What Day Is It Again?

Coffee in the Montreal skyline mug, "Radio Nowhere" by Bruce Springsteen on iTunes. It's 34 degrees out there this morning, chilly! I lived through yesterday after almost no sleep on the plane (Dave would disagree, he'd say I snored across eight states. He'd be wrong) and fired two full kiln loads. From those loads, I'll ship five orders today. By Friday I'll have three more orders shipped and another on Monday. The schedule continues on like that through late March with a bit of a break for....

___________________

And the day went to hell in a handbasket. Four of the five orders were shipped, the fifth was packed and will ship tomorrow. The kiln was loaded and fired. It was a day of one damn thing after another. A day when there was no schedule to follow. A day of flying by the seat of my pants and trying to get through a To Do list as long as, well, I don't have one of those, but you know what I mean. And I did get through the necessaries. I got the orders shipped and the kiln loaded.

However I didn't get any analysis done (am I making ANY money at this glass business thing? I should look at my shipping costs and my credit card handling charges and my materials costs and my prices...), nor did I get anything done in marketing, website improvement, studio cleaning, business process improvement, planning for the year. All in all, I end the day filled with disquiet. My bottom-line was not all that I could have hoped last year. Yes, it as another Growth Year where I poured everything back into the business. But somewhere along the way I need to find out that I can pay a mortgage, support a family or even just myself (no, Dave, I am not trying to tell you anything--I'll love you forever and be your life partner at least that long), a time when I can say I MAKE A LIVING AT THIS GLASS THING. Why is it so hard to be a professional American craftswoman?

Okay. Deep breath in, let it out slowly, and hope for a better day tomorrow. Goodnight, sweet dreams.