Today I had a lot of fun grossing out a local reporter, JT Street, with a soap demo and an interview (that part was non-gross, I hope). He was here for nearly two hours to get enough material for a 90-second spot on tonight's evening news. And, being a reporter, he was asking me some very good questions beyond the obvious "Why soap?" that gets asked a lot.
As I've written before, this grand journey started when I lost my job and turned to my hobby of soapmaking to expand it to a business. You see a lot of success stories where the owner worked and slaved away for years to build their business into a success, and now five, ten, fifteen years later they're happy and busy and have seventeen employees and a desk in an air-conditioned office. Here I am in the thick of things, almost two years in, and with working 50 to 70 hours a week I'm just about breaking even. Ultimately my goal is to make enough for messing up my kitchen to make pretty soap to keep us in those little things like food. I would occasionally like to buy my nice hubby some new handkerchiefs now and then (they are kinda yucky but he carries them around anyway), and my ultimate goal is to make enough so I can hire him for the bookkeeping and marketing areas. (His blog is kept updated much more than mine. I keep busy enough doing everything and don't always take the time to blog about it.)
But right now, things are starting to get dire. We tried to be responsible and put our house on the market six months ago. Now, 41 showings later, we're still trying to pay our mortgage and trying to avoid foreclosure, a short sale or one of those deed in lieu dealios I'd never heard of until recently. I have sent out roughly...oh...about 1200 resumes and have had four interviews in the past two years. Heck, I just applied to decorate cakes in the grocery store. At least it would help pay for the student loans from grad school.
I'm not trying to be all woe-is-me here, simply truthful. This is happening to a lot of people. When I am not sending applications out, I am working on my business. My sweet husband Mark has three jobs (two of which he loves but which pay very little). And unfortunately, we're "those people" now. The ones you keep reading about who are un- and under-employed. We're trying to avoid becoming other statistics, another foreclosure notice in our neighborhood. At first I was fairly certain we'd be able to avoid this. Now I'm not so sure. We're just...waiting.
As I've written before, this grand journey started when I lost my job and turned to my hobby of soapmaking to expand it to a business. You see a lot of success stories where the owner worked and slaved away for years to build their business into a success, and now five, ten, fifteen years later they're happy and busy and have seventeen employees and a desk in an air-conditioned office. Here I am in the thick of things, almost two years in, and with working 50 to 70 hours a week I'm just about breaking even. Ultimately my goal is to make enough for messing up my kitchen to make pretty soap to keep us in those little things like food. I would occasionally like to buy my nice hubby some new handkerchiefs now and then (they are kinda yucky but he carries them around anyway), and my ultimate goal is to make enough so I can hire him for the bookkeeping and marketing areas. (His blog is kept updated much more than mine. I keep busy enough doing everything and don't always take the time to blog about it.)
But right now, things are starting to get dire. We tried to be responsible and put our house on the market six months ago. Now, 41 showings later, we're still trying to pay our mortgage and trying to avoid foreclosure, a short sale or one of those deed in lieu dealios I'd never heard of until recently. I have sent out roughly...oh...about 1200 resumes and have had four interviews in the past two years. Heck, I just applied to decorate cakes in the grocery store. At least it would help pay for the student loans from grad school.
I'm not trying to be all woe-is-me here, simply truthful. This is happening to a lot of people. When I am not sending applications out, I am working on my business. My sweet husband Mark has three jobs (two of which he loves but which pay very little). And unfortunately, we're "those people" now. The ones you keep reading about who are un- and under-employed. We're trying to avoid becoming other statistics, another foreclosure notice in our neighborhood. At first I was fairly certain we'd be able to avoid this. Now I'm not so sure. We're just...waiting.
RSS Feed
