Remembering my first

The day I opened my store was such a blur, but in all the craziness, I can clearly remember my first real customer. The store opened at 10 AM and for the first few hours, friends and family popped in and out. My first sale was to a friend of mine, a fellow store owner in the shopping center. She bought a hipster overnighter as a birthday gift for a friend of hers.

But that sale didn't really count. She knew me, and like many of my girlfriends, had stopped by while we were setting up. She spotted the bag a week before we opened and said that she would buy it as soon as we were "officially" in business. While I sincerely appreciated the business, it wasn't a bonafide honest to goodness real sale to someone I had never met.

That happened just after lunch.

A group of women wandered in and began checking things out. I followed them around with enthusiastic and over-eager explanations of all of the products they were looking at. They finally gathered around a display of fold-up tote bags.

"Oh, these look just like the Longchamp," one of the women said. I had no idea what she was talking about.

Another added, "Fifteen dollars? They would make great gifts!" She scooped up three bags.

The truth was, I hated those totes. But they were inexpensive, and I needed some filler items since my opening budget was so tight. The colors worked for our display, so I ended up ordering a ton of them. We wrapped the bags and sent the woman on her way. Later I found out that the bags were a knock off of a ridiculously expensive brand of collapsible french bags.

So that is where I am now with my writing. Lots of friends proclaiming the cleverness of my products and a few lined up to "buy," but no real customers yet. And the truth is, I can't wait for that first sale.

Knock off cheapie thing that I hate or not, it is going to feel damn good to sell it.

Transitions

When I stumbled into retail a few years back I felt like such a fraud. Though I had been a serious indie store stalker for many years, I had very little actual retail experience. My girlfriend, in what was probably a post-partum act of delirium, hired me to manage her hipster gift shop. Three months later she sent me to the gift market as a buyer with a list of vendors to visit and instructions to "just go ahead and order anything else cool."

So there I was, with someone else's credit cards, navigating thirty floors of products. I was terrified. I tried to bolster myself with the facts: I had a pretty good feel for the aesthetic of the store. I had list of previous orders to work from. I had a budget. I could cancel orders once I got back. Still, it was difficult to convince myself that I could pull it off without the safety net of experience to call on.

I like feeling like I am fully qualified to do something. That I have been well trained to make the right choices. That there is some knowledge base in my mind which gives me the undeniable permission to do whatever it is I am doing.

Which is probably why motherhood is such a struggle. And why slogging my way along towards being a writer feels so scary.

I don't have a literary background. My sophomore year of college, I ditched the English department and went in a different direction, ending up with a degree in computers. Then I chucked my corporate gig for a stint in retail. My mind is filled with tidbits of systems upgrades and five year color trends. Knowing that purple has been staging a comeback for the last three years (and failing to really take hold), isn't going to help me write a book or pitch an article. People who have been into this stuff for years mention things I have never heard of, like The Chicago Manual of Style, and I smile and nod and think yeah, what she said, then I go home and google it. I read, but I don't consider myself well read. I am usually too unsure of myself to use a semi-colon; I have a long way to go.

Yesterday, I signed up for a writer's weekend hosted by the Sun Magazine. The conference is touted as one appropriate for all levels of writers and I am just going to believe it. I think it will feel exactly like my first trip to the gift market. Intimidating as hell.

I did end up with a decent pile of orders at that first gift show. I did go on to own a store myself. Somewhere in between I started to feel legit. I think eventually I'll probably find my groove as a writer too. I have allowed myself to believe that you can get where you want to be with some persistence and a lucky break or two.

I just hate the part right before it happens.