Writing

It is getting so frustrating when I have all these other things that command my attention and all I want to do is sit at my computer and write and write and write. It seems I can never run out of things to say to a piece of paper or a computer screen, but put me in front of a real person and I’m at a loss. Give me an architecture project and I will procrastinate until the very last moment, but tell me you need a letter or a memo or a summary and I’ll jump right on it. When I see call back a client and update my blog on my to do list what do you think I’m going to do first? It just seems really so hard to get paid to be a writer. I’ve been writing for myself for years… stories of my romances and heartbreaks, frustrations and elations. But what does it take to get that writing noticed? That I have no clue. I can post things on my blog that no one reads and spout off on all things important to me, but if it never gets read then to me it isn’t really writing. I can hope that somehow a copy of my hard drive slips down between the cracks of my floor boards and someday someone restoring my house will find my stories and publish them posthumously as an original look at life in the early 21st century, but I just don’t think that will happen. I read all the books on starting writing career and look at all the selling that needs to be done and that is just not me. I’m not a seller. I’m not even a go getter. I’m an observer and that is what makes me a writer and not a great seller. So I sit here stuck and frustrated and wondering what I can do to make myself a career of what I really love to do…..write my observations of the world down…. And to chronicle my existence here on earth in this body in this time.

After the Oscars

I love movies. I'll see pretty much anything that has a happy ending. More than the movies though I like a good story and I like to be entertained. I want to be taken to places and situations that are not a part of my regular daily life. I want to know what it's like to rob a Vegas casino, fall in love in the English countryside, and live the single life in New York City. That's why we all watch the movies.... to take us out of the ordinary and to experience something new and different. We can judge who is a good actor and who is a great screen writer, but I don't think we can really judge what a good movie is. To me it's anything that entertains me and lifts me up, to others it needs to move them emotionally and make them think deeper thoughts about the way the world works. Movies are bashed for thier unrealisticness, their poor dialog, unlikely couples, and undeveloped story lines. But for me they are all doors into other worlds regardless of who the actors are and how well the story is told. When times are tough I don't want to see others on screen struggling with my same problems. Give me the Rodeo Drive shopping spree, the good life lived in a French castle, and the excess of a royal family. These are things that make me forget that I have laundry to do and that we are having hotdogs for dinner. I just wanted to say thank you to all the people that make movies, even ones starring Paris Hilton and Rob Schneider. I want to thank all the people who spend their lives trying to tell a good story, entertaining us all, and recording the hopes and dreams of us all on film and on paper.

Funky Friday

The ultra- conservative bank we left our tax returns with 2 weeks ago has now non- officially said no to us asking if they might want to lend us money to expand our shipping business. No application, no business plan, just a no because of the fact that our shipping business has no assets. Do we have to buy a plane to get a loan? Do we need a fleet of trucks? What does it take for a cash business to get a loan? I'm serious about starting a bank that funds businesses like ours. I would think we'd make a mint giving loans to businesses with no assets. Now if only someone would loan us the money to start that business. HA!
Where to next? I'm not sure I want to go through the rejection of trying another bank. I know our business is rock solid the way it is, we just don't fit into any existing business model that the banks are comfortable with. We'll just have to wait until the seller is really ready to sell and carry.

On the architecture front....things are still slow. I actually took and completed a project this week that I am invoicing for a whoping $227! When have I ever done a project for that little? Never. Usually $3000 is my minimum. Yes I am that desperate for cash. It was an easy little fire exit plan that didn't need stamped or anything complicated. But still even I am amazed that I did it. It will help pay for getting my compressor installed next week. Every little bit helps.

And officially next Friday is Amelia's last day at day care. I just don't have the $500 for March's tuition. I might regret it later if the rugs start selling like hot cakes. I won't be able to get her back into her new preschool until Sept when school starts again. The boys will be home all summer anyway, so she might as well be at home too. She's much easier to take care of and keep entertained then they are anyway. Daycare's across the country must be feeling the Great Recession. There have to be tons of mother's just like me who are out of work and can't justify the hefty monthly payments while they look for new work. Amelia is just going to be my little apprentice. She will learn the business from the ground up literally.

Bored Today

I'm bored and I've only got an hour until it's time to pick up the kids from school. So I'll just rant here for a little while.
We haven't heard back from the bank since 2 weeks ago. They took our original copies of our tax returns from the past 4 years and are apparently keeping them, or have forgotten about us entirely. I really don't think the shipping business expansion is going to be done with bank money. We are going to arm wrestle the seller and offer him a small cash down payment and then he'll just have to carry the note. It will happen and we will have a new territory eventually, but it is moving so slowly, just like I was rambling yesterday about the rug business.
Life always seems like a waiting game, but I have to remember it's the waiting part and the creating part that are just as important as the getting part. Life happens everyday even when I'm waiting. Things are moving and I'm on the path, I just can't see my destination yet, but the path is beautiful.
That's too philisophical. While I'm on the path, tonight I'm going to watch American Idol.

Everything is taking so Long

So now I have everything I could possibly need to make my rugs and there are still issues. Apparently the cmopressor needs to be hard wired into our electrical system. Okay so that will be done.....next week to the tune of $500. I finally have my rack built and all my wool in 56 beautiful colors, and still I can't get things started.

I've been working on this new business since basically last July and it has taken this long to get all the supplies, knowledge, and equipment together. It's very frustrating at times when all I want to do is just produce a beautiful rug. I feel like I'm moving so slowly and everyday it's just a tiny baby step in the right direction. When I first started I had no idea how to do what I want to do and now I'm looking for a Tibetan manufacturer for the rugs so that if and when I get a big order I have the power to back it up. It has all more or less come together and soon, very soon I will have a product that I can sell!

If it took this long to get all the supplies together, will it take just as long to find a buyer? We'll see.

Home Office

It's official. I've moved home. I've still got a few odds and ends at the office in town, but hopefully this weekend I'll get everything home including the giant framed picture of Elvis hanging over the conference table.
After spending all morning just trying to heat my home office I'm missing the town office already.
I'm almost ready to start tufting. The compressor arrived yesterday and the wool gets here tomorrow. So now pending any more winter storms (it's snowing right now)I should be able to start next week after we get everything assembled this weekend.

I think we were shut down by the bank yesterday. It was the same old stuff.....no assets, no loan. This is so frustrating considering what the cash flow is for the shipping business. Why can't we be judged on that instead of the assets? There are no service businesses with assets. Web sites don't have assets, technology companies don't have assets, and those are new businesses. We've been in business for almost 5 years and we can't get a loan to grow our territory because our trucks are not an asset and our customers are not an asset. WTF? I am almost at a loss on this. I am beyond frustrated and without words. Our 1 business that has always done well despite the economy and the one that we want to grow now that things are rough in our other businesses, we are not able to get a loan. We are not even asking for that much money....$100k-200k. That is nothing in the world of business.
Talking to the banker she was trying to bring up that if we were a yogurt business it would be so much easier... I nearly smacked her upside the head.... a yogurt business. We are a worldwide shipping business and you are comparing us to a yogurt company. UGHHHHH
We will keep looking for a bank that is willing to help and probably one that is not as conservative as the one that we visited yesterday.

On a better note. I finally ordered my 5hp 60 gallon, 20 CFM air compressor. It should arrive next week sometime along with the wool shipment. I absolutely promise to put up pictures of the studio next week and hopefully have the start of a rug to show. In the meantime I'm just going to complain about the banking industry.

I would love to be able to start my own bank and lend money to businesses and people like us. There is a lot of money to be made in service businesses with no assets and I don't understand why the banking industry can't get it thru their heads.

I am the cause for the drop in consumer spending

Obviously I am no longer making any money as an architect. My 2 projects I had left that I was counting on to get me thru till summer were indefinitely postponed last week. The money I make is not a lot.....sporadically like $2-5K every other month, but that is my money and I spend it everywhere. It's for:
1. Vacations (weekend trips to Phoenix, Vegas, San Diego, LA)
2. Bimonthly trips to Old Navy for clothes for the kids
3. Endless amounts of craft supplies from Michaels
4. Toys and knick-knacks from Target.... I used to spend $800/month on crap from Target... new hand towels, new sets of sheets, cool frames, DVD's, the latest trade paperbacks, cheap shoes for the baby to go with every outfit, novelty t-shirts for the boys, anything and everything that looked cool.
5. Books from Barnes and Noble.... I used to spend about $80/week there.
6. Amazon and yes this deserves is own line item seperate from Barnes and Noble. I am the queen of Amazon. I don't like to get just 1 book a week (like I am now) I like to order 20-30 books at a time from Amazon. I have over a 100 books in my shopping cart and saved for later I am so far behind on my book shopping.

You might think..... wow that's a lot of money spent on crap, but that is what keeps consumer spending up and the economy moving. Those are all the things that keep me sane. It's all entertainment... not the shopping so much, but all the things that we buy give us something to do. We need books to read, we need to visit other cities, we need clothes on our backs. Now that I've lost that income I am most cetainly bored. I guess in one way we just need to be a little bit more creative in how we spend our time. We are repainting our craft projects instead of buying new ones to paint, we are watching old DVD's that we haven't seen in a while, we are buying shoes that go with every outfit, I am reading all the classic books that I paid so dearly for from Easton Press instead of buying new ones, we are exploring closer to home and finding places we didn't even know were right in our own backyard. It's not all bad, but it is definitely different.
I guess we should be glad that those are the only things we are losing due to the economy. We have no problem paying our mortgage or any of our other bills. There are families that are not able to buy groceries or pay their rent and all I'm moaning about is books and crap from Target, but still we are feeling the pinch.

The Great Recession

Good News! For one of our businesses (Business #1 I'll call it) we were able to modify our SBA loan. We had tried months ago to get our bank to refinance our loan since we are having a hard time making our $9500/month payments. That's right....that is a freaking lot of money. Our sales have been down between 25-30% in the last 6 months due to the lack of construction around here. The bank said "No way". We finally called the SBA and they had to call our bank and strong arm them into adjusting our loan. The SBA basically had our backs. This to me is just another example of how the banks are hoarding money and until the government (SBA) called them out on it there was no way they were going to help us. We got our loan extended 18 months and our payment will be reduced to around $6300/month. Yea! SBA!
This week we have another meeting with a bank for our shipping business. We'll see if they are interested in loaning us $200,000 to expand our business. That should be an interesting meeting.

Just to update you on how over all the Great Recession has affected us...
1. I've lost all of my architectural clients due to bankrupt projects, and the unwillingness of banks to fund any new ones.
2. I'm taking my daughter out of day care since I can no longer afford the $500/month and also see above.... I have no projects and a lot of free time on my hands.
3. I have upped the deductible on our health insurance to $5000 so that the payments are not $750/month but a more affordable $450/month.
4. We are giving up our luxury automobile leases. When the lease expires in June we will not be leasing another Audi, but will resort back to driving our 1990 Ford F150 pickup.
5. I am giving up my cute little office down town due to reason #1 and to save the $1200/month.
6. We've let go all of our employees at Business #1 and are staffing it solely with family members which makes for lower overhead, but long 6 day work weeks for everyone.

Oh yeah I'm gonna give you all the facts and figures. I have no secrets when it comes to money. I love to see what things cost and assume most other people do to. If I'm going to put a personal face on how the economy is affecting people then I can't do it with allusions to figures. I've got to be real about it. Keep reading....it's only gonna get better....or much, much worse.