belated new years wishes

After my last post I started to feel better and actually made it to a few holiday social occasions. I wasn't the life of the party—mugs of hot tea aren't quite as much fun as eggnog or mixed drinks—but I managed. Then, bam, it turned into a sinus infection. Which knocked me out. Basically I've been moping around the house for the past week, popping antibiotics, and working on things that didn't involve moving from the sofa. Like paperwork.

Everyone thinks having your own business would be so much fun. And it is. But there are so many not-fun things that you don't consider when you're dreaming of how creative you're going to be. I processed close to 200 orders last year (and a huge thank you to those of you who became customers!). Each one of those orders has an invoice and each item has a backup sheet on file. For crafted items I have to keep track of how much the materials cost to make it. And for every vintage item I need to track what it originally cost. There's really no way to do your taxes without this info. The IRS doesn't take kindly to guesswork :)

When I first started out I didn't have a clue how to track all this stuff but over time I've developed a system that seems to work. And every year about this time I start pulling all the parts of the system together. It's mostly mindless work and that turned out to be the perfect thing for my condition.

I tried to write blog posts several times last week but they either made no sense or were too boring. So excuse my lack of posting. Come to think of it, this isn't the most exciting post I've ever written. Hopefully I'll be back to my old self soon.

Happy new years—six days late!