Maggie Rants [and Raves]

Slightly Competitive

by Maggie Franklin | February 9, 2009 | Bookmark +

With all the news and gloom and whining about The Economy these days, I’ve noticed something about myself ... I might be slightly competitive.

 

For starters, at least in my specific location, most of the individuals and small businesses that I see whining about how bad things are, are mostly making their own destinies. I don’t understand why so many people just accept whatever they hear on the evening news as gospel and then hoist up a white flag and go back inside and hide under the covers! If this is the way you — or your business — chooses to deal with economic downturns, then you deserve to go out of business. Find another line of work — you weren’t cut out for self-employment.

 

Sorry if that goes down a little rough, but I don’t know how to sugarcoat it.

 

Me? I’m not going down without a fight.

 

It helps, of course, that I have a strong client base that has been with me for years and I don’t see them leaving unless someone cuts off their hands. I highly doubt it’ll come to that though, so I’m feeling OK. But yeah, there are some spaces open in my schedule right now. Maybe those spaces are always open in my schedule, but maybe I just notice them lately. Maybe I’m only worried about them now because I just picked up one more bill to pay and everyone’s talking about the end of the world — running like Chicken Little, thinking we’re headed for the next Great Depression.

 

<shrug> Who knows? Maybe we are.

 

All I know is that suddenly I find myself all revved up with new ideas. I have a zillion schemes running through my head and I’m excited about marketing them. For the last two weeks I have been obsessed with marketing — ways to get my name and my work out there and ways to fill those last few spots in the book and prove to all the people who have been boxing up their polishes that it is possible to make it through the rough times.

 

It occurred to me the other day that this is probably part of my competitive nature. Maybe it’s not so much that all my ideas are so great, so much as I just hate seeing people who claim to be so passionate about something give up so easily. They can have my sculpting brush when they pry it out of my cold, dead hand. I don’t ever see myself as working at a retail job and someday telling my customer, “Oh! So you do nails? I did nails for a while. I loved it, but I had to get a job that was more secure. There’s just no money in nails you know.”

 

 

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