Change Isn’t So Bad After All So Don’t Be Afraid Of It
I’ve had a lot of changes in my life, as all of us have, but I shouldn’t have been so afraid of them after all. Let me tell you about it.
My husband and I grew up and lived in the Barrie, Ontario. Hubby is a nurse and he was working in Toronto. He loved the work but the commute everyday was killing him. He just wasn’t the same man. He came home one day and said to me “I’m a nurse, I get paid the same no matter where we are”. With that said we decided to move, where to we didn’t know. He sent out some resumes and a good position came up in Mount Forest. A small town of about 5,000 people.
We had no idea what we were in for. We didn’t know the town, we didn’t know the people, nothing but here we are and we love it. That was big change #1
Change #2
I had always had this little dream of having my own little shop. There was a storefront open and without me knowing it he gave me one for our 13th Anniversary. He showed me the store, handed me the keys and said “It’s yours”. Wow! Now I have a store but nothing to put in it. Hubby to the rescue. He had thought about everything. All I had was a bit of my artwork to put in it but nothing else. Again, hubby to the rescue. He had already lined up some other artisans to put their work in on consignment. So that’s how Sherry’s on Main was born. Now I had to figure out how to run a store. Scary, but scary good. It changed and evolved over the 18 years I had it and I loved every minute of it.
Change #3
Covid happened. Because my store wasn’t considered essential I had to close. Then the government allowed non-essential stores to open again, then, guess what, Covid reared its ugly head and once again since I was not essential I had to close again. I lost almost a years worth of earnings. What was I going to do, how was I going to hold on. I had nothing coming in but the money kept going out. Now that was SCARY but I held on and was able to open for the Christmas season.
Change #4
My landlord had decided that since Covid was screwing things up with supply chain and all, January would be a good time to do renovations on the store. It makes sense, January is a slow sales month anyway, BUT I had to have everything out by the end of December! I was extremely lucky to have some fantastic friends without whom I would never had to be able to do it on my own.
Change #5
I was all excited to move back in to a “new” store. With the beautiful renovations that my landlord had made he put the rent up so high that I couldn’t afford to stay. This terrified me. What was I going to do, where was I going to go! After all I loved having my little shop. Since this is a small town it didn’t take long for my predicament become known. I had 3 different landlords offer me there storefronts. Two were unsuitable, the third was the place I wanted to be. But, guess what, it was under renovations as well and again, because of Covid, the renovations were taking too long. As of this writing they are still going on. This was a big disappointment, I didn’t have a place to reopen and shopkeeping was all I knew.
Change #5
So now I don’t have a store but it made me realize that after 18 years of owning and operating my little shop I was tired of it. All of the stress that I didn’t know I had just slipped off of my shoulders. I feel lighter and free and I get to spend time with my husband. Our house looks like a hoarder lives here with all the totes and boxes but I’m still kinda in business through my website. I also have a plan. We have a bedroom that we don’t use so I’m going to make it into a little showroom in there where I can display my products to take pictures of them and to do some live videos.
In the meantime my office is here, sitting in my recliner with my tablet on my lap. Oh and I can’t forget my new employee, Wednesday,
She “helps” by sitting on my lap making it difficult to hold up my tablet, or better yet, sitting on the keyboard so I can't type at all. Those of you who have a cat know that the struggle is real. I love her, I love my husband, I love my new life and I’ll be able to take the time to write another murder mystery play!!
So change isn’t always a bad thing. Sometimes even though they are scary, disappointing or just fall out from under you it can be a good thing, so don’t be afraid of change.
TTFN
Sherry