We Interrupt Your Regularly Scheduled Programming...

I want to blog, it's just that I don't know what to blog about!! Here is a photo of some of my family. Saturday we had our annual "snow shoes" tournament. That's playing horse shoes in the snow, accept there was no snow this year which was just fine with me. Mostly it's just the men playing the game while the ladies socialize... and by that I mean, drink hot chocolate spiked with Bailey's and Peppermint Schnapps. Here we have my Aunt Debbie in the lower left, behind her is my bro's gf Andrea, then my Ma, Me, my Sister Diana, and my Aunt Jo-Anne. It was a really fun day.

Now I'm here, sitting at work, trying to figure out what I'm gonna do with the rest of my life. Nice huh?? Well here's the thing. I've worked at my family's copy/print shop for 5 and a half years. We've had our fair share of struggles, and this year with the economy in the dump we are in a very tough spot. On top of that, the landlady is moving to the Carolinas and is selling the house. She gave us a year to figure out what we're going to do. Our budget isn't really flexible enough for us to just go out and lease a new space and the home office is too far away from the city for it to be realistic to keep our existing customers. We're in a major cash crunch and don't know how to fix it. One idea is for someone to be laid off... that someone would have to be me.

I've got skills, a degree, a lot of experience, but what's out there for jobs?? I've done a little looking around and the prospects are not great. I've thought about going into business for myself, but realistically, with the economy the way it is, is that smart? Plus that takes startup capital which I do not have, nor think I'll be able to get. And then we wonder, do I really need to get a new job? Would my Dad be shooting himself in the foot by laying me off if we happen to get really busy this spring? Our busy season should be kicking in any day now. We work on Patriot's Day every year because we're always so busy, while the rest of the city is closed, watching the Boston Marathon. But this year, here it is already March 3rd and it feels like it's still the beginning of January. I have nothing to do.

The printing industry has been changing a lot over the years as people have been using the internet a lot more to distribute documents, now more than ever with everyone trying to save money in any way they can. Everyone's going digital. Our biggest monthly order has gone away, they're distributing it online. Oh PDF you are a blessing and a curse!!

I've been brainstorming, writing down all the jobs I've ever had and all the things I love to do to try to come up with an idea of what I should do next. I'm young, single, my options should be endless. I potentially can go anywhere in the world from here, the sky's the limit! So what do I do?? I have no idea. I have no savings, I've worked in jeans, I don't even have a decent interview outfit. I am still paying off my credit card debt management plan, I can't even borrow money to get started. Not that I'd want to anyway. I've thought a lot about getting the whoopie pies back in action. I've printed out a lot of information to help get started. It would cost some money, but we already know there's interest out there. I wish I could do the GF version, but there's been some controversy around that and I am not even close to perfecting the recipe anyway. But if I got started with the regular version, then I could move on to the GF soon enough. I just don't know!!

Anyway, so that's why there's been a lull here, I haven't really been inspired to write, but I'm feeling the bug again, so hopefully I'll have some brighter topics soon!