Case for clarity
It had been a rare thing for me to take a vacation for pleasure, the mounted pressure of running this teeny business as a single parent in a country not of my own origin, with many employees to manage and wonderful clients to deliver to, all compounded as an unbearable weight over the years. I had built Mexchic up from a humble idea circa 2006 (with a friggin Etsy store!) to a formal, functioning, successful and growing business. A dream, no?!
But I had always wanted Mexchic to be small, a tight ship where I can freely create, mix up the art and commerce, make enough money to be comfortable. Over the years I had slowly grown the business, we even healthily survived COVID (a feat I tell you!) I would accept more and more work, while making less and less art, feeding the monster of growth for growth’s sake, while growing away from each year, the core essence of why I started Mexchic. And around late 2022 I began to have anxiety attacks, something I’ve never experienced before, the stress was unforgiving and I knew something needed to change and thus spent most of the entire year of 2023 breaking the issues down into manageable parts, assessing a soft way to slam the breaks without too much damage.
There was damage, I can assure you, but I also very quickly realized that things were not as they seemed (nothing ever is!) and the decisions I had made to restructure Mexchic ended up being the healthiest thing for the business and myself to have made. Trusting one’s own instinct and body, feeling what you know needs to be done and then acting upon it is never simple or easy but I have made many extremely difficult decisions in my 50 year old (!!) life, all of which had extremly positive outcomes, I regret not one of them.
So here’s to clarity, here’s to not allowing yourself to be burnt out, no matter how long your to-do list may be, it can get done tomorrow … or never! I have also clarified a vision over the last few months, that there is no need to follow a blue print in running this business, understanding that allows me a lot of freedom in making up new rules for how i run this ship; and you wonderful family, friends and clients will stick by us wherever we go or patiently wait for us to reinvent ourselves for the umpteenth time! (I am an Aquarius after all ;)
Life is too short to not take vacations on the regular, even if they are short weekend escapes, they MUST happen! I crank the Johnny Nash anthem I can see clearly now and finally really get it haha. And and guess what? I’ve been making art again and I just took my daughter on a vacation :) We went to the beach, there is a sparkling new highway which took about 15 years to build (google it) and a few months ago it officially opened. A trip from Oaxaca City used to take 7-8 hours of curvy mountain terrain to arrive upon the majestic tropics of the lagoon filled crystal clear waters of the Oaxacan coastline (it deserves these and sooo many more adjectives !:) and now… now it takes 2.5 hours. I’m not going to go into where we stayed or what we ate, it was all incredible, I’ll say only that you need to go and explore this coastline for yourself— like in the olden days, pre internet travel guides— use your instinct, talk to the locals and trust your gut!
