Of course one of the main benefits of having your own business is that you get to create your own schedule. You are free to take vacation when you please, jet off on a moment’s notice based on your own personal decision; with no paperwork to fill out ahead of time or permission to ask. Of course the downfall of this is that when you don’t work; when you do jet off on any moment’s notice; your business may suffer and most indefinitely you will have no income for that time period. I am speaking of only the beginnings of a small business; I’m hoping this doesn’t apply to those lovely well established businesses out there who have found the tricks of the trade and are implementing them with discipline, but I can’t say for sure; I’m not there yet.

With that, my husband and I are on “Christmas vacation.” I left town on the 20th to fly to San Francisco to meet my parents to then fly to Oahu to see my brother get married. We then flew back on the 22nd, wrapped some gifts and then picked up my husband at the airport on the 24th. He used all his might to prepare for the loss of income we will have taking this week off. But given we are a new business, we didn’t feel we could simply drop off the face of the planet entirely and so we will pay our one employee this week to run a market for which will make maybe enough money to pay our employee but nothing more all in the name of consistency. We won’t be back in time for another market later in the week and we have no employee available to run it so that will simply be a loss of income on our part. I’m trying to realize that I can just take it as a day off and not think twice about it. But I’m have trouble not thinking twice about things. I’m developing an eye twitch which is never a good thing. And so clearly I need to learn to let go. I just don’t want my life decisions to be run by waffles.

Coming back to reality however, having no money in the account poses a greater level of emotional distress I believe mainly due to the time of year where you want to buy gifts and have $ to spend on loved ones. I am blessed with a large loving family that gives me more than I need. And Jesus is the real reason for Christmas. Keeping perspective, it’s okay that we have to work so hard to simply get by; this is the game of having a small business. I just have to decide if I want to be in the game or not.