Because I haven’t had time to blog this week due to a whole bunch of reasons, I figured I’d use today to share with you what I am feeling this week. (My apologies to Arrow Living for stealing your idea but, what can I say – it is a good idea!)

Here we go….

• Fireplace Repair Part 1 – Monday was a day of practicing patience for me. The fireplace in our 100 year old house needed to be cleaned, then fixed. Basically the lining inside the chimney is having issues which isn’t uncommon for a 100 year old house. "We will be there by 8 am" turned into showing up at 10:30 am. And as I am waiting, I am taking work calls from home which prevented me from calling to find out what is happening. To be fair, there was a significant accident on the freeway which was creating issues for everyone. I heard from friends who found their 20 min drive to work take a couple of hours. In the end, the guy showed up, did a great job cleaning the place, and did not have an overly helpful pitaroo trying to help. (The pitaroo was too busy sleeping on my bed to notice there was a stranger in the house.) Sadly, the crew to fix the fireplace was unable to show – so we will hopefully get something scheduled with them soon. With the weather turning rainy and cold, we miss our fireplace.
• An education in the law being in conflict with business – Working in a new industry always brings forth new challenges as you learn the ins and outs of the business. When I started at this company, I was amazed at how large our legal department was….amazed until this week. State government put forth a new law that affects our industry that we are now scrambling to respond to. As we look at the details of the law, we are finding that it doesn’t work with a large business. If you are a mom-and-pop type of business (small volume), the law is workable. But any business on a larger scale is screwed to find a way to get this in place without major systems and process overhauls. In addition, the law would take our business backwards almost 30 years as it is in direct conflict with a federal law that allowed our industry to evolve forward. I have worked in one other company where federal and state legislation had to be closely understood and followed at all levels, but the company was very small in comparison. The intent of the law is a good one but their outline of how businesses need to respond is where it goes sideways.
• Meetings: The Practical Alternative to Work – To say the last two days of my work have been full-on meeting hell is an understatement. Someone asked me why I always bring my laptop to meetings, and I explained that sometimes it is the only time I can check my emails when I haven’t been at my desk all day. I am looking forward to getting some work done today as I only have one meeting. Being busy is good – I like busy – I like being too busy as I am horrible with idle time. But damn.
• Kitten Rescue! – G made the decision that we are getting a cat for our 15 yr old. We had decided that earlier in the week, and BAM! the universe seemingly dumped a kitten into our laps. A friend’s husband’s submissive discovered that the brother to her kitten had been abandoned and mistreated, so they had kicked into "rescue mode". I got lengthy messages from both my friend and her husband and eventually his submissive about the kitten. "Yes, we will take it – when can I pick him up?" was my final answer. An hour later, I received a message about how maybe the kitten didn’t need to be rescued. They have another cat – this one an adult female who has had litters of kittens already. We can have her. Sadly, that won’t work with our existing cat. I worry about two adult cats getting territorial – just won’t work. I do worry about both cat and kitten though. Doesn’t seem like the owners should be allowed to have a cat at all – and hearing how careless they have been, well, I hope things get better for the cats.
• Surprise! – An artist whose photography I’ve shown at the club reached out to me just as I was reaching out to him last week. He has discovered that while swinging groups are turning more and more to Facebook in order to connect that many of the sub-35 year old people are unwilling to do that on Facebook out of fear of being found out. As a result, they are struggling to find a way to stay in touch with what is happening in the community. Years ago, this artist had build a website and monthly newsletter / magazine for people to keep up on what was happening. He decided it was time to revive it for this newer group of people. Cool, I told him, how do I get the erotic art shows in there? He is going to set me up as someone who can add that info which is awesome, but the big surprise came when he asked "hey, can I put some of your photography in the first magazine??" I sent him a few photos that I know have gotten good response and didn’t think anything of it. Getting the first copy of this electronic publication, I was surprised at how great it looked but even more surprised that I came across my own photos. He used both of them. I sometimes get stuck in curator mode to the point that I forgot that I am also a photographer – an artist – just like those I serve.
• Letting Go – A couple of months ago, I was asked to participate for a the 2nd annual holiday pop-up store at the school. Last year, it was an awesome influx of about $500-600 as I sold a shit ton of photos. They didn’t have to ask me twice to sign up! I had a few ideas of ways of displaying and selling my photos – and I started putting things together. I was making great progress until last weekend when I had printer issues – then ink issues. I figured that was not a big deal because I had already done a bunch of work. It’ll be fine. I went back to the pieces I had put together already and found the surface they were adhered to did not like the glue – they were all coming apart. At this point I was in full panic mode. Working full-time was going to make this difficult to recover from. After feeling bad that my "shop" was going to suck this year, I came to a decision – I needed to send my apologies and withdraw. I was not going to do something that made me feel like I was half-assing it. And I wasn’t going to not sleep for a few days as I tried to quickly redo everything that took me two weeks to get done in the first place. Writing the email to the organizer sending my regrets was hard. Thankfully it was met with understanding. Rarely do I admit that I cannot do something but instead power through it much to my own detriment. Letting go was the right thing to do – just rarely easy for me to do.

I just finished the audiobook version of Brene Brown’s new book – Braving the Wilderness. With the politically charged social environment we are now living it, I think this book is necessary for everyone – regardless of how you identify politically. I could write a whole post about the book itself -and fuck, I still may. Many MANY takeaways. Worth the read.

Happy Friday!