Purveyor of Vintage: What a productive Vacation!

Retail management, what is not to love about it? Despite the stresses and the long hours, I really do enjoy my work. It keeps me youthful and on the fore front of fashion. It also gives me hands on training on how to run a business and that is what I aspire to do one day. No amount of education can really teach you how to deal with the daily grind of customers, outfitting forms, merchandising, and selling. I enjoy it all.

As you all may understand, working full time (or in many cases for many Etsians, raising a family!), Etsy part time, and blogging is all very very time consuming and finding a way to balance it all can be a little stressful. I am working hard to find a harmony to this all.

I was on the verge of burning out! Creatively, physically, and emotionally. I had a scary faint at work one day and I realized I was pushing myself too hard and had to just get everything set up. I had to lower my expectations and realize that it wasn’t all going to happen overnight. I had to handle each thing one step at a time.

This week, I had a vacation. So I took the time to work and get everything set up and finally settled. I made myself a checklist on Word and I’ve been hi-lighting everything I got accomplished.

It looks a lot like this:

Blog

Blog revamp

Search for blogs with common interests – ongoing

Twitter – find people with common interests – ongoing

Revamp product descriptions for older products

Take new pics

Fix up lighting on some pics

Finish up Etsy shop spreadsheet

New pricing

Make a new avatar

TREASURY! Make a few new ones for funsies. – ongoing

Advertising and marketing. Read up on different methods – ongoing

Business cards

List new items

The highlighted ones are the ones that are completed. I think I did pretty good work in a week. A lot of my time was spent researching and reading. I also spent time with my family, which is something I rarely get to do. Overall, I feel refreshed despite all the work that I did get done. It was a welcomed change.

Sometimes working hard but feeling accomplished can refuel a mental battery. Lately I’ve been beaten down by many people around me. I needed to feel good about myself again. MAIN ACCOMPLISHMENT NAILED!

BTW, If you did not know, Jeremy (Mom Jeans) is obsessed with Star Wars. Our “business” cards have pictures of Star Wars characters on one side (please don’t sue us, you have enough money!) and our names on the other. It’s mostly to grab for attention. We plan to leave them around bars and such for a bit of a “viral” campaign. It’s a cute idea!

This is what I came up with: