2011 Retrospective
Hey friends! This gets a little mushy and dark. Proceed with caution, my dearests.
2011 in a Nutshell. Or, rather, how I remember 2011. Today I felt like an utter failure as I woke up without an ounce of motivation or passion for my life. And thus, I decided to recap my year to ensure that I am still growing, still learning, still functioning to my potential, and to make sure that the stuff I have spent my time on is, in fact, a reflection of who I am and where I want to go.
I spent the last year continuing to build my first startup, Checklet, a web startup that builds apps for Etsy sellers to make the left-brained part of their craft business just a little less painful. Blind leading the blind?!? Perhaps. I have kept busy and fulfilled by adding decorative touches to our first home, mostly thrift or antique store purchases or re-purposed furniture. Not because we are broke, but because I am in love with re-purposing things and with adopting old treasures and giving them a place to live and be cherished. I also happen to be averse to buying new things. I have spent countless hours looking through antique store for things that make me happy or make me feel good, or that I think just need to be in our house. Most times I come home empty handed. But the hunt alone brings me great thrill. The backyard is starting to get some attention as well since Eric and I have been reading about permaculture, listening to podcasts about permaculture, raising chickens, and have recently considered buying dairy goats. Work has been steady. Something to be thankful for, certainly. I survived three of the most lonely months to date, or, since I have been married at least, when Eric went to NYC to participate in TechStars NYC. He landed on a reality show on Bloomberg T.V. while I questioned daily whether I was in fact married or if the past three years of wedded bliss was just an illusion. As they say, “Mama tried.” That could be said of Eric as well. There just wasn’t enough of him to go around in those three months. That was not the best quarter of 2011. It did encourage me to really go after my opportunities in the craft market and to push even harder on my own start-up. I spent the first 3 years of our marriage basking in being loved so thoroughly and nurtured by my best friend, who also happens to sleep next to me. I had no idea that a man could be so loving and patient as this man is with me. I also spent a lot of time obsessing over what it meant to be the second wife and a step-mom, so it wasn’t all that. But I sense the tide turning, and that it is now time for me to go back out into the world and do my life’s work.
In the Fall I spoke at my first Craft Conference, the Creative Conference for Entrepreneurs in San Francisco. I pretty much begged and pleaded my way in (a reference from one of my favorite Etsy admins helped too), but hey, I got to speak, right?!? I started a new blog to help crafters run their business like a web start-up. My co-founder Katrina has helped me immensely with that.
This summer we took the kids to Lake Havasu, Arizona with my parents, to the place where I spent many summer vacations as a kid. It wasn’t as pretty as I remembered. The kids endured a week of answering questions they had already answered multiple times from my grandmother who is suffering from dementia, and were incredibly patient and understanding. They grew up a little on that trip. And they continue to amaze me at their adaptability and maturity. I’m pretty sure they saw her as a child, and pretty sure they didn’t have any idea that she ran a company, introduced me to the Smithsonian, baking, ballet, theater, traveling, and backgammon (a current staple in our house—albeit on the iPad). Many of the things I have taught them, were taught to me by her. And so the world turns. Someday I will be able to tell them what it meant to me that they got the chance to meet her. These children whom I did not give birth to but who share my last name continue to shape me into a figure of myself that I hardly recognize. Each week it gets a little harder to see them go back to their mom’s for the rest of the week. But, alas, this is the dilemna with children. My mom once told me that whether they are from your womb or not, they are only with you for a short time, before they must find their own way. I was prepared. But even preparation can’t prepare you for such a thing.
As I looked over my year and synthesized everything that I spent my time on, I came up with a few themes. I’d like our household to be as self-sustaining as possible and I would like to grow spiritually. I also want my work to be a reflection of who I am. I want to give to others out of what has been given to me.
Since owning our own home and even before that, Eric and I have both been massively attracted (like a bug to a light in late summer evenings) to the idea of having our own urban homestead. Living in the Old-Southwest has been our dream since I moved here to marry Eric in 2007. It became a reality when a little old lady moved out of her home–a home that had not been updated for 30 years. It has been a joy to transform a 1939 brick tudor that had ‘good bones’ into the home that we share. There are very few spots in this house that we have not touched or transformed or updated. Our fingerprints are all over it. Luckily Eric’s Dad taught him lots of basic woodworking and electrician skills.
We love living a short walk from the Truckee River and the seedy casinos. In fact, we thrive here. We love that there seems to be a food revolution going on in Reno and we feel lucky that they many of the awesome new eateries are popping up just around the corner. The kids too have voiced an appreciation for the diversity of people where we live. We like that we can be as involved with music and art as we want. When I have time I teach a class or work with high school artists through the Holland Project–the local non-profit for kids. I coached a girls’ high school soccer team this past Fall. We love that the city of Reno has very few rules about having livestock in our own backyard. I love that my breakfast comes right from my backyard. We are working towards that becoming even more of a reality in transformimg our whole property into permaculture.
As long as I can remember I have been about these things. I just used different avenues to live them out. I always like the idea of getting back to my roots. The simplest crafts interested me the most. When I was 18 I took up quilting on a whim. That summer I ended up at a Quilting Camp where I was by far the youngest woman there. I could hardly be considered a woman. I love the freedom associated with a survivalist mentality. The thought that I could, if certain circumstances were to occur, help my family survive without Target and a grocery store energizes me to no end.
In the spiritual realm things have really take a turn over the past 5 years. About 3 years ago we stopped going to church. This was a huge undertaking for me, since I thought that church would always be a part of my weekly routine and that thoughts of the Bible and God and sin management would fill my brain for the rest of my days. The loss of that often made me sad. It still does, come to think of it, but in the way an ex-boyfriend sticks with you. I am learning to hold life and religion and love in places in my heart I didn’t think existed, while at the same time, learning that I can’t quite think about any of them the same way. My openness to others and their beliefs has increased ten fold and I feel like a better person. It is just different, that’s all. I have less certainty, and am learning to live with that. It was also a huge crush to my ego to not “have the answer” anymore. Death for my ego, I should say. I will likely write a post on why this happened and where I am going from here.
That was my year. I am sure I missed a lot. But the themes are consistant. May next year be just as amazing and painful and lovely.
