"The only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking, don't settle." -Steve Jobs

 Remember that time, specifically the last 30 years, where my dream job was doing haircuts from home?

I'm living the dreeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaam. Also, help me. This was my dream. This is what should be so fulfilling, right? I'm not supposed to be dreading each time I am a few minutes away from a client coming.

Working on strangers at a public salon was so much easier is several ways (and so, so much harder in other ways). Greeting a stranger who is judging the salon more than judging me is so much easier emotionally. Teaching someone is so much easier when I never see them again and don't have to dedicate brain space to that keeping that interaction locked away, able to recall details of what I've already told them or not.

Inviting strangers into my home is a so different. It is BETTER in so many ways. I love having my area with my stuff and my decor and my world and comfort zone. I love not having a boss and not having someone micromanaging all the little things I'm not efficient at. I love having the extra time to interact and have full consultations and pull out pictures and really work out what works for them and their hair and their life. 

Having everything be on me is hard, though. How the studio looks, how clean and organized and welcoming is on me. How I interact with them is on me. The ambiance is on me--if my daughter is upstairs screaming about something dumb (and oh man, is she doing that a lot lately), or if my husband is loudly belching upstairs (which is also an annoyingly common occurrence), that's on me. 

It feels like there is A LOT MORE room for forgiveness when it's a corporate shop than when I'm just my dorky self, barefoot in my basement.

And a corporate shop creates such a different mood around the financial aspect of things. Them complaining that they would bring their kids in more often if it didn't cost so much to do so? Water off my back in a corporate salon. In my own studio? Guilt-inducing. I want to be helpful and just discount and want to work for free for them. Which isn't fair to me, nor my little family while I am taken away from them while I work.

Also, the children. Oh my goodness, the children. My overwhelm is so much quicker when there are children in my studio, loudly playing, hands all over my things, demanding to wander up into my family space upstairs, with the parent paying the littlest amount of attention to the children as ever. And I'm quietly losing my mind while trying to blend around these cowlicks.

 

Was going absolutely bonkers while bringing in 5K a year the dream? 

Anyway. Still love what I do... just need something more. Trying to figure out what that is.