18+ years in

 I started this blog 18 years ago. It began as a fitness/workout blog and was that for a long, long time. But gradually other things crept in. Life happens and that's what I wrote about, my life. I've started a new business venture and was considering starting a new blog for it, but I have decided against that. This blog has so much of my life in it, I'm just going to keep going here. 

So the new business is called Flo's Banana Stand. I'm going to sell mugs and tumblers that I make, I can also customize them. I will eventually add in laser engraved products, but right now I'm still in the learning curve with them. I've set up a 'shop' on Shopify and will probably set one up on Etsy too. I still have a lot to learn about both things. I spent yesterday working on tumblers. I did 6 and still have one more to do. I realized that I may be heating them too much, but that's a story for another day. I did get a new heat press yesterday that is specifically for tumblers. With the mug press I have I had to move the tumbler around because it was too long for the press. This resulted in some areas getting more heat than others and a kind of burning or scorching of the pattern. It's not noticeable to anyone but me, but that's enough. 

Okay, so this blog is about me and my life, so let's get to it. To get this business up and running, I have to deal with a lot of mental stuff. For example, I look at other people's work and think I'll never be that good. Thankfully, my mindfulness work has helped me deal with that and push those thoughts out of the way. But they still pop up and still have to be dealt with. I have been fighting perfectionism paralization. I have moments when I'm so afraid to screw up that I freeze up and don't do anything. I'm getting past that with the tumblers, still need to work on it with the laser engraver. But these things can be serious obstacles if I don't deal with them immediately. So tomorrow I dig into the laser engraver. I need to come up with some designs to do on the limited material that I have. So the laser engraver involves learning a new program too. Actually two. I need to learn  the program that runs the engraver - Lightburn, and I need to learn the program that allows me to manipulate images - Inkscape. So the learning curve is really steep in this one and it's a little intimidating. I do have a fear of messing up mainly because I only have 1 piece of each type of media. If I mess it up that's it, don't have another one to try on. Not that I can't buy more. I bought a bunch of tumblers on deals, so now I have a whole lot of tumblers and don't feel bad messing one up. But with the laser engraver, the only thing I have lots of is wood. So I guess I could start with the wood and then expand from there. Doh!!!!!