So when one is leaving a steady paycheck to be their own boss, there are definitely days when The Panic sets in. I believe that a positive mental attitude is everything to success so I actively work to stay in that place. But… I will admit that sometimes it’s hard. 

Right now sales are down across all online channels. The sites themselves won’t admit it but when you talk to other sellers, everyone is experiencing a major downtrend. I had more sales last year when I was barely listing anything at all and just old stuff would sell every other day. It was automatic, list something and a couple hours later I’d get a sale from the shop, usually not even the item I listed. Now, I can list 5 to 10 items a day and it’s crickets for two or three days. It’s really alarming. Fortunately, I do have multiple sales channels and I haven’t had a day where I didn’t sell at least one thing somewhere. 

But the mortgage payment went out today, as well as our beefy monthly insurance payment. I had to transfer a little money from savings and that put me in a very bad place mentally. I have done well overall, but we’ve also been spending a bit and I booked a trip for both our anniversary and spring break. I think I just need to adjust the spending for a bit until things pick up again and just have faith that all my hard work will pay off. There’s a lot going on globally and domestically that has people not spending as much and it’s just a matter of waiting that out and making sure I’m covering my bases before I’m sourcing more or buying people’s dinners, ha ha. 

My point in making this post is just to say it’s very natural to have days where we question and analyze and even worry a little bit. I think a good, healthy response is to use this to examine how we can do things more efficiently, where it makes sense to adjust behavior- not out of fear, but out of pushing ourselves to do better. Keep in mind that we can’t allow ourselves to be overcome by these thoughts or to entertain them habitually. Once we’ve address the concerns, we have to not dwell on them. The best thing to get past it is to get to work and bury oneself in what is going on at that very moment. For me, right now, that is listing away- and doing a little laundry, ha ha.

PS it’s been a minute since I posted it, but you can find my listing from today on TheRiCharmedLife.etsy.com.