Time is funny–often it manifests as a series of cycles, each with
different steps we must pass through, over and over, until we can
start the next.
It’s easy to be caught up in those cycles, reactionary, defensive, or
even avoidant. I fell into many of those traps this year, because I
forgot something crucial: patience.
In all my time alive, and in everything I’ve achieved, the only tried
and true path to success in my own life has been patience. All the
best things I have in life today came from slow, gradual change,
understanding, time, and attention. Some things can’t, or shouldn’t,
be rushed.
So, I want to talk about the cycles I’ve been in this year. The good.
The bad. The ones I’ve rushed, and the ones where I’ve taken my time
to create something incredible.
Wins and Losses
Last year, I set a few lofty and public goals. In hindsight, they were
all pretty vague and hard to quantify, so I’m going to try to set
better goals for this year, but let’s review them real quick.
This year, I wanted to:
Improve Total Escape Games’ branding and operations, streamline how
we run the store, and grow the business
Join the local Chamber of Commerce
Get more involved with other local businesses
Do more art, complete drawing challenges, and explore new mediums
There were other, smaller, and more personal goals, but those are the
ones I committed to publicly. In my personal life, I also wanted to
reconnect with friends and acquaintances, make more time for good
conversation, and try new things.
The Good
The good news is that the store did great. This year,
Total Escape Games:
Fully transitioned business ownership, including all wholesale
accounts, new bank accounts, renegotiated contracts, new
subscriptions, and a full audit of every tool we’re using and
paying for
Launched a brand new website made with WordPress that has a
fully-integrated eCommerce solution that ties to our in-person
point of sale
Made a critical new hire to improve team efficiency and allow us to
staff more deeply at busy times, plus let go of an underperforming
member of the team
Also, in the process of doing so much work for the store, I ended up
getting to work on quite a few creative projects, including the
redesign of our website, graphics for the store, logo changes, and
other collateral.
Doing so much work with the store helped me realize a few things
about business ownership in general that felt like big unlocks for me,
and built my confidence.
First,
holy hell there’s more to it than I thought.
Also less than I thought. It’s a weird mix. On the one hand, I was
surprised how few things were going on behind the scenes that I wasn’t
already at least helping with, so it was reassuring to know we really
can run the business truly and completely on our own.
Also, I doubled down on supporting the team and clearing the way for
all our specialized employees to get work done, and they absolutely
crushed it. I’m so proud of everyone we have with us today, which is
a great feeling. We hit our event goals, our sales goals, and our
growth goals for 2024.
Regarding the personal goals, I didn’t spend as much time on creative
drawing as I’d hoped, though I did complete a 30-day drawing
challenge in addition to Inktober.
The Bad
I didn’t join the local Chamber of Commerce. I have done a ton of
networking this year in spite of that, and I do feel closer to many
business owners in the industry who I respect, but in specific terms
of joining the local Chamber, I failed this goal in 2024.
Also, I was wholly unprepared for the amount of paperwork, phone
calls, meetings, regulations, and compliance matters I’d have to
complete in the first few months of our business ownership transition.
I was shocked when it took us four months to fully move every account
over to our names, remove the previous owners, change bank accounts,
and rewire all the hundreds of places using the old financial
information.
It was hard, and exhausting, and I hate signing things now. Joking.
Sort of.
The store also wasn’t able to migrate to our new bin-sorting approach
to our nearly 500,000 Magic singles, and I realized there isn’t good
enough software to support us overhauling our system yet, which took
some of the wind out of my sails.
That said, the hard work and disappointment was also rewarding. I
feel so able to handle things now, like no matter what crazy
compliance issue or new legislature takes place, I at least have a
framework in my mind now of how to navigate it, and have access to the
necessary resources when I do need help.
Plus, I did—with the store’s help—contribute a lot to
local nonprofits and schools, which helped connect us better with the
community around us, not to mention gave us the opportunity to support
some incredible local initiatives, giveaways, and charity causes.
Because I’ve been so busy with the store, I didn’t get to spend nearly
as much time on personal or professional software projects as I’d
intended. I managed to start learning JavaScript, and Vue.js, but
that’s about it. I did less web design overall than I’d hoped.
I did get pretty proficient in WordPress though in building the site
for the store, made enough time to redesign this website and rehost
to Cloudflare Pages, and snuck in some coding projects when I could.
Letting Go of the Past
Look, there’s only the present. We can make goals for the future, and
learn from the past, yet we’re perfectly wedged between, and all we
can control is now.
Reading Meditations by Marcus Aurelius further entrenched this belief
in me this year, even though it was something I already held in
my mind.
The past has been tough. I mean, everything good and bad that’s ever
happened to any of us exists in the past, essentially.
Looking into the past for lessons and to grow is a great approach to
life, however, we must be careful not to linger too long and be
seized by it.
It’s easy to regret, to worry, and to be hurt by the past we’ve lived,
not to mention the events that have dragged us down and given us
pause. Yet, we are not defined by those events, and instead must allow
ourselves to move past them and become more.
So, this year I’m letting go of the past. It’s difficult, and it
takes a great deal of patience both with myself and with the world,
but it’s working.
It’s not easy to let go of, or accept, 30 years of experiences and
built up expectations, and this is one of those things I realized
this year is going to take time, and that there’s no way to shortcut
it. But every time I’ve made the effort this year to work slowly and
deliberately through things, I’ve been happy with the outcome on the
other side.
It’s also coincidentally why this post is a couple of days late going
out—let’s just say it’s been a crazy start to the new year,
and 2024 had surprises up its sleeve even down to the last days.
Embracing the Future
There’s no real way to predict the future accurately, at least as far
as I can tell, so instead of trying I think we’re all better off
living in a way where we’re happy with our current choices while also
leaving room for our future to surprise us.
Now, if you can see the future, send me a message. I have so many
questions, and I’m sure we could talk for hours. But unless that’s a
superpower out there in the world somewhere, I’m going to have to
settle for an idle curiosity of the future, instead.
Because, really, what is more exciting than infinite possibilities?
That’s how I’ve come to understand the future. I make goals and set
ambitions for what I’d like to achieve, both personally and
professionally, yet what I’ve come away with this year is to go with
the flow and to not be so rigid in my own expectations that I miss
valid opportunities because they appear unfamiliar to me at
first glance.
The future can be anything. That’s neither good or bad, it simply is.
So, rather than worrying about the future,
I’m learning to prune my decision-making
such that I can make quick decisions when necessary without exhausting
all options and chasing all outcomes, and I can also pull back to
give myself ample time to consider the consequences when the time
is right.
I’ve learned a new kind of flexibility when considering an unknown
horizon that offers strength both in business leadership and in
navigating my own life.
This year, I’ve learned to:
Let go of control
Avoid spending time on things I dislike
Dwell in the current moment and find the flow
Address problems immediately so they don’t fester and grow
Embrace money as a resource to have meaningful and fun experiences,
especially with good company
Accept hardship, difficult emotions, and struggles, and work
through them with intention
Take surgery seriously, take more time off, and not push it.
Seriously
Endings and Beginnings
The year started with me losing something dear to me.
Yet, it also started with me finally owning the business that I’d
been helping to lead for many years, and an opportunity to continue
growing both as a person and as a budding entrepreneur.
It was bittersweet, to be sure, and the trend continued throughout
the year.
So I had to get clear on what I want from life. This brought some
amazing new people into my life and, at the same time, led to the
exit of several people from my life when I realized my values weren’t
aligning with theirs.
I took my first paid consulting work this year, and grew my store
substantially. I also stepped down from my position as Product
Designer at Fill & Fire to focus more on my other ventures and on my
own personal development.
All of these were difficult, but especially leaving
Fill & Fire was hard. The people on that team are like family
to me—they’re people I care deeply for, working towards a goal
I strongly believe in, and I was happy to have contributed over the
years.
It's hard to leave when things are good. But I needed to
re-consolidate myself around the factors most core to my life and my
goals, and it's important to be true to these tough decisions when
they come up.
Even that was a huge learning experience for me. The end of
something beautiful which I truly valued has offered a new beginning
in my career, one where I work towards bringing my expertise to other
businesses to serve on their Board of Directors, or even to consult
on business strategy.
Last year, I didn’t know those were things I even wanted to do.
So, it’s been a long, hard, and emotional year, full of parting and
saying goodbye. Yet, it’s also been a hopeful year, full of
encouraging new opportunities, incredible new connections, and an
interesting and unknown future that fills me with curiosity.
Trusting the Process
Life is an incomplete path. We’re never a complete piece of art, or a
perfect person. Instead, it’s a journey in which we take incremental
steps towards becoming the best version of ourselves possible. It
takes time, patience, and a great deal of understanding.
It can be easy to get lost in the many twists and turns of life, but
I think it’s important to maintain your vision of who you are and
your values, so that you can properly navigate.
In a sense, that’s what I mean by “trusting the process.”
Set an intention–a business goal, a personal achievement, anything.
It has to be something big, the culmination of your life’s work, for
it to truly serve as your North Star. Figure out the kind of person
you have to be in order to achieve that goal, and who you’d like to
be once you reach it.
Then, you start moving. Day by day, you work in a consistent rhythm
with your goals, trying each time to become a little bit more like
who you want to be. That’s the process.
What you’ll find in the end, I hope, is that even if you miss the
original goal you set, you’ll have still become a great version of
yourself, and will certainly have surprised yourself by finding
delight and opportunity along the way.
All of life is a process, and the only way through is to trust that
each thing that happens is a necessary step towards where we’re meant
to be. What we can control, we do, and in so doing become the version
of ourselves that’s capable of achieving our goals so that, when we
get that opportunity, we can seize it.
That’s what I’d like to believe, anyway. I’ll let you know if I
get there.
Until then, Happy New Year, and I wish you all the success in the
world in 2025!