August is Home Business appreciation month

August is home business month.  Well what a perfect month for us here at the Celtic Attic.  We started off as a home based business, moved to a store, moved back to home based when my son got sick, and now are both home based and store front based.  We have taken the best of all worlds and are constantly merging and changing and re-thinking the Celtic Attic concept.  Here is an excerpt from our book a Leprechaun's Pot of Gold...

Life can be a big drama if you perceive to fail. It is not always about the end result.  The finished product is a success but so is actually completing the project, idea or dream.  It would be nice to make a million, but that is not why I write.  Words are like angels and their wings carry my thoughts to print.  I think that the angels guide us on our path and in writing I am blessed.  I write to help others and if the money comes as a result, I certainly won’t refuse it.  In writing this book it is my intention to myself, to you the reader and to the universe to help others achieve their dreams of owning, running and making money at an online business and fulfill a dream.  The mere writing and publishing of it is one of my successes. If I only help one person with this book it is a success. There is no failure, except to not try.  “Even if you are on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit there.”

I think everyone has periods be it a year, a day, a week, an hour or a second in which everything appears to fall apart.  Your job ends, someone dies, a spouse or child becomes ill, or you feel terrible because of... you fill in the blanks here.  We have all experienced that knot in our tummies that signals stress.  We have all felt at one point or another that this is just more than I can possibly handle.  I could die from this, I won't make it past this, and this is not fair...

I remember falling to the rocky ground outside my home on a cold winters day in Jan 2003 after I had come home from the post office to find an ambulance and fire truck in my driveway and my children and husband at the time trying desperately to give my mother CPR.  I fell to my knees and screamed I will do anything if you bring her back, don't take my mom from me, I am too young and so is she, we have so much left to do and say... well little did I know that that was the beginning of my year of hell.  That was the first incident in a procession of horrors all of which were terrible.  That first event was the most horrific event of my life thus far. 

I lost my father in December of that year to end my year of hell.  In between my mum's passing and my dad's passing, my youngest son became very ill and my husband at the time was diagnosed with thyroid cancer and he underwent two surgeries to remove it.  I know there were other events in there good and bad, but those are the ones that stick out today as I write this.  I know from my own experiences it is how you deal with the events in your life and the tragedies and the victories that meld us into the people we are at this very moment.  The next event will shape you into the person you will be in the next second and so on and so on... if you can take any tragic event and see some silver lining under that darkest cloud, you are livening a life blessed.  Those that cannot turn the tragedy around are doomed to live in sadness. 

Remember any victory is to be taken as a blessing and be thankful for it every second because if you are not grateful, but boastful and think you are deserving of it, in one split second it can turn around into something else.  If you can keep the positive in every moment, in every aspect even if you are not feeling it, you can express it and work through things with love and patience and caring, then each subsequent second will be a blessing and not a horror. “Man cannot discover new oceans unless he has the courage to lose sight of the shore.”4

4 Andre Gide

            I have certainly lost sight of the shore on more than one occasion, more than I would dare recall for you here today.  I have been a waitress, bartender, photographer, office manager, paralegal, social worker, peace officer, housekeeper and small business owner just to name a few occupations I have held over the years.  I have driven fast cars, surfed, sailed, skateboarded, bungee jumped and fallen out of an airplane (with a parachute of course).  Why?  The only answer I can ever think of when people ask me this question is I just wanted to try it.  How can you truly know if you like or dislike something if you haven’t tried or experienced the passion and fear?

            I believe a lot of people dismiss their dreams because of fear.  Fear of failure, fear of the unknown, fear of figuring out what they really thought they loved just wasn’t what they really did love after all.  For me that lost love is law school.  You can look in my high school yearbook and it clearly says I was going to be an attorney.  Believe me I gave that dream my all.  I even attended law school but found out on my personal path to self-discovery that law school was not my destiny.  Take a chance and walk with open arms and open eyes down your path.  Don’t walk in fear, face it and learn and grow from each and every experience.

It is nice to finally realize that what you are doing is what you love and it is exactly what you should be doing with your life.  We all struggle to find ourselves and our paths and most of the time it is right in front of us.  Usually it comes out of necessity or an experience or a revelation… Called intuition, but we so seldom listen to our hearts.  We choose to listen to our heads and be guided by some societal force that tells us what is right and wrong and of value.  Lets try to listen to our hearts and hear the silent whisper of the angels in the wind that truly bless us each day of our lives.