Business

Did I tell you all that I’m officially a business owner?

I’m a business owner.

What a weird thing to say. I am, after all, all of about five years old, and definitely don’t know the first thing about business or management or what might go into a sales report.

And yet, I have my own business. Story Nook Productions. It’s even registered with the state of Colorado, which means that it’s very official and grown up, which is odd, considering that I never set out to be a business owner. When I was little, I wanted to be an archeologist.

Have I ever told any of you that?

Yep, I was going to find clay pots and use a paintbrush to unearth the most amazing discoveries and probably live in Egypt or somewhere equally far away and fantastic.

The fact that I was terrified of skeletons and mummies and anything bone related didn’t bother me in the least. I just figured that I would leave those discoveries to other people. We don’t all have to find mummies, you know. Some of us can dig up clay pots, and that’s fine too.

Since I was about ten and didn’t know what an archeologist did for a living or even how to become one, that dream fell by the wayside. So did my plans to become a missionary, own my own ranch, manage an orphanage, and own a bookstore that doubles as an ice-cream shop.

Secretly, I’m still holding onto the bookstore/ice-cream shop idea.

It would be the perfect match for me. I love books and I love ice-cream. What could go wrong?

Melted ice-cream and bankruptcy come to mind, but I’m trying not to think too deeply about that.

But, for the moment, I own a business. I sell stories.

Lately, I’ve been swamped with work. I am still selling as many scripts as I can possibly bang out to the radio show that I’ve been working with for the past two years. I’ve also, just recently, sold a short story to a magazine that asked me to submit to them. They thanked me very nicely, said the check would be in the mail asap, and asked if I might like to sell them stories regularly.

I said yes very professionally, after I finished dancing around my kitchen and telling every single person in my family just how proud they could be of me.

Selling stories is kind of an odd business. I do my taxes, keep track of my expenses, and have a schedule, but at the same time, everything I sell comes straight out of thin air. I spend hours and hours thinking very deeply about people and places that don’t exist, and weirdly enough, someone pays me to do it. And at night before I go to bed, I pray that I’ll have good ideas the next day, because without those, I really will have to look into that bookstore/ice-cream shop plan.

I still think it would be the perfect fit for me.

Do you own your own business, or have you ever thought about starting one? Tell me about it in the comments!