BACK–OR BEGINNING–IN BUSINESS…

Well, after very unintentionally floating in blogdom limbo for the last week…I am back!

Now, I am not the most tech savvy gal by any means, but in my recent attempt to establish a site on WordPress.org, I simply felt….stupid. First, I had no idea that WordPress.com and WordPress.org were so vastly different from each other (a good tip here: do your research!). Generally, WordPress.com is a free blog site, similar to Blogger, Typepad, etc. with basic templates, a few customization options, and other additional options you can purchase for a fee. In order to look slightly more professional (even though I have no idea what I’m doing most of the time), I chose to purchase my domain name for a small yearly fee so that my site reads “themodagecottage.com” rather than “themodagecottage.wordpress.com.” Yes, I realize that my business name is already long enough without adding that additional hodge podge!

Anyhow, with this amateur attempt to up the ante, I found a host to support the WordPress.org application, made all the appropriate purchases, tried to transfer my meager content along with my domain name…and failed miserably. So I have spent the last week trying to make sense of the whopping mess that I created – installing themes, adding widgets, blah, blah, blah, so that I could proudly publish to the world at least a semi-professional site that I put together all by my lil’ self.

But heck, there comes a time when one must face reality. My reality, just this afternoon, in fact, was telling me that I wasn’t yet prepared to wrap my head around WordPress.org and all the CSS BS that goes with it, and to go back to what I actually enjoy doing, which is writing for my blog instead of customizing it.

So here I am, a week later, back on WordPress.com and loving every minute of it! I say all of this to you because I imagine that one day, when I actually have readers and followers, some of you may be in the midst of starting a business, or thinking about it, and I am here to say that no matter how much potential you may have and no matter how bad you may want it, everything will not happen to you all at once (something like “patience is a virtue…”). You will hit road blocks, and many of them, but a road block is not the end of the road and you WILL find a way around it – even if that means reigning in your ego a little and starting back at the beginning.

SO, now that I’ve gotten this business talk / inspirational message out of the way, let’s get to the good stuff! Here are a few things that I’ve been thinking about over the week that I have been M.I.A….

Easy, breezy, and bright summertime style. Love, love, LOVE that boyfriend jacket! Time to go shopping…

Cool, calm, and collected summertime style. Seriously, could she look any cooler?

Time to brighten up that living room, change out the slip covers, throw in some flowers, and add that dramatic touch (I recently found a HUGE, vintage milk jug, and just ordered these branches in white, not to mention….repainted my entire living room)!

Inspiration for a little something I’m working on….

Indeed!

AN INSPIRATIONAL MESSAGE TO MYSELF…

A long rant may not be the best way to begin a blog, but if you stick with me, I promise that there will be many fun-filled (and much shorter…) posts in the very near future! But to be as authentic and real as possible, I felt it necessary to be honest and open – not only with my readers, but with myself – about my very real fears and frustrations; about life, about business, and about living – or better yet, NOT living – life to its fullest.

I love my life – I really do – but at times, many times, I simply….forget. Instead, I begin honing in on all the negatives, all the terrible wrongs in my life: the bad skin days, the bad hair days, the bad hair months, the gray and rainy start to the week (despite the clear, blue sky and warmth of the sun beating down on me at this very moment), the laundry piling up, the clean laundry piling up, the chaos that is my husband’s desk, the chaos that is my entire office, the food-caked dishes piled on the kitchen counter (don’t even get me started on the rest of the kitchen…), the lack of storage space in this house, the limbo that is my “business” (quotations = stretch to call it a business), the judgments of friends and family about my business, and the list goes on and on.

Why do I do this to myself? Why do I so often have “the glass is half empty” kind of mentality? It’s overwhelming, fear-inducing, and frankly, just plain stupid! These thoughts hold no real value. Instead, they keep me terrified of taking a single step forward – that one, single step that will put me into motion (as the saying goes, “a body in motion stays in motion,” right?).

So, instead of putting one foot in front of the other, I tend to plop my butt in front of the computer, troll the web for ideas and inspiration (which in itself is not a bad thing!), and dream of the day when I will actually have the guts to move.

*On a side note, most of my inspiration comes from pictures – beautiful landscapes, picture-perfect homes, picture-perfect people in their picture-perfect homes…probably not the best thing for my sensitive and perfection-craving ego. In fact, it either puts this ego into a bit of a tivy – into super overdrive – or it simply makes me want to drive off of a cliff. I’m confident in saying that neither is healthy.

This morning, however, I found a few inspiring words (courtesy of Elements of Style) that made me question my negative perspective, and actually put a little bit of force behind my butt and into my feet:

“You don’t have to be great to start, but you have to start to be great.” – Zig Ziglar.

This was followed by a blurb by Andrew Gates (husband of blog author, Erin Gates):

“…just start and things will happen. Far too often we over think something so much that it never even gets off the ground. Better known as paralysis by analysis.”

Paralysis by analysis. Holy shitballs, that is good. And that is exactly where I stand. I analyze any potential risk to the point of exhaustion. Ever hear “making a mountain out of a mole hill?” Well, I make the Grand f’ing Canyon out of a crack in the sidewalk. And then I turn my eyes onto all my faults and weaknesses, analyze those to the point of exhaustion, until I feel so much like one huge stinking pile of poo that I actually want to jump into the canyon that I just created. But since I do love life (literally!), I just stand there instead, too afraid to jump over to the other side.

I realize that I do expect to be great to start. I want to step over that canyon (or crack in the sidewalk) and materialize into Kelly Wearstler, or at least a beautiful, intelligent, and all around amazing entrepreneur that has all of her t’s crossed, i’s dotted, ducks in a row, or whatever. I want perfection. But I hate to break it to you Sista (yeah, that would be me, speaking in 3rd person…), that’s just not how life works. Life is messy, life is hard, but it can also be fun and fulfilling when you actually choose to live it. You just gotta get moving, put one foot in front of the other, one little baby step at a time, and things will start to happen, life will start to happen, instead of it just passing you by.

I BELIEVE IN YOU.