It's been a long journey.
We've gone through lots of life changing events and personal growth and discovery since we last had the shop open. The most challenging of these was being diagnosed with PTSD. Understanding what it is, how it has been presenting in my life, how "trauma brain" works and how sometimes it feels like I have no control over how I react to certain situations. It has been a hard adjustment trying to understand that all of these little things that I had always thought or were told were just part of who I was or my personality, was actually the PTSD and sometimes my responses to trauma triggers.
Now I am able to more readily tell if I am triggered and why my thoughts, actions and body is responding the way it is to that trigger. Which is a huge step. Pre-diagnosis, which happened when I was 34 years old, from events that occurred before I was 6 years old, I was just presuming something was wrong with me and didn't understand why I was feeling something so intently, or why I felt so strongly for or against something, or why a situation which wouldn't bother someone else would be frightening or cause such anxiety that I would not be able to do it. What I have learned is that while you're still "you", when triggered a different part of your brain is active for decision making and reactions to the situation you find yourself in. When this happens you also stop using your frontal lobe - the logical part of your brain- for decision making and reactions.
Sorting all of this out has taken quite some time and intensive work. But I was noticing that I had a lot of anxiety connected to running my Etsy shop and particularly with custom orders. At the time it was just an additional source of pressure that I didn't need to have on my plate, so I took it off of my plate.
Now all this time later I have had some thoughts trickle back about reopening my shop, or the possibility of doing that and what it would look like. And I am going back and forth about it to be honest. I did enjoy creating the art pieces. But I never quite hit that sweet spot where I would create things, they would sell regularly but not be a cause of too much pressure to full fill. I can't say if I will reopen or not for certain. It maybe that I reopen with absolutely no custom work.
I can say that I am not at all prepared to run a merchant booth in person again at this time. In addition to the logistics of running a booth again, is the added concern of the still widespread covid pandemic. My family managed to avoid catching it thankfully until February of this year. However I have since needed two different inhalers daily and my dr believe this will be a long term effect of having had covid. Then I cause it again at the end of August, about a month ago, and am still working on fully recovering from that. So at this time, health wise it would be too great of a risk for me to have an in person booth.
But progress so far is updating the site, making a new post and seeing where things go. Until next time, may you find magic wherever you are.