Peeling Back the Layers
Peeling back the layers -
I’m an anthropologist by schooling. I say schooling because once I left college all my anthropology stopped, but did it really? I was not employed by a company to work in “anthropology.” It really wasn’t a degree that I could go out and get a job in, not a shock, trust me my father had been telling me since I chose the degree as a freshman in College. I thought I was going against the system - or my father at least - to pick something so obscure with fantasies of Indiana Jones coming to mind. After spending a summer at a field school in Nebraska tediously looking for bones or clues of human intervention in a bison kill site, I realized that Indiana Jones was certainly a fantasy and just getting the degree and paper was all my degree was worth. It got me in doors that normally wouldn’t have been open to a non-college educated person. I felt like a fake most of the times - someone who has moved from thing to thing never really finding her passion in a career. As the pandemic hit and the great reset - meaning our life reset - has set in, many realizations have come to mind. Peeling back the layers has been interesting to do in my own life. At heart, I’m an entrepreneur… that is my passion.
So many reasons have brought us here to Sedona, elbow deep in sprucing up this old building, but as I scrape the old paint off of these walls - my anthropologist brain kicks in, I wonder…. Who came before here? The floors had 20 years of dirt ground in to them, how many people have walked through these doors? Was it a happy business? Why did it close? The peach color that covered all the walls revealed other colors behind them - bright purples, brilliant reds, yellows and blues. Bright and happy colors - what was it for? I scrape, clean, buff, cover and add a new fresh look but I can’t help but think about the others that came before us. The hard work, the ups and downs, and the ultimate sacrifice of small business life. Were they full of excitement and anxiety as we are? Did they end because of being tired or did this pandemic sink a nail into their business that they couldn’t get out of? This is my anthropologist mind - who came before, how they functioned, and how will the next generation function as well. My sympathy and understanding swell as I see the rise and fall of so many small businesses at this time. We are opening a new but we could have just as easily been finished. We hang on with our passions and our commitment to quality and providing amazing experiences for our customers, a hope that we offer something different than the click buy world. With this, we risk it all. Not just a little money here or there - we risk every dime, and time away from our children, we risk time for ourselves, we put all the chips in to hopefully come out at the end with something in tact, but this is the life we have chosen - an old timer snowboarder and an anthropologist… but boy will we have some stories to tell our grandchildren!
I’m an anthropologist by schooling. I say schooling because once I left college all my anthropology stopped, but did it really? I was not employed by a company to work in “anthropology.” It really wasn’t a degree that I could go out and get a job in, not a shock, trust me my father had been telling me since I chose the degree as a freshman in College. I thought I was going against the system - or my father at least - to pick something so obscure with fantasies of Indiana Jones coming to mind. After spending a summer at a field school in Nebraska tediously looking for bones or clues of human intervention in a bison kill site, I realized that Indiana Jones was certainly a fantasy and just getting the degree and paper was all my degree was worth. It got me in doors that normally wouldn’t have been open to a non-college educated person. I felt like a fake most of the times - someone who has moved from thing to thing never really finding her passion in a career. As the pandemic hit and the great reset - meaning our life reset - has set in, many realizations have come to mind. Peeling back the layers has been interesting to do in my own life. At heart, I’m an entrepreneur… that is my passion.
So many reasons have brought us here to Sedona, elbow deep in sprucing up this old building, but as I scrape the old paint off of these walls - my anthropologist brain kicks in, I wonder…. Who came before here? The floors had 20 years of dirt ground in to them, how many people have walked through these doors? Was it a happy business? Why did it close? The peach color that covered all the walls revealed other colors behind them - bright purples, brilliant reds, yellows and blues. Bright and happy colors - what was it for? I scrape, clean, buff, cover and add a new fresh look but I can’t help but think about the others that came before us. The hard work, the ups and downs, and the ultimate sacrifice of small business life. Were they full of excitement and anxiety as we are? Did they end because of being tired or did this pandemic sink a nail into their business that they couldn’t get out of? This is my anthropologist mind - who came before, how they functioned, and how will the next generation function as well. My sympathy and understanding swell as I see the rise and fall of so many small businesses at this time. We are opening a new but we could have just as easily been finished. We hang on with our passions and our commitment to quality and providing amazing experiences for our customers, a hope that we offer something different than the click buy world. With this, we risk it all. Not just a little money here or there - we risk every dime, and time away from our children, we risk time for ourselves, we put all the chips in to hopefully come out at the end with something in tact, but this is the life we have chosen - an old timer snowboarder and an anthropologist… but boy will we have some stories to tell our grandchildren!
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