Weekly Mileage #141 and a Business Win and a Business Setback

I wasn't able to go on a trail run or hike on Monday because I had a chiropractic appointment and errands to run. The monthly appointments continue to keep my headaches to a manageable level (ie, mostly gone).

We've been fighting colds all week, to varying degrees. I feel like I got hit the worst, of course. Despite that, I have managed to get some stuff done. Though that's more because I've got deadlines I'm working against.

I've been working on notebooks for my Etsy shop. I've added these flap notebooks, which I really like. I'd made one in the spring, but the leather I used was really stiff and I wasn't really happy with it. I bought this leather because I love its flexibility, but it turned out to not be great for laser engraving. It's got an oil finish, which I'm pretty sure means it's not a veg tan. Veg tan leather is really all you're supposed to put in the Glowforge- anything else is too unpredictable, if not dangerous (due to fumes). It may not be a candidate for engraving, but it works great for these flap notebooks.

The funny thing is that out of the variety of notebooks I have listed, I'm only selling the music notebooks right now. In fact, I've run out of my staff paper and have to go the printer first thing Monday to see how quickly they can reprint paper for me so I can get my orders filled on time. I've sold 11 music books in the last 3 weeks!

It's interesting to see that the music notebooks are selling so well. I'm guessing they'll all be given as gifts for Christmas. But the sales velocity means I could probably raise the price on them after the holidays. The cost to produce these is higher anyway because of the printing costs, so raising prices would improve my margin.

Wednesday I went for a hike because I needed some fresh air. It wasn't fast or strenuous, but it got me moving.

Friday I thought about going for a hike after speech therapy, but it was too cold. If I'd been feeling well, that wouldn't have stopped me, but I was not feeling great, so it was enough to put a kibosh to that idea.

Friday afternoon I discovered that I broke the site I'd been trying to transfer last week. I thought I'd saved backup files, but once everything was transferred, I couldn't find the backups. I was able to rescue about a third of my posts by copying and pasting cached views, but two thirds of my posts are still missing (they weren't cached). Super frustrating and depressing. In the grand scheme of things though, it could be a lot worse. This was my newest site, with the fewest posts. I was able to rescue a third of the content. I was able to piece together the titles for 98% of all the posts, which gives me a starting point at least for knowing what I wrote about. I still have all my images as well.

My first thought was to start rebuilding my site, but after some thought, I don't think I will. I'd planned on pivoting slightly with that site after the new year, so why not just make the pivot a bit more permanent. I don't need my site for the pivot, at least not yet, so I'll leave it be until I'm ready to start writing for that site again. In the meantime, I'll repurpose the content I was able to save and incorporate it into my travel site. I can change the focus a bit and make it relevant to that audience. This is actually a double win- only writing for one site AND having a number of pre-written posts that just need to be tweaked a bit. This will save me a lot of time, allowing me to focus on some other aspects of my businesses that need some attention.

So it's not how I would have gone about doing things, but having the issue mostly decided for me is freeing. Finding the silver lining and figuring out how to make it work for me rescues the situation from the disaster it could have been. Though I'd still love to recover my lost posts and save myself the work of recreating them...

Friday evening was our ward Christmas party. They had asked for people to share musical numbers before the dinner portion. Since Sunshine needs to rack up some performances for her Music merit badge, I volunteered her and River. They played a simple version of Angels We Have Heard on High, with her on the piano and him strumming chords on the banjo. They did a great job! After the short program (there weren't a lot of volunteers), everyone headed in to dinner and we headed home. I was feeling pretty crummy and half the kids weren't feeling great either. If Sunshine and River hadn't been performing, we wouldn't have gone at all.

I forced myself outside for a hike on Saturday, just to keep from getting too far behind. There's just over 3 weeks left in the year and I have 10 hikes to do still. I went slow, and there was definitely no trail running, but it was still a bit draining. The fresh air was good though.

That afternoon I let the kids decorate sugar cones in lieu of doing gingerbread houses. Gingerbread houses, even the graham cracker versions are just too much of a commitment- time, energy, etc. We decorated sugar cones in YW Thursday, and I realized it was the perfect substitute for gingerbread decorating.

the tree I decorated at YW

The boys lasted just long enough to decorate their trees, and then they were done. They never would have lasted for a whole house. Even better, the only thing I had to do was ice Ocean's cone for him. River did his own.

They enjoyed demolishing them afterwards, though I think they only ate about half of each one.

I think we may have found a new tradition!

After taking pictures of the kids' trees, I headed downstairs to work on notebook orders and organize my workspace better. This is when I realized I had run out of staff paper. I thought I had more, but there is no more hiding anywhere. When I thought back about the music books I'd made, I realized that yes, indeed, I'd used up all the paper (my original order had been enough for 10 books). Time to order more!

Weekly Mileage
Wednesday- 1.70 mile hike
Saturday- 2.00 mile hike
total- 3.70 miles

42 hikes towards #52hikechallenge
2.56 kayak miles towards #365milechallenge

156.17 outdoor foot miles towards #365milechallenge
41.16 indoor foot miles towards #365milechallenge
130.0 bike miles towards #365milechallenge
329.89 miles total