Sunday, January 02, 2011

Renewal...

Okay…

            So either Blogger lost my account, or I am just absolutely misremembering how to get into it. Probably the latter as I can see my old blog, but cannot for the life of me remember the passwords to get in to post. Ehh… getting’ old… what can ya do?

            By the time this actually gets posted, it will be early into the second day of the new year. That’s okay, ‘cause I am talking about the first day of a new rebirth, awakening, re-imagining, insert appropriate word here.

            Those who know me know who I am and what I do. My wife and I own and run a small game store in the Midwest. No video or computer games, just table top stuff. Board games, miniatures, RPGs, collectible card games, and associated accessories. I do most of the in-store stuff and she handles the back office situations. We make a good team (and have for 19+ years).

            Over the last two years, a LOT of stuff has happened to us as a result of our owning the store, the economy turning way BAD, physical exhaustion on my part, and just our world getting turned in upheaval. As a result, we had a decision to make, either give up our house or give up our store. We chose to give up the house. What can I say? In five years of home ownership, I came to realize that I sucked at it. I am no good with tools, and with running the store, I was never there to either (badly) fix things that needed fixing or supervise someone who could do the job better than I could. On the other hand, despite pretty much being thrown into the deep end, it seems that I have something of a knack for running a retail establishment. *SHRUG* Who knew?

            Anyway, after pretty much twenty years solid of working for other people and having them dictate how I needed to behave all the way down to my way of dress, unfettered freedom made me giddy. As my own boss, walking into my own business, I could pretty much wear what I wanted. Left to my own lazy devices, I will dress for extreme comfort. Translation: T-shirt… sweatpants… backward baseball cap… shaving when the whiskers began to itch… showering when I had time… Yeah, you see where this is going. The business was never neglected, but practically everything else in my life was, from personal hygiene to my wife and kids on an emotional level.

            The combination of the house situation and the lack of self-discipline pretty much made me check out mentally for about a year and a half. In the back of my mind, I knew something was wrong, but I really paid it no mind as I had truly fallen into a mindset where I was ignoring all but the most basic of needs.

            In the store, we have a customer who shows up for some of our regular events, and they like to take pictures. There was only one taken directly of me, but I was in the background of more than a couple. Looking at those images I was slightly disgusted. Somehow, I had turned into Comic-Book Guy from the Simpsons. In terms of friendliness, I was better than he was, but visually, I was a dead ringer. I was always slumped or slouching, looking WAY overweight (which I am, for me), wearing a T-shirt that was at least one size too small for me, and four days of beard growth on my face with a dour look on my face. I had become the typical gamer geek store owner who customers only tolerate because they can’t get their fix anywhere else nearby. (In our case, that is not true. We have a competitor not five miles away from us.) Looking up from the images, I realized that everything else in my life was taking on some of those figurative qualities, from the store sliding into a dingy state to my home life being barely up kept on my end. I was a mess. Those pictures brought me a plain truth and showed me what was happening.

            As a person, one of my strengths is that I tend to tackle perceived problems with reckless abandon and overkill. Have I mentioned that one of my weaknesses is the fact that I can be highly oblivious for long periods of time?

            So… when presented with an outward image of myself that I do not like, what do I do? Well, in true overkill fashion, I make a New Year’s resolution to effectively be one of the best-dressed game store owners anyone has ever seen. Yep, from t-shirts and sweatpants to shirt, tie, dress shoes, and good jeans/khakis. There are also plans to wear a sweater vest on a regular basis, possibly one with our store logo on it. I have resolved to do this every day I work at the store this year, which should be roughly 362 of them as we are only closed for Memorial Day, Thanksgiving, and Christmas.

            Why start there instead of the store or some other aspect of my life? Simple… Dressing well on a regular basis requires more self-discipline that one might think, and that self-discipline frequently carries over into other aspects of life. On this first day, I found myself cleaning things in the store I had ignored for weeks and clutter I’ve ignored for MONTHS. There’s still a lot to do (in all aspects of my life), but small steps forward are still steps forward. I meant to take a picture, but I left the camera at home and by the time I remembered it at home, I had already changed into, you guessed it, a t-shirt and some sweats. However, for those with a good mind’s eye, I can at least attempt to describe what I wore…

White Button-Down Oxford...
Dark Blue Sweater vest (Darker and more muted than royal blue, but a shade or two lighter than navy blue)...
Dark wash jeans...
Black, braided leather belt...
And this tie from theTieBar.com…

            I do plan to take pictures, if for nothing else to document how well I'm doing with this whole resolution thing. The shirts and sweaters won’t show much variety for a bit, as I had to go get some new dress clothes that actually fit my over sized self right now and was working with a modest budget, but more will be coming in the future.

Peace… GopherDave

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