycare, but i think this would need to be near home because of the aforementioned kindergarten thing, right? in other words, it would be best located in our school district or else i'd be leaving work in the middle of the day to chauffeur evan, right?
3. a nanny.
4. a shared nanny, like shared with another family or something, so that there could be more kids hanging out and being friends? maybe this is something i invented in my own wishful head.
5. latchkey for evan and something separate for emily. to the very best of my recollection i literally did not know kids with two working parents as an elementary school child, and so to me latchkey was this foreign place in the gym and the cafeteria where the weird kids went (i'm just being honest about my 8 year old prejudices here, folks) and maybe there they did weird things or maybe weird things were done to them? but maybe it's different now? or maybe it was always different? discuss.
6. something different altogether?

daycare mystifies me, my friends. clearly i need your help.

:: the things i wish i could outsource ::

there was a time, right after evan was born and lasting, i dunno, a year or more, that i wrote here every day. it went like this: get up, feed the baby, eventually eat something and get dressed and brush my teeth, do the day, whatever the day was to be that day, do dinner for the baby, eat with brian, kid bed, BLOG. and then after blog, or sometimes before, or during, FLICKR.

it was just part of the day.

now i feel like my days are so overrun with everything else the blog is reserved for whenever-i-can-find-the-damned-time. (and flickr? i'm not sure i've used it once since i uploaded the pictures from NSS last may).

and no, whenever-i-can-find-the-damned-time does not include now.

but i've been working so hard on bringing you (and the world!) aper + pink that i forgot to tell you along the way what it's like bringing a new business into the world when it's, like, a planned-in-advance business.

up up creative happened and grew and became. it was an unplanned but very much wanted pregnancy and it has grown to be a very pleasant child.

aper + pink was 100% planned, and while the execution (gestation?) has been purposefully condensed into a short, short period of time, it has at times felt like this overwhelming beast. not the business idea, but everything that goes into making a business idea happen at a certain time and on purpose.

there has been ordering, or i suppose i would be telling a truer truth if i were to say there has been 90% order planning (and unplanning, and replanning, and second-guessing, and third-guessing, and then back to the second guess, no maybe the first) and 10% actual ordering.

there has been physical organization and orientation.

there has been a lot of really awesome pre-launch marketing -- getting out there and talking to the people who i want to be my customers -- which has also served as pre-launch survey-taking and focus group polling.

but holy hell there's so much thinking that goes into this, and i don't mean the angsty "what on earth am i doing with my business" kind of thinking that i've gone through at regular intervals with up up creative. this thinking is more like, "okay. i have a plan. in my mind it is as clear as day. how do i get it across to other people in a way that makes it as crystal clear and fantastic?"

i'm a decent communicator. a decent teacher. i can usually take a large pile of information and carefully, skillfully, condense it into its finest, most digestible self. but taking the fine, digestible idea and building all the necessary scaffolding to hold it up to the sun? 

i've tried three separate times now, or i guess four, to outsource the design and development of the website for aper + pink. i've also developed three almost-complete e-commerce websites. and each time i've changed course, or made the plea to others for help with the coding work, or the design, i've not seen that the real issue is this: i'm having trouble wrapping my head around all the content, and instead of sitting down with that i've been trying to throw Function and Pretty at it. 

oh that i could pay someone to climb inside my head and grab all the bits and bobbles related to aper + pink and then put them through some kind of strainer and turn them into the actual stuff of the business. 

which is to say: i'm going to have to take the next few days to climb inside my head and gather bits and bobbles and spend the time it will take to actually mold them into the business. i was really hoping i could avoid that part by hiring out the website work.

i guess i may do it all myself after all, since the very hardest part is on me.

damn damn damn.

:: on limits and e-commerce ::

i've spent a good portion of all available free time over the last three weeks -- which admittedly, with the holidays and moving into the new studio and all, hasn't been much free time -- working on the e-commerce site for the new print shop.

any of you who has spent any time setting up, comparing, designing, or implementing an e-commerce site feels my pain, i'm sure.

and all that pain has been tripled as i've simultaneously developed three different carts at the same time, pitting each against the others in a battle of design accessibility, pure e-commerce power, technical support, customer service, and ease of use.

i've run the up up creative e-comm site on, i realized recently, four different e-commerce platforms over the span of not-quite-two-years and i've extensively tested an additional three platforms.

each has its strengths and weaknesses. each drew me in for one reason and drove me away for another.

just a few days ago i got a very kind email from someone who had been visiting my up up creative e-comm website for inspiration as she looks to build her own stationery biz site in the coming months. she cited mine as being very user friendly, i think. i get weekly emails asking who designed it. so i like to think that it's a decent site.

but i'm here to tell you: i often consider nixing the e-commerce functionality on that site.

i'm sitting here on a sunday night wondering why i'm spending so much time developing an e-commerce presence for aper and pink (the new print shop, for any uninitiated folks out there in readerland).

there are a few reasons why, but chief among them are these:

1 - the custom design and print-shop work i do is complicated. people have questions. they have special requests, want special sizes, want to combine and uncombine and recombine things. they think their project is different, somehow, than what they're seeing on the page in front of them, and often they're right: it is different. having a functional e-commerce site tends, in my experience, to make people see limitations as brick walls. if only five sizes are listed for sale on an e-commerce website, it's easy to assume that those are the only five sizes available.

2 - i do not see myself in the goods business as much as i see myself in the service business. sure, my customers and clients walk away with tangible (and sometimes intangible) goods, but the value that they get from coming to me rather than going to someone else is that i provide a service. i make their lives easier, or i accomplish something they didn't think could be accomplished. i think e-commerce sites work very well for goods-based businesses but do not apply quite so neatly to businesses like mine when part of the lure is that you can get something made just for you.

3 - i am equally ignited in my work by two things: the things i create and the people i create them for. i like working with and speaking to those people at least somewhat directly (if digitally over email, much of the time). e-commerce sites, when they work properly, they make it so that the buyer and the seller needn't interact. this is the thing that's perhaps got me the most hung up. i don't like not interacting.

4 - i do pretty alright, sales-wise. my business continues to grow. but here's a little secret: the percentage of my income that comes from sales through upupcreative.com is, well, insignificant would be too harsh a word, but it's close. most of my sales come from emails, phone calls, or convos on etsy. they come from someone asking me a question and me answering it. and i kind of think that's the way it should be.

of course i insist on doing much of my shopping online. i don't like pushy sales people. i don't even like pushy sales emails. i am turned off by sales, discounts, and promotions. i know what i like, what i want, and what i need and i don't need anybody trying to convince me of anything. but if i'm looking to buy something complicated, or special, or whatever, i prefer for there to be a person on the other end of things.

and on the other hand…

nothing makes me crazier than a lame website. i like knowing enough to be able to create kick-ass websites for my businesses that do what they need to do and do it well. i've (gasp!) enjoyed working through the development of these three side-by-side comparison demos of the new aperandpink.com shop because it's rewarding making the technology bend to my will and do it prettily.

i just wonder if it's worth my time when it may actually work at cross purposes to my businesses' objectives. sure, e-commerce sites may save me time processing orders and sending and chasing after invoices, but they do not help me build, for example, a safe haven for graphic designers who want high-quality, kick-ass print services they can't get elsewhere. they don't help me convince my wedding and print customers that the sky's the limit. instead, they suggest quite the opposite: that there's a very specific set of parameters defining what's possible.

i realize it's crazy, but i'm considering heading off in a new direction with my websites. i'm considering turning away from e-commerce and towards gallery- and info-based sites. it's very 2004, i know. give potential customers as much as i can in terms of inspiration and information (pricing, ideas, etc.) but then let them come to me when it comes time to order, which is what many of them do now anyway.

what do you think?

:: julie's first day out ::

four strange and unusual things i did this morning:

1. i showered. i showered even though i showered yesterday. i did this because crap! i am going to see actual people today! every-other-day showering is for people who work at home, damnit!
2. i packed a lunch. kinda. i'm way out of practice on this and really more like threw some food into some containers and put it all in a wegman's bag and who knows if there's enough food or too much or what.
3. i stopped at starbucks because i've got a gift card and i stood in line and i did this weird internal dance to the tune of "i'm a commuter commuting to my studio that is not in my house and i'm standing in line at starbucks with other people who are commuting to places of employment that are not in their houses."
4. i packed my laptop into an ill-fitting laptop bag because, oh, did i mention, i'm not going to be at my house today, and being not-at-my-house will not work so effectively without my laptop.

and also, two things i would normally be doing today that i kind of forgot i won't be able to do today from not-at-my-house and hmm, this is going to take some getting used to:

1. laundry. i have at least three full loads to do and usually i'd sort of throw one in here and there throughout my at-home workday. need a new plan. your advice is welcome.
2. make pizza dough. also not going to be possible from the studio. which means that dinner tonight? i'm going to have to figure something out. more advice welcome.

this is going to be weird. good-weird, but weird.

:: kick-ass short-run fine-art printing heading your way ::

richard branson, i learned today, started his airline because when he was in the music biz he hated flying on other people's airlines and he thought to himself, "i can do it better." and then he did it.

yes, i'm comparing myself to richard branson, because we're totally analogous. in this one case.

so, here's the basic deal...

as you probably very well know by now if you're a reader of thishereblog, i've been running a design studio / print shop / online retail establishment for more than three years now, and every six months or so I go through the old "should I or shouldn't I outsource" debate. 

to date, other than my wrapping paper which i had offset printed here in rochester, i've kept all printing in-house, but not for lack of trying (at times) to outsource.

at one point quite recently, after the 33 weddings that came of the september experiment, i decided something needed to give. so i went out into the "street" and asked every short-run-type graphic designer i could think of (and read every related post on every related forum) and i came up with a list of seven or eight printers to try.

cut to mad spree of account setting up and sample ordering.

then cut to me getting the samples and being un.happy.

then cut to me being frustrated and wondering why there isn't someone out there who will print my orders on MY printers with MY inks and cut them on manual cutters in small batches, paying close attention to things like making sure things are centered and even and that, you know, crop marks aren't showing (one of the top-recommended print shops actually sent me my order with crop marks visible on almost 20% of the order they were cut that irregularly) and generally doing things the way i insist on doing them. (as i've said before, like it or not, i care deeply about quality and paper and the art of printing.)

cut to me waking up on a sunday morning with an epiphany: i am in a perfect position to be the printer i am always looking for. i've made the contacts, i've got bulk accounts with major paper distributors who ship to me straight from the mill at a crazy discount if i order thousands of dollars' worth at a time and can do it on their production schedule. i've got equipment and lots of practice being a perfectionist about printing.

and so. so so so.

i will be opening a short-run print shop. actually, it will be a

fine-art

short-run

indie-powered

designer-loving

eco-friendly

in-house

kick-ass

anything-but-basic

print shop equipped with everything you need to wow your clients and amaze your friends.

i'll be featuring vibrant, water-resistant pigment inks and all the best cotton, recycled, and bamboo paper you can imagine. oh, and want something a bit more exotic? how about sugar cane? kenaf? or perhaps some self-adhesive kraft paper? done.

the thing is, for most people, printing is the un-fun part. it's the tedious, error-ridden part. it's the part that brings swear words to their lips and tears to their eyes. it incites arguments between otherwise happily engaged couples just trying to keep invitations personal, practical, and affordable.

but I love it. i love learning the tricks and figuring out how to avoid the troubles. i like discovering new methods and new substrates.

i mean, i read blogs about printing. i really do.

the official launch will be in february 2012 at aperandpink.com but in the meantime, i'm always still print-print-printing along. i'm bringing on new customers now and hope to continue doing so as february approaches.

and now you finally know what i've been scheming. yay!

:: on the importance of disappointment ::

i realize this may be a little bit too much info for some of my readers, but i promise i won't dwell on it long.

emily was conceived on our first try. we had kind of talked about another baby a little bit here and there and then one saturday afternoon, on a hike with evan, we decided that it would be OK to start trying to have another baby, figuring that it might take a little while and that by the time the baby would be born, evan would be 3 or so.

cut to me, two weeks later, peeing on a stick and running sneakily out to the kitchen to brian to show him and ask, "could this even be possible?" and possible it apparently was.

hormonal teenagers take note: it can happen on the first try.

we were excited, of course of course,  but i also remember thinking that there's a very good thing about having to try for a few months before a baby is conceived: the disappointment of not being pregnant a few times solidifies in your minds that you really really want to have a baby. when the baby just appears in your belly without any prior disappointments, it can be jarring. even confusing.

which is why on monday of this week, i started looking for studio space despite all of the unsureness i was feeling on sunday. i decided that the only way to know for sure how i felt about it was to look and to either fall in love with the idea or not fall in love with it. i decided that i would look and force myself to suffer the possible euphoria and disappointment that would come and that would help me know whether to go for it or not.

the first space i fell in love with was smaller than my attic. the price was ohsoright, but smaller? that's a no go. and there it was: real, true disappointment.

the second space i considered was far too expensive and while it was close to the kids' babysitter's house, it was surrounded by accounting firms and medical offices. and yet: even more disappointment.

by the end of the week it was abundantly clear: whatever i feel about going full-time (still not ready) and hiring an employee (ditto), i am completely ready to take the next step and move this gig out of the attic -- where i bump my head on the ceiling each time i stand at my paper cutter -- and out into the world.

the place i settled on is ridiculously perfect even in its imperfection. it's a room of its own, with ceilings that i couldn't even hit my head on if i drank fizzy lifting drink, settled snugly into a corner of the space shared by booksmart studio, pistachio press, and a small cadre of other artists. i feel like it should be called "both-and studio" because it's both separate and connected, both private and shared, both mine and not mine, both still-just-me and not-still-just-me.

i move in january.

:: the first business trimester ::

it's four now, and i'm just sitting down to work, which on a sunday is pretty much unheard of. usually i toil my sundays away since i have no childcare on monday and only part of a day on tuesday. sundays are important days, work wise.

instead of working i spent 20 minutes on the elliptical and 5 hours sweeping and mopping my house from top to bottom. (note to self: if you are going to spend five hours sweeping and mopping, 20 minutes on the elliptical is kinda irrelevant.)

my work break has much less to do with needing to clean -- let's face it, i clean so seldom that there's basically always a need to do it -- and much more to do with needing to do some business thinking.

it's the same reason i've been absent here on the blog these last 19 days.

i'm thinking. planning. assessing. polling. synthesizing. crunching. fantasizing. gut-checking.

business is slow this month -- because i made it that way. i've taken off random saturdays to sit and stare at my husband, or my in-laws, spent sundays sliding furniture around in order to uncover bunny-sized dust bunnies. i've gone evenings (not many, mind you, maybe even just one) completely computer-free. i've taken long lunch breaks and walks around the block.

sales are way down, of course, but thanks to work i did all year for minted and snapfish, i'm reaping the rewards of the holiday season without much effort at all on my part.

i have my reasons for creating this slow, slow november.

i am at a point in the growth of my business and my family life where i need to figure out what the next few years are going to look like.

brian would like to have a bit more of me on the weekends and has suggested a few times that it might be time to think about a more full-time daycare situation for the kids. and i've also had a business epiphany that pushes the issue further. 

i have a really excellent business plan and i've crunched the numbers and done some market research and floated the idea by friends and colleagues and it's excitingly possible. doable. but to do it right, and it's the kind of thing that really has to be done right, it will require three things:

1. a significant investment - of somewhere around $10-16K - that it will take between 9 and 12 months to recuperate, which I realize isn't bad at all from a business investment standpoint.
2. a dedicated space (i.e. commercial or industrial studio space), which adds to the investment tally and extends the time until break-even.
3. an employee. which, yeah, adds to the investment tally and, right again, extends the time until break-even quite a bit more. this part of the equation also adds the potential for a lot more stress.

i'm not totally good with stress. my tissues seem to be stress sponges, sucking up all the cortisol and adrenaline and other yuckiness and turning them into raw, pulsating panic that strikes when least expected, sometimes even waking me from a dead sleep. 

i am surprisingly okay with issue number one, the investment, but the second two are too big for me to take lightly. they're major. crazy major. to make those two things (a studio, an employee) work with my life, i'd definitely have to up the week-day daycare and in order to compensate, work less on the weekends. i'd be signing myself up for a full-time day job working for myself and being someone's boss.

let me tell you, it doesn't feel great knowing that i have this viable business idea that has the potential to really be wildly successful and that all i need to do to make it happen is commit to it fullheartedly and step up and take the reins and yet i'm sitting here writing a long thinky blog post about it.

it also doesn't feel great knowing that my hesitation is a very female hesitation. something tells me that a man in my position would already have been down to the SBA talking about loans, would have scoped out studio space, would have talked to the woman at daycare about extending the kids' hours, and would be spreading the word about the impending new hire. that i'm not doing those things makes me feel a bit wimpy.

brian is already telling people - you know, family members and such - about my new business plan, which makes me cringe a little bit. or not cringe. wince. like it hurts to talk about it. and hurt i guess it does, because i know he's right that i could easily be racing forward into the wild blue future. 

but there are things i just can't ignore. i can't ignore the fact that i'm a total introvert who isn't exactly jumping up and down at the thought of working day-in and day-out with the same human being, having to communicate each day with that person. having to advise, guide, teach, correct, and listen to carefully enough to make the business - and the working relationship - work.

and i can't ignore the fact that emily is only two and i still want a little bit more time with her. she's at that age where we are starting to be buddies, and i really do not like the idea that i got to share the early buddy years with evan but might choose not to spend them with emily. it's a decidedly motherly thing to worry about, that i won't know my daughter as well as i will know my son, but it's there and its un-ignorable.

so here i sit, feeling so much like a mother in her first trimester who is nervous and excited and bewildered, who doesn't want to tell anyone about the baby yet - just in case. here i sit with a kick-ass plan for a really kick-ass business, one that would be both a new direction for me and a really logical extension of everything i've been doing since november 2, 2008 when all of this started.

if i don't move forward with the plan, i know i'll mourn the loss. i don't know that i can go as far as to compare it to a miscarriage or an abortion, since i've never experienced those, but there will definitely be pain and mourning and the sense that something amazing didn't happen. but while that sounds to some like a reason in and of itself to move forward -- take the plunge in order to avoid the mourning, the pain, the loss, the regret -- to me it's not so clear. avoiding that sense of loss isn't enough to make me ignore the fact that i'm not sure i want the life that bringing this new business to fruition would bestow upon me. the life for me, and for my family.

it's all so damned complicated.

there are some things that i am pretty sure of. 

1. i like working. i wouldn't trade in my job for staying home full time in a million years. i LOVE my kids and i LOVE that we have mondays all to ourselves to just do kid-and-mom-type things. out and about in the old things and here at home things. but i do actually hope to even out my life a bit more over the next few years so that i can do more of my work during "normal" work hours and less at night and on weekends.
2. i like that my job is flexible.
3. if anything, over the years i've wished it would be even a little bit easier for me to take breaks, deal with illnesses, etc.

beyond those things, i think i need to do some more house-cleaning, by which i mean soul-searching. i hope you'll indulge my silence about the specifics of the business while i do so.

and um, yeah, please do stop by my shop, as well as minted and/or snapfish, if you're so inclined this month. you'll be contributing directly to my ability to take the time to figure shit out.

please and thank you good night.

:: today ::

printing.
planning.
psyched.