"Free"ing up my time : pausing my business

I think I've realized I'm just not in the space to focus on my business. It is not something that brings me as much joy as it used it. It feels like a continuation of a hyper focus on consumerism. I want to spend more time doing things that don't cost people money, that do not cost me any extra money and that gives back.

It's been disheartening selling on etsy, it's just like feeding a mega corporation my money for ads on their over saturated marketplace. It also feels so much less personal, I only hope that people will like what they receive and there isn't really any connection. So I had gone down the route of selling at local popup markets, and OMG - I only did it for 6 months and sure maybe you're going to drop this girl boss knowledge on me that I should have kept going, that 7 months is the best time or you have to do it for at least a year. With that honestly I'll tell you, it's just not for me. I'm not privileged enough to be spending so much time and money to get a negative profit.

If you weren't sure, to vend at most pop ups in Austin costs typically $60 - maybe if you're lucky you can find a small booth for 40-50 that's VERY rare though. I normally see $75, now keep in mind you're showing up about 2 hours prior to set up your booth, and you're only selling for 2-4 hours. So for me back when I was selling my art and stickers which ranged in price from $5-$15 I didn't didn't give myself enough of a price range to make a profit. Because honestly most people are window shopping at these events, and if you're new or your products are not really what the audience of the venue are into, you're kinda out of luck.

Now that is kinda my fault as a business owner not to have enough space in my pricing that I wouldn't have to make like 10 sales to break even. However I don't wanna be selling very expensive items. I want to share my art affordably for people.

All that to say, it does not serve me the same as it used to to run my business right now. I'm working full time and I'm working typically every weekend and sometimes doubling then. I'm also juggling being a student and just a normal human on top of all of that. It's just too much and something needs to take a break. So instead of using my free time to poop out as much jewelry as I can. Or no longer having time to draw for fun, needing to make sure every art piece I worked on was something that could or would sell. I'm going to be stepping back. Perhaps over the year I'll make enough things in my free time for fun that I'll have extra that I could choose to sell if I would like, but I want to remove that capitalist pressure from my free time.

I'm off to go to my Etsy page and put a pause to it. Hopefully I'll still remember to file my quarterly business taxes on time because it's too complicated to shut down my business haha. It was a fun ride and I'm proud of myself honestly. I'm just okay with changing course.