Clichés abound!

Now that fall's been eliminated from our calendars, winter's starting to set in and it's definitely not welcome. Take a very early season change, add in the craziness over H1N1, mix in a general feeling of 'blah' with everything else, and you've got the makings for one hell of a depressing 6 months.

But there are tiny, minuscule glimpses of potentially good things in the near future. Now that I've settled on what I want to do - various forms of non-traditional/standard stationery - I can start moving forward and doing research. I'm still debating the whole 'Do I become a small business now or wait?' question; there's the matter of all the upfront costs of not only becoming a small business in my province, but the money I'll need to actually get supplies to get started. Good thing I've got all this time on my hands to do the grunt work on all of this.

I did have a plan similar to the one I'm about to enter into a couple of years ago, before I got pregnant with my daughter. I know the very basics of what I need to do (incorporate or not? do a name search or not? come up with a business plan or not?), so I shouldn't have to go through all of that again. The only question is when - do I start going full steam ahead on all of this now, or do I start putting out feelers, see what products actually sell and then get the ball rolling on setting up a business?

Thinking about all the work I have ahead of me just to be able to sell little bits of paper makes my head hurt. A lot.

But I want to do it. It gives me the freedom I've been looking for in a job for years now; it also allows me to raise our daughter. Is there a local market for what I want to do? Yeah, no. Is there a more broad - perhaps, online - market? From what I've seen, yes. Can I tap into that? Yes, if I get my act together and take the plunge rather than harping on about wanting to do it for a change.

For the time being, I'm going to look into selling my photos. I'm hopefully going to get printing quotes this week from local printers and then I can go ahead and start hawking them online. It's not what I was originally planning on doing, but if I was going to do what I had originally planned on, I would be up to my eyeballs in papiér mache and craft paint. I think I'll be much happier in the direction I've settled on.