“No excuses^ Watch your waste.” – NARA – 515081 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Before I post this, there are exactly 666 posts on this blog. Which is sort of appropriate as I’ve been having a devil of a time over here. (See what I did there?)

You know when you’re reading a blog for a while and then the author just completely abandons it for no reason and you’re like, “Oh, well” and you write it off? Well that is NOT what’s happening here. I swear to you.

I’m not going to tell you that a bunch of crummy stuff’s been going on over here because I feel like a broken record on this count. But I am going to tell you that I am very appreciative of your patience while I try to figure out how to live my life in this new strange world. I am also going to tell you that I am VERY lucky. Even the worst things that happened this year have all resolved themselves in what is, really, the best possible way they could have and I am extremely thankful for that. Not to mention, there’s been some very good news mixed in, the kind that brings its own chaos, but is still a welcome break from the doom and gloom. In the end, hopefully the worst lies behind us and now it’s just a matter of catching up and finding a plan for moving forward.

But it all adds up to the fact that my life, both professional and personal, has been in total disarray and I’m not even remotely caught up yet. Hence why blog posts here have been sporadic, my store is mostly empty and eBooks have been delayed. 

I feel more than a little awkward writing this post because it’s basically me making excuses when I have written many posts the gist of which are: there are no excuses. For instance, I am the proud author of this little gem of tough love: No, please, beat yourself up about it (On the value of being hard on yourself) I also don’t like to talk about myself or my personal life… I’d always rather give you an informative article or other such useful post. But it’s getting to the point where I feel obligated to give you at least some kind of an explanation so you don’t think I’ve closed up shop for good.

Right now, I’m feeling more like the person who wrote this post: When life gets in the way of running your business: 4 things you can do to minimize damage. I’ve come to peace with the fact that there’s some stuff that’s just not going to get done this year and there’s nothing I can do about that. “Come to peace with” here means it still stresses the heck out of me and I have a meltdown every now and again, but even those moments of total epic freakout are slowly getting better.

Other than our products (ie, the ones we manufacture and distribute ourselves) there’s going to be very little in our store this holiday season. Am I worried about missing out on the biggest retail season of the year? Insanely. But I’ve looked at the big picture and decided that other projects need my attention more in the next few months and I’m hopeful that these few well placed projects will make enough money to make up for the lack of holiday sales. I have to believe that there is plenty of time in the future to make up for this strange and unproductive year.

The sort of wacky thing is that I’ve got several projects thiiiiissssss close to being ready to launch but I just don’t have the time now to finalize them. What I’m hoping is that, once I get my life back to normal, I’ll have a bunch of things to release all in a row to make up for the profits lost this year. But, honestly, who knows what the future holds? If there’s one thing this year has taught me, it’s that a lot can happen in 12 months and that planning is, to some extent, futile.

Anyway, I know I have a lot of new followers and readers from recent appearances online and off who, unfortunately, started reading this site in the midst of this chaos. I want to assure them that nothing about 2012 on The Whine Seller has been normal and that I hope to be able to resume the normal schedule of a new article every Monday, Wednesday and Friday morning soon… I just don’t know when that will be. In the meantime, posts will continue to be sporadic and the books and eBooks I’ve promised you will be ready… when they’re ready.

What’s the lesson to take away from all of this? That even the best laid business plans can get waylaid by life? That sometimes you need to, if not make excuses, at least allow yourself to modify your goals based on extenuating  circumstances?

You tell me.