Remember my resolution to learn how to better manage my business and create a mindful and sustainable plan?  I’m proud to report that it is a resolution I have been keeping.

This morning was the first meeting of my ‘Simple Steps‘ class at Women’s Initiative.  The morning was dominated by introductions: the teacher’s to us, the course to us, and ours to each other.  The diversity of the student body is exciting: there’s a handful of healing practitioners, a couple of aspiring vintage store owners, a web designer, an importer, an eco-tourism agent, a videographer, a florist, a caterer, an aspiring restaurant owner, an eco-interior designer and home consultant, at least one other jeweler (yay!) and a few others I can’t remember.  I’m particularly excited about talking shop with the other jeweler, who in addition to being totally friendly and sweet, just finished up her JTI at Revere Academy.  Smart cookie.  If I could go back in time, I would have taken the JTI at Revere and Simple Steps at Women’s Initiative before launching a jewelry business.  That combo probably could have saved me from quite a few missteps.

The class is an eleven-week walk-through of creating a viable business plan.  Although I already have a business that has been viable and supporting me for nearly three years now, I feel like I’m at a plateau of just eking out a living of poverty wages.  More profoundly, though, I feel like I’m not living up to my potential and vision.  I want to contribute positively to the local economy and culture and promote good stewardship of the earth through sustainable practices and treading lightly on the earth.  I really need a plan to match that vision if I seriously want to obtain it.

One thing I like about this instructor is that she emphasizes that businesses reflect and manifest a set of values, reminding us to stay mindful of our values as we envision our future businesses and draft our plans.  She even, in typical California-style, lead a deep-breathing, eyes-closed, relax-and-envision-your-future exercise.  A little cheesy?  Sure.  Helpful and inspiring?  Definitely.

I keep thinking about the contrast between this instructor’s approach and the one presented at at last year’s Craft Congress in what was, for me, a very frustrating panel, where one of the panelists urged the audience of (almost entirely female) crafters and business-owners to aim small and be satisfied with less.  The feminist in me really took issue with someone telling a audience of women to be lower our aspirations and be content with less– less money, less accomplishment, less power, less recognition.  But what really frustrated me was the dangerous and disempowering assumption that the only impact a business worker-owner can have in the world is a negative and destructive one.

I believe in treading lightly on the earth, in treating its inhabitants with fairness and respect and in inflicting no harm.  I don’t think that capitalism’s mandate for endless growth and expansion is sustainable or good, and growth for profit’s sake is not a value I hold nor express through my company’s practices.  But, let me be clear, here.  I have goals– big ones.

I don’t accept the premise that the best impact I can have on the world is no impact.  I believe I can have a very positive impact– for the earth, by upholding green standards for my own manufacturing processes and by applying pressure up the supply chain to demand that industrial manufacturers, refineries, mines and mills use earth-friendly practices; for working people, by sourcing my supplies from companies that treat their workers well and create domestic manufacturing jobs and by (eventually) providing creatively-meaningful and well-paying jobs in my local economy; on my community, by running a stable and independently-owned business and playing an active and mindful role in the economy and in our democracy; on the arts and crafts traditions, by sharing knowledge and by passing on the history and skills of my trade.

My dream is to, one day, run a worker-owned jewelry design and production co-operative.  That’s a huge, huge goal that won’t be easy to attain.  I’m grateful and excited to have found the support of women who, rather than tell me to lower my sights, help me to understand and take the steps that will lead to my eventual achievement.

One of my resolutions: to not be quite so remiss when it comes to blog postings.  Maybe beginning this in the busy autumn season was not, in hindsight, the wisest plan; I never really got a pattern down– especially inexcusable for a onetime English major who aspired to write as her grown-up occupation.  Now, I avoid the computer like the plague– not because I dislike writing but because I loose myself in metalworking.  I have to be dragged away from my workbench, physically.

Another resolution: better bookkeeping habits.  This is, of course, a resolution I make every January, as I hunker down with tax forms and heaping piles of unsorted receipts.  A positive side-effect of resolution #2 is that spending that much more time in front of the computer makes it all the more likely I’ll stick to resolution #1 by way of procrastination.  Like right now, for instance.

I’m a big fan of January– especially now that I live someplace where New Year’s Day was a balmy fifty-two degrees and sunny (I recall caring for it a lot less in the bitter cold of Manhattan).  I like what it symbolizes: regeneration, redemption, hope.  For me, it’s not so much the self-improvement resolutions though that mark this time, though; after all, I constantly feel pressure from society and in the form of my own goals and expectations for myself to improve and be better.

At the New Year’s Party Steve and I threw, Erin, a friend, said, “I like ending things,” meaning, years.  I like it, too.  I like the neatness of things having ends and beginnings, like novels or symphonies or school years.  Novels, though, have their ends built in; the endings make sense and you can feel them begin to approach.  Years end so abruptly.  I’m always in the middle of things.  I’m always trying to get more done and to do it better.  To set goals and accomplish them, and of course I never accomplish the really big goals, so I am always breaking them down into smaller and smaller pieces so I can reach hundreds of smaller milestones without ever completing a goal.  Running a small business exacerbates the anxiety of unfinished business: there is always something to do– an order to be filled, an item to be photographed, a store to be called, taxes to be filed, an inquiry to be returned– I’m never, ever done.

What I like about the New Year is that it always arrives so abruptly.  The calendar is completely indifferent to my goals and milestones, all the million and one accomplishments I am supposed to have fulfilled by now.  The year ends when it ends, whether my character has progressed or not.  New Year’s is unforgiving.

It’s good that once a year I have to confront all the tasks I failed to get done, the changes I didn’t make, the people I never called, the goals I fell short of, the goals I never set.  Otherwise, I’m pretty sure I could delude myself into thinking I was on course to accomplish everything next week, forever.  This is a good time to stock not just of what I want to improve but of what I want.  What do I value?  What is important to me?

Toward the end of our New Year’s Eve party, after a champion’s game of Cranium (I still prefer charades), Sarah suggested we go around the room and share a resolution, which sounds a little old-fashioned and corny, and maybe is a little old-fashioned and corny, but after six hours of drinking and eating and with a roomful of friends, is, it turns out, really incredibly nice.  People’s answers ran the gamut from the admirable (”be more generous with strangers”) to the achievable (”try two new group exercise classes”) to the unenviable (”stop smoking”) to the inexplicable (”wear more tweed”) and quite a few having to do with the various scholarly pursuits of my genius friends.

My resolution was and is to take a class on bookkeeping so I can learn how to better run the business-side of my business.  And I’m planning it on it; I have it all mapped out on my calendar.  But that’s not very interesting and as it falls into the self-improvement category, I’m amending it here.  My resolution is to spend time reflecting on and thinking critically about my business.  My resolution is to think about not just what I want from my business but also what I want it to do and to be.  What do I value?  What is important to me?

As I reflect on these topics, I’ll also write on these topics, here in this blog in 2009, along with more mundane things and anything else I feel like.