Tag: discouragement
Pain the Word that Best Describes this November
Pain, its not my favorite word, but sadly it was the perfect word to describe last month. After weeks of pushing as hard as I could to prepare for the holiday rush, dreaming of what might be, nothing. Absolutely nothing. Not one sale the entire month.
My heart sank into my shoes. After all that effort, pushing myself to the point where I was to exhausted to move which intensified my chronic nausea and the severity of my now daily migraines, I had actually taken a step backward, because at least the previous November, with only a handful of activity packs, I had made 1 sale. And now, with more than a dozen POD puzzles, sweatshirts, t-shirts, and mugs I had made nothing.It was hard to tell what was more painful, the severe ache in my head or the searing pain in my heart.
While I had done my best to remain cautious, repeatedly reminding myself that even though I had slightly more than doubled my listings from the previous year, my selection of listings was still to low to expect hundreds of dollars worth of sales. Yet even though I knew there was no real hope of making a couple of 100 sales, considering that a few months earlier in the middle of quarter 3 I had made 8 sales, with the over 2 dozen listings I had added since then combined with the holiday rush, surely I should be able to double that number. Or so I thought.I wish I could say that the month of December proved to be kinder, but so far I have gotten a grand total of 1 sale where last year I at least had 3.
So enjoy this short acrostic poem about pain. And hopefully, if you were to chose a poem describing your last few weeks, words like cheer, joy, and success would be the words that best fit your experience.
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Discouragement: Choosing to Be a Joseph or a Murmuring Israelite
If I were to write a poem right now the title would probably be discouragement. It would certainly sum up the mood of the day. Not only for me, but for my business as well.
Here we are, nearly a month into Quarter 4 and after weeks of pushing myself to the breaking, I made 3 whole sells on Etsy for $18 dollars. I know what you are thinking, how will I ever manage to spend so much money. A new car, a house, a vacation, or all of the above? Ha ha, it really is enough to take the wind right out of one’s sales.
I know that I have a way to go to develop really good designing skills, but even though I did not expect a rush on my products, I had hoped that at least 1 or 2 of my designs might get a couple of sales. I was sure that some, like my Turkey’s protesting Against Thanksgiving and insisting that you should play Sudoku instead was not only colorful but humorous as well.
Sadly, even though my Mother helped me to purchase a mockup to give it more appeal, it has gone over as well as bag of potatoes filled with bricks.
If that were not discouraging enough, in a few days we have to move from our temporary rental, and we still have to find a new place to move too. And between the holidays and the arrival of the winter birds there is a good chance that we could find ourselves on the street.
It is hard to believe that when we put our home on the market almost 1 year ago, there were multiple homes in our price range. Even more amazing, it is hard to believe that at the time, interest rates were low enough that we could get a house for $300,000 and it would have cost less per month than the house we were living in. Why at the time we put our house for sell, there was a 4/3 manufactured home on 3 acres for $180,000 that we were hoping to get once the house sold.
But fast forward a couple of months to when our house finally sold, and it was as if a vacuum had come along and sucked up every descent price home and then spit out a bunch of higher priced fixer uppers. Almost overnight anything that was descent disappeared from our price range or shot up in price along with the interest rates. Before we sold there were dozens of halfway descent places under $250,000 and even some under the 180,000 mark. Then our house sold and their were only a handful of fixer uppers remained. It has been six months since we sold our home and 4 since we had to move out into one temporary rental after another, and the market has become even bleaker. Now, with the our down payment dwindling and the competition for housing rising, it seems as if it will not be long before my mother, sister, and I shall soon be homeless.
As each day brings us closer and closer to this possibility, I find myself pondering the story of the Israelite and their years of wandering in the wilderness. From the day beginning, as we moved from our house to house with the remains of my beloved father and a few weeks later placed the remains of our sweet pup Happy by his side, I was reminded of how all through their wilderness wanderings they had carried the remains of Joseph.
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Enduring the Hidden Drop of the Etsy Roller Coaster
I have been trying all morning to create a post about the struggle of trying to build an Etsy shop while dealing with poor health and a slumping economy. There is so much I could say now that I have passed the 1st year mark with my shop about the importance of listening to old adage of if it is not broke don’t fix it, the importance of listening your body and knowing when to give your body the rest it needs, accepting that not everyone will be an overnight success, and more.
But today my brain is just to tired to focus. As much as I would love to write an article saying that if you just think positive there is delay or disaster that will stress you. But that is not true.
Like it or not there are days that you will wake up and say to yourself, what am I doing? Why am I even trying when nothing I do work? And you will be tempted to give up. And strangely enough, some of those days might come the day after you make a sale.
Sure there are going to be many great days when your mind will be full of hopes and dreams. Dreams that are bolstered by the remission of your symptoms and encouraged by a few sales. Like a well designed roller-coaster, there will be a period of steady climb with only a few mild dips that are perfect for lulling you into a false sense of confidence before a blind turn reveals a stomach shattering dip.
With a new high of 8 sales, July was one of those months. Finally after months of getting only with 1 sale and only 3 months where I got 2 or 3 sales, my slow but steady work was starting to paying off. With a few sales now behind me, and more than a hundred and fifty listings, my business was on the cusp of taking off as each new listing, sale, and the occasional review only adding to the growing momentum. With each sale I was calculating the conversion ratio to estimate what my sales would look like if I got x amount of visits and how may visits it would take to pass the next mile marker of 10 sales per month.
After such an exciting month I was eager to see the progress that August would bring. Now that I had close to 160 listings, 30 sales, and 2 reviews, surely I was set to see my biggest month ever with 9, 10, or even 11 plus sales. And from the amount of traffic, which was 4 times the amount of my normal traffic, it seemed like that hope was going to become a reality. Day by day I eagerly looked at my inbox hoping to receive a message from Etsy letting me know that this massive (at least for me), influx of traffic had converted into sales. Morning after morning I woke up filled with hope, eager to see how much money I had made overnight, only to be met with disappointment.
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Thoughts about Faith
Faith, it is a very small word containing only five humble letters, yet it certainly is a mighty word. When everything is going right, and the road of life is quiet and well paved, it is really easy to say I have faith and think that you understand what that word really means. But how can you? What faith is required when life is at its best and want and fear have no place in your life.
What faith is required to walk on plush carpets and eat ice cream by the pool? What faith do you have to rely on when your life is like a romantic postcard or an add for a tropical resort? What exercise of heart and mind is called for when your life could be flashed up for the poster image of successful because your every want and need is met for years to come. When your beliefs line up with the crowd and are excepted at every turn as the only way to live, saying I have a measure of faith takes neither courage nor self-denial.
It is not until trial and adversity hunt your steps, when discouragement and disappointment hunt you down like a pack of hungry hound dogs that you really get a glimpse of the depths and power of faith. Because it is then that you have to chose to hold on to faith. It is then that you have to chose to grab hold and cling to faith, that it become more than words.
From our comfortable arm chairs it is easy to look back at the mighty men of faith and say, I would do the same. Or to look down at those who fell short of the mark and say, I would never do that. Nothing would make me lose my faith. I would never chose the comforts of this life over faith in Jesus. If I were in that garden, or if I had been King Saul, or if I had been so and so I would have done this and not done that.
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Finding A New Dream
Even though I had known for a long time that it was coming, the day it finally broke through my thick head that my dream was over, it felt as if my heart had been run over by a mile long bullet train running at full throttle. Tears filled my eyes as I looked down upon the pitiful remnants of the dream that been the driving force of my life since I was five, and finally admitted to myself that like Humpty Dumpty, all the glue in the world would not put it back together again.
I would like to say that when the truth finally knocked its way into my brain, that after a few hours of mourning, I rose from my bed of tears stronger, wiser, more resilient, and with a sweet calmness worthy of emulation. I would like to say that it was such, but sadly for days, weeks, even months I was touchy, moody, and at times only tolerable company as I grieved for the cavernous void in my heart that I had no clue how to ease.
With bitter sorrow I listened to every tidbit of the active world around me. The green eye of envy rising to the surface as I was barraged at every turn by fresh tidbits of my peers success until I dread to hear the phone ring lest it was some loved one sharing news with my Mother that they were certain would bring smiles of delight to our face. News that at other times might have only brought forth a dry smile and a momentary pang of longing that was easily smothered by the abiding hope that one day soon my Mother would triumphantly be able to declare that her daughter had finished premed or graduated from nursing school.
But now that the battle had been conceded, now that I had admitted that my life’s purpose had been defeated by the superior foe of chronic pain and misery, I was like a flimsy dot of a life raft lost at sea. Rising and falling on the storm maddened waves of uncertainty and loneliness and pounded by the beating rains of despair. Like a haunting melody the unforgiving wind declared that I was nothing but a useless blob, a worthless blood sucker sucking the life of my aging parents. With fiendish glee the flashing lightening and earth jarring thunder would announce that my future once so bright and hopeful was doomed to ignominy and failure.
During this bleak time my pain was made more acute as imaginary images of my frightful fate, terrorized my dreams and haunted the most peaceful moments of my days. Like the midnight sectors of Dickens strange Christmas tale, my eyes were tortured by the fearful realization that one day the comforting arms around me would be no more, and that I would be left pale, friendless, and jobless to face a future wandering the streets begging for the stale crumbs of human sympathy.
Get Out of Life Free Card
When I was in high school, one of my favorite weekend activities was to play Monopoly with my Mother. If it were not for homework and household chores my Mother and I would have played the game all day. We loved going round after round, hoping and waiting for all the properties to brought up so we could make our exchanges and build our hotels.
As I look back on those enjoyable mother/daughter afternoons, I remember that despite nearly always loosing the game, I would have such fun. But there was always a low spot (not counting my nearly perfect record of landing on Park Place or Board Walk after it was brought), that made my heart tremble. And that was landing on the community property space. There were so many dangerous cards to chose from such as pay poor tax, pay school tax, or the dreaded hotel and homes tax.
But one bright spot to the day was the unexpected joy of lifting up the card and discovering that I had chosen the get out of jail free card. That wonderful card which would allow me to get of one jam without having to pay a penalty and having to fork out 50 dollars that I did not have.
As I think about it now, I imagine that to some people it must appear like I or any other chronically ill person has managed to land on community property and by the luck of the draw pull out this special card. This wonderful card that allows us at any moment to get out of work, chores, and any other unpleasant life duty. To many it may seem like if something is too boring, to demanding, to exhausting, dirty, disgusting, stressing, etc we get to pull this little ace from out of sleeves and declare that we are now privileged to get out of work and got and do the things that we really want to do.
Discouragement
Today is one of those days were discouragement keeps knocking on my door trying to find entrance into my heart. Stubbornly reminding me of all the goals and dreams that I have not meet and pointing out all the accomplishments and privileges that my peers enjoy. Whispering in my ear that life is and has passed my by. Insisting that my humble little life is a failure because I have not hit the mile markers of life such as getting a car, a job, a husband, and children like all my other classmates.
When discouragement comes to visit, it is amazing how as soon as its footsteps cross the threshold happiness threatens to go on vacation. Probably because joy, peace, contentment, and self-esteem cannot endure discouragement’s contentious presence. There is something about that dreaded visitor called discouragement that drives away pleasant guest such as hope and comfort.
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