Tomorrow week 4 starts of staying at home.
You would think we are all adjusted by now… Well I think not.
Every morning when I walk our dog, it feels a bit eerie. I live in a city, on a busy street, with a lot of traffic, nowadays only the bus goes by. When I walk the empty streets, I hear a lot of bird sounds. When I take a short walk, I am in a park or forestlike park, that is the beauty of Arnhem, now I can hear the birds singing loudly from my front door. That is nice, but a kind of weird.
By the end of February, my business sales fell flat overnight, I did not see that coming! I started my business almost 10 years ago on the first of September. It was in the middle of ‘the crisis’ I lost my job at a hospitality consulting firm as a designer. Luckily I had a side project, making bags, pillows and backpacks I sold on the playground of my kids school, not with a stall, people just knew. People contacted me and asked if I could make them something. By the time I set at home, my business grew, and went on growing until a few weeks ago, it just stopped. That was a horrible sensation… Am I able to celebrate my 10 years anniversary coming September?
I am pleased to say that by gitte has very loyal customers! There is no by gitte without you! And I am so glad you all pick up your pens these days, writing is more important than ever it seems. I am a big writing enthusiast. Yes I’m repeating myself. In the past two weeks your orders were all writing and pen related items, you make me a proud maker. I guess, with the extra time we have per day without commuting, writing gives us the time to contemplate and create.
‘A ‘hole-and-corner’ is an old English term meaning a secret place:
somewhere you go to contemplate and create.’
Where is yours?
My not so secret place is our dining table. I start the day writing to get my thoughts organised, it brings clarity. It is an active form of meditation. I write down everything that comes to mind without my inner critic stopping me to overthink what I have been writing, so it doesn’t look pretty and probably with a lot of spelling mistakes, I have dyslexia… It is all in the process, not in the result. Every day I write, sometimes about a dream I had, or the groceries I have to do that day. When nothing comes out of my pen anymore, and my writing is not done, I write a short sentence to keep the ink flowing until the words come again or time is up. A little trick I learned at a writing course. Give it a go and see where your writing leads you.
Thank you again for all your orders, you keep me busy and make me a proud owner of a small business.
Keep on writing!
Stay home and stay safe!
