August 2015

I went by the shopping center a week or so ago late at night and had to stop and look. My store still sits empty.

 Now there is another one closing too....

Paco's Paradise has been there for more

About #thefinal90

Some folks have come across this journey recently and been curious how it came to be. If you didn't go back to the beginning and start there this is a summary. 

 
A few days before the deadline of Friday, August 1st 2014, a new blog began. Launched to capture the process of letting go and ending the 19 year run of a small local business; not done for sympathy or attention but as a way of explaining what it's like to close a beloved store. There's not much written about this sort of thing but my store deserved to have it's story told.

Here is where it starts - 
http://thefinal90days.blogspot.com/2014/07/what-its-about-introduction.html

 

My shop's final story has now been shared across many

social sites. You can find it by searching 

keyword/hashtag #thefinal90. Thanks for reading.

Cleaning out a storage unit June 4th, 2015

I'm heading to a shop in a small town near me today to sell off some of the things I held onto. There isn't ever going to be another retail store for me and six months later I'm trying to remember why I held onto all this anyway. 

My van is loaded up with merchandise that someone will look at and possibly make an offer on. The store is one I've visited plenty of time and shopped at - one which maybe ten years ago began as just a tiny little space and grew into a beautifully showcased retail emporium that it is today. I'm glad to know these people planned well and made their dream come true but I can't stop thinking and wondering where I went wrong with mine. 

So much love, effort, hard work and dedication poured into my shop for all those years is now boiling down to a storage unit of stuff which needs to be sold, donated or just thrown away. The dream is over and insane as it may sound, six months later it hurts as much as it did in October of last year. I'm not letting go gracefully I guess.

 

 

Six months later

Sometimes things have a funny way if sneaking up on you. I remember the first time I went grocery shopping after closing my store in October of last year. I recall thinking it was my first time in an independently owned store, no longer as a small business owner, and it felt strange to no longer be "one of them".

Tonight its six months later and I'm lost. The job search isn't going so well and I can't find my place. Maybe it's because I haven't made peace with closing that door yet - for the last half a year it's been absent from my life but now here it is just before Memorial weekend. All the small business owners t hat I know are working late, getting prepared and being the captains of small ships on the sea of enterprise. 

My ship doesn't sail there anymore and while I've struggled to come to terms with the end of a 19 year run, somehow I thought it would be easier to move on. I miss my little shop; my customers; being good at what I did and loving it so much. I guess when you've had all that,  feeling lost is to be expected. I'm not sure where I go from here. 

Missing what was

I am missing my business so much lately. The only place where I came alive for one of the only times in my life, is gone and it feels like I've lost a piece of my soul.

I loved the customers, the kids, the strangers who turned into friends, our conversations and the dream. Because five months later that's what it's fading into; just a dream. I will likely never be a small business owner again because it's becoming clear to me that fear of failure and loss a second time is something I can't risk. To lose a part of my heart after 19 years is something I'm still struggling to grasp.....how I let so much time slip away while on the wrong path.

Finding a job is proving to be much harder than I'd thought and the silence of what's gone just echos around me now. It's spring; there should be excitement for a new season; plans being made and instead there is silence. I let what most refer to as the best years of one's life fade away doing what amounted to nothing and now the emptiness is crushing me.

I wish I could hit replay but it's too late. The piece that completed me is missing and while a shadow is still looking for a job, what made me jump put of bed in the mornings full of enthusiasm to get to work has died. Finally I can say that perhaps it would have been better if I'd never been a small retail shop owner. There is a sadness in my life that I can't fill.

I've lost a piece of my soul

The weather just began getting warmer a few days ago. I'm feeling as if I should be cleaning; getting the store ready to reopen for the upcoming summer season; placing merchandise orders and building new displays, but that's now part of my past. For the last nineteen years all those things took place in March and April, and now for the first time there is an empty space.

I'm looking for a job, and have been ever since the shop closed. I didn't expect to find much available during the winter but now that many businesses are gearing up for the summer there should be plenty of options. Maybe I'll have to work some weekends but likely not all, and that's something most people would want, rather than working every Saturday and Sunday for months as I've done. A day off will likely be a "normal consideration" so the crushing non-stop schedule that had become routine throughout the summer is behind me. There are some great little businesses, amusement parks, and attractions around here and if I'm lucky I'll get to work for some of the long-time local owners....

What I can't find is my passion. That thing that makes you want to jump out of bed in the morning is gone, and along with it, the inspiration that used to flow from  my fingertips as I created art out of odd things and strange items. To me it seemed like magic when it happened - and given that the ability to create and make things had only come to me in the last five years - it was magic. Only in the last several years was a fragmented brain able to function normally, and with it came this incredible sense of being able to carry an idea or a concept for a sculpture or piece of art - for the first time in my life. Before then? I was a shop owner yes, but after struggling for years was still unable to keep focused enough to actually build something....what grew inside of me then now appears to have died with the store.

Even this series of posts and articles, which during the final 90 days was something I craved to write, has become so difficult. What used to pour out of my heart and mind, so urgently in fact that I'd need to capture my feelings by furiously typing on my phone, has fallen silent. The words are labored and no longer run freely, with this being the first time in months that I'm writing. Caught off guard at seeing some old advertising materials and photos of my shop from the past, I'm somehow brought back to this blog today. But what I want is the ability to feel whole again - not just for a fleeting moment - but to have that peace in my spirit.


I have lost a piece of my soul.