Day 62

So something's been bothering me for a couple of days. I'm part of a group of henna artists on facebook, which I wander in and out of depending on how much time or interest I have to spend on them. A goodly portion of them are newbies, and then there are some who've been doing it for longer then I have. There are ones that, based off the photos they proudly post, have no business charging people as much as they do (or some of them even at all) and ones like Neeta Sharma and Kim Brennan who have at least a dozen books between them and are flown around the world to henna clients.

Anyway, back to what is bothering me. One of the frequent members of the group (who's not half bad, but lives in a small midwestern town) posted the other day

"Stupid question time:

When do you give up? When does it become time to just throw in the towel and move on to something else?"

And the first response (from someone who is also not half bad but hasn't been doing this for more then a couple years) was:

"Never. Never give up, never surrender, always eat the worm ;) the determined will inherit the earth!!"

While I appreciate the go-get-em sentiment, that comment (and the question in general) really really rubbed me the wrong way. The original poster went on to write that her winter was very slow (MANY people replied that it's ALWAYS slow for henna artists) and that she lost a lot of money last year.

So my response was slightly different then this, so as to not hurt the feelings of either of them, but the general feel was the same.

There CAN be an appropriate time to give up, and theres NOTHING WRONG WITH THAT. There's a societal taboo against throwing in the towel, which turns us into slaves to jobs, ideas or goals that don't necessarily work. You have to weigh your pros and cons and CHANGE what you're doing, and again, there's nothing wrong with that. We have such a strong aversion to change in our society, and the idea that by changing we are FAILING. This is far from the truth.

If you are losing money in a business, (significant amounts of it, because we all know it is hard to start up a business and make money from the get go) if you are worried that you can't feed your family and that you are going down the wrong path, it's certainly time (long past due, actually) to re-evaluate whether this is the right thing to be doing. It might not be because you're not worthy of the title "henna artist". It might be because your clientele isn't there. It might be because you're spending your energy in the wrong places for marketing (or not doing it at all.) It might be because you're completely clueless what it means to run a business.

Whatever the reason is, it's not failure if you say "wow, I gave it a try, and it didn't work out. Now I'm going to do something else that will work for me." You can always continue to do what you love to do, but go get money some other way (MOST people do it this way.) This "Never give up" attitude will do nothing but drive you to despair, and it will RUIN the thing you love to do.

I am actually really proud of myself for starting up Red Wolf Reiki, getting a space to do it in, sticking it out for 8 months and then saying "you know what, I can't spend my energy on this AND henna, and I have more vested in the henna business so I'm going to set the reiki business aside." All I can think of from that time now is how much I'm happy that I didn't keep on paying money for a space that I wasn't able to devote time to, and that I was able to prioritize my goals and needs. I remember how I brought all this to Dan and explained it, and how he gave me that certain head-jerk expression that means he's surprised and said "Wow!" And he was proud of me.

Anyways, I just had to get this off my chest. I did post a couple of times on the thread for the original question (it turned out she was just fishing for "pick me ups" and compliments) but it wasn't satisfactory enough for me.