I have had years in the past when I thought...this is the worst year ever......I tell myself again and again when Januarys come that this will be my year. Somehow though, my hopes tend to unravel with each pressing month.
In 2000, my grandfather got sick, then passed away, my boyfriend at the time cheated on me, and I was failing several of my college classes. I nearly convinced myself to drop out of school that year and move back home. Instead I got a fake id, started going out to bars, and somehow managed to survive that semester.
I graduated college in 2004, a year late thanks to having to retake chemistry classes (due to my crappy grades from the semester I talked about above). I quit working at the little aquarium shop I had been at all though college and decided to open my own business. For whatever reason (probably fear of doing it alone) I asked a girl I barely knew, and whom knew very little about the industry if she wanted to go into business with me. In just a couple quick months we had opened out saltwater aquarium store in a basement shop on the waterfront of Portland. We did nearly $100,000 worth of sales in the first year, yet as a start up business we had little to show for it. We spent countless nights going to the bars straight after work and I barely had enough money to pay my rent every month. It was at one of those bars that I meet my husband. After meeting him I realized that I needed to make some changes. I quit smoking and drinking on March 22, 2005.
Thats when my relationship with my business partner began to fall apart. In April or May I knew it wasn't going to work anymore when I found out she had pulled money out of our business account to pay her rent, even though we had payed the business' yet. After lots of debate she decided that she would buy my share of the business.
I made plans to open a new shop in Freeport, we drew up papers with our attorneys, and we ready to move on. I put a down payment on my new space and began moving into the apartment building Tony had just purchased. She and I scheduled a time to have her sign off on all of the paper work and finalize everything. I went in that day and she decided that she was not going to buy my share anymore. She had already resigned the lease to our space, without my name on it, changed the locks to our business, stolen all of our photos for advertising, and emptied out of bank account. She changed our business' website to advertise her new store. I got screwed. (There were also false claims made to police,and threatened restraining orders and other fun things going on)I lost out on a lot of money and had to scrape by to open my new shop. Three months after I opened, one of my electrical outlets caught on fire and caused a lot of smoke and water damage. I had to close for several weeks and never regained my momentum after that. That year felt pretty awful at the time. In 2006 we bought our house we are in now, moved to the boonies, and I eventually closed shop. Thats around the time I started this blog.I think that this year probably takes the lead in bad years. Most of the challenges are things I don't feel comfortable posting to my blog, but it has been a year of heartbreak. I keep having this dream (nightmare) where I am drowning and just as I am about to reach the surface, I get sucked right back down to the bottom. That pretty much sums up this year. I do, however, think that I am surviving this year better than any of those other years, probably because they made me into a stronger person each time.
All that being said, it is time to move forward and make some changes once again. I am closing comments on this post because it was really only made as a means for me to vent a bit.
From here on out I will get back to my regular posting and start figuring out how to make next year a better year.
