Blue Windows

January is always a quiet month at Blue Windows. You go from hav­ing all your reg­u­lar cus­tomers come in at once in December to hardly any­one at all. December is the best time of year! I get into a bit of a funk after the Holiday rush is over. I miss the con­stant flow of peo­ple and energy they bring. Then some­thing hap­pens after a cou­ple of weeks of quiet. I get a surge of energy and my cre­ative ideas begin to become over­whelm­ing. I imme­di­ately want to change every­thing! You can ask any of my employ­ees. I get like this every year. I orga­nize, read mag­a­zines, plan win­dow dis­plays for the year, patch and paint, clean and start slowly buy­ing for the store again. This year is a bit dif­fer­ent. Among all of those things I’ve finally suc­cumb to face­book, a web­site and blog­ging (which I pre­fer to call jour­nal­ing). I’m excited for the year ahead. Although times are still tough I feel con­fi­dent in the year 2010.

The best deci­sion I made for 2010 was when it became very clear to me that I needed to give back. I truly needed to do this for my per­sonal san­ity. I was begin­ning to focus way too much on money (the lack of it) and how poorly the store was doing. I real­ized how lucky I was to have a store on 2nd St and how for five years I never really took advan­tage of the pos­i­tive impact the store could make on the com­mu­nity. This month we chose The Long Beach Rescue Mission for our char­ity. They pro­vide com­fort for so many peo­ple in our com­mu­nity. Not only do they pro­vide a place to sleep but they pro­vide the help needed for reha­bil­i­ta­tion. Second chances are impor­tant so through the month of January 10% of the store’s prof­its will be donated to the Rescue Mission. I’m excited to see the growth in the store and myself through this challenge.

Heather