When One Door Closes....

What a day today has been. This week has been a bit of a roller coaster emotionally in my personal life, and finally that was all resolved and everything had been worked out. Then, this morning I got an email from My Pillow, where I've been working as an at home sales rep since November, that my services were no longer needed. I'm pretty angry about that because I feel they have been shady in their dealing with their contractors and the reason given in the generic email I received was not accurate in the least - but in any event. I was sitting here feeling sorry for myself and trying to figure out what I'm going to do next and I logged into my Merch by Amazon account to see I had two more T-Shirt sales since I logged in late last night. That makes 13 sales this week, far more than I have done any other week since I started in late April. It also brings my total sales up to the number I need to "tier up" to the next level. Right now, I can have 25 designs active at any one time (up from 10 when I first started) and when they do the next round of tier ups (Amazon doesn't have a set schedule for when they do this or how they select who gets tiered next, but lately its been happening on alot of Monday's so...fingers crossed!) I HOPEFULLY will be in the next round and get tiered to 100, meaning I can have 100 designs live at a time. Obviously the more designs you have, the greater the income potential. And I'm finding I LOVE designing and I definitely love making money while I sleep with the passive income of this business model. I've worked freelance and as an independent contractor for many years due to having young kids I don't want in daycare and also my general distaste for working outside the home. I've had some great, long term gigs and I've had some short and miserable ones and one thing I've learned is that the old adage is definitely true- God doesn't close a door without opening a window! As upset as I was earlier, losing My Pillow is definitely not the end of the world, it has been so slow that I barely made anything there anyway. Hopefully Merch will fill the gaps, and if not then it will be onto other things. The possibilities are endless in this life. Cheers to everyone, have a great weekend!

This Is 38!

As usual, I'm a bit behind! Because I turned 38 a couple weeks ago! I have never cared about age the way some people do, I don't want to hide my age, I don't wish I was younger, I'm all about enjoying what is happening now and looking on the bright side. Every year, before my birthday I spend some time reflecting on the prior year. I feel that I want to constantly learn and improve, so I judge each year by what I learned or did or improved on from the prior year. So! While I was 37, my personal relationships improved a TON. Things were better with my S/O than at any other time in the years we have been involved. After years of off and on and constant strife, I feel like we got a major grip on things this year. Not entirely, there are still fights and issues, but WAYYYY less than before. Progress. I also learned to sew. Something I tried a few times before over the years and always gave up on quickly. I finally am getting the hang of it. This is big to me. I set a goal to read a book a week for the whole year, and I accomplished that. Actually alot of weeks I read more than one book. So I learned ALOT this year. This year, I began working as a Sales call center rep for My Pillow, which has had it's busy and not so busy times, but overall has been good for my family and my continued quest to work solely from home to raise my children and to always be there for them. Very recently, I got approved for Merch by Amazon, after what felt like an excruciating wait. So I'm designing T-shirts for sale on Amazon now. It's early days and I'm not making a ton of royalties yet, but I'm seeing the potential and very excited. What do I want for 38? I want to hit the 1000 tier with Merch By Amazon by Thanksgiving. Earlier if possible but I think that's a fair goal. I want to continue working from home for the year and raising my children and watching them grow. I want to move out of my smallish rental house and find something bigger hopefully with more of a yard for the kids. 38 feels very exciting so far and I cant wait to see what happens next!