Goals for 2022

I spoke in the last newsletter about my 2021 goals and how they panned out. I've always been a goal orientated person, I'm a driven perfectionist who's always aiming for the next Big Thing. As Yoda said to Luke in The Empire Strikes Back "All his life has he looked away... to the future, to the horizon. Never his mind on where he was... what he was doing." He could have been speaking directly to me.

It's a hard balance to strike, between setting manageable goals as a means to drive a project forward vs. overwhelming yourself with something unachievable. And somewhere in among all that, stopping to enjoy life before it passes by. I struggle almost daily with this balance and often tip towards the unachievable, unmanageable and overwhelming end of the equation.

Well, not this year. This year I want to try to slow down and enjoy the things in front of me. To keep my mind on where I am and what I'm doing (thanks Yoda). I have some vague notions of where I want to go with the business and some immediate (as in, next 12 weeks) tasks. But beyond that? There be dragons.

I spoke in the last newsletter about creating a definition of success for Craft & Thrift in 2022, after following Josephine Brooks 'Reflect on Your Year' blog post. My definition of success for Craft & Thrift in 12 months is as follows:

"Craft & Thrift is selling high quality thrifted fabrics through my own website. The business is profitable and repaying debts. Some of my time is spent on collaborative projects that are sustainable or community building e.g. physical products or written word."

You can see in the first sentence there - 'through my own website'. This is my first goal of 2022 and I've been working hard behind the scenes for the past few months, creating my own shop on my own website. I have a basic website here, that functions to amalgamate all my various online spaces but it's currently in the process of getting a major overhaul. Some of the products will be moving off Etsy and onto the new site, so I'm currently working to update the product photos and listing descriptions. There will also be new products only available through the website, like a secondhand craft bookshop! I've been curating a selection of secondhand and vintage craft books, focusing only on textile crafts. I'm excited to make shopping secondhand for these items more accessible

I'm very excited to gradually move the shop off Etsy in the next 12 months and onto my own web hosting. It's going to be satisfying to have full control over the site, rather than being an the whims of the Etsy search function or advert algorithm. I have no doubt that it will be hard work, one of the benefits of being on Etsy is the large amount of web traffic they bring to your shop. I'll have to work harder to bring people to my shop but I'm ready for that challenge.

I'm so excited to finally be at a point that I can tell you all, my newsletter friends. I'm keeping it under wraps for a bit longer on social media, but I'm hoping to have it live by March. I'm waiting for a final secret piece of the puzzle, that will hopefully be here by the time I'm next writing to you...