The last time I sat down to write a shop/life update was in June. The world was in turmoil. It still is, but I was on a roll. I was full of aspirations on how consistent I was going to be “from now on”. I had a plan; a good plan. Then life happened, and now it’s the middle of October. We all have life stories, stories that throw us off our game, or keep us in the game, depending on how you look at things. Knowing myself the way I do, I should have known that I am anything but consistent. From a marketing perspective, inconsistency is a self-sabotaging nightmare, but apparently I seem to naturally gravitate towards chaos. That it seems, is just how I roll. My Dad gave me a really cool piece of driftwood art several, years ago, with a tiny copper wire person precariously balancing on a tightrope. Dad asked me what I thought it meant, and of course, I had no idea. Apparently, I was always saying that I needed to find balance in my life. I have always worked too hard and let my self-care fall by the wayside. I’m also very hard on myself when I don’t meet my own high expectations. I don’t know what happened to that piece of driftwood, but I can still picture that little person trying to balance himself ever so carefully so as not to succumb to his impending doom of falling through the hole in the wood. I guess the lesson here is that I need to keep trying to find that balance and to not be so hard on myself if I fall to one side or the other. I had a plan to write newsletters every month, to consistently engage with my readers so you wouldn't forget about me. The entrepreneurial goal being that I would be in your subconscious the next time you needed oils, keeping the consumer wheel going round and round. The “soul goal,” and obviously the more important goal of the two, being that I would consistently take the time to slow down enough to write. Writing is always therapeutic, as those of you who write will know. But a bunch of very messy life happenings that I will not go into, got in the way. So, here it is October, and I’m trying to get my balance back and not fall off my tightrope. But, also trying to gently remind myself that if I fall off, I can just get back up and try again. “Fail, Fail Again, Fail Better.” Pema Chodron
