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Packing Up my Bookshop! Future Plans, Making Space, How to Find Success in Failure



In the summer of 2022 I made the hard decision to close my bookshop. While packing up hundreds of books I contemplated if I was making the right choice - and did this mean I had failed at my dream of being the owner of a small used bookstore?


Sales were not coming in like they used to during the Pandemic. It was a race to the bottom during this reseller boom as more and more resellers caught on to the high profit margins book sales can bring. Shipping media mail rates increased 4 times alone in 2022. Due to the American Rescue Care Act, side hustlers are now taxed like small business owners, and filing 1099k forms for every reseller app felt daunting. 




It was time to close the book, for now, on Hyla Brook Books. I needed to increase my income a lot quicker to escape my poor fortune. It felt bitter sweet telling my followers of 3 years that the shop was closing, that I would no longer focus on selling vintage books. But every ending is a new beginning. I knew it was the right thing to do to make space for other opportunities of growth.

I shared the great news that I got a job at the school. I love being in classrooms, being surrounded by the notion that the future is bright, the sunshine yellow school busses, mascot pride, I am as close to a classroom as I can be without being enrolled as a student.

I'm trading the time I spent running my online bookstore to work this school job. It's a good investment and the best thing for me right now. 



Shifting my focus from selling books has let me enjoy reading them. I started blogging again and keeping notes for my novel, project Nightingale. i found out over the week that my character discovers an abandoned church piano, listens to a free concert in the park, and is afraid of death. she is poor but finds beauty in the sounds of the Nightingale in the woods, until one day she finds the time travel nightgale. The time travel machine is not something mass produced, but there is more than one. Also my character doesn't visit different timelines - she is stuck in the same one until she can remember her song/ find her voice / remember who she is. She is stuck in a bad timeline, where she keeps making the same mistake over and over. On my precious free time, I started to learn how to read music notes - both for my novel but also so I can practice scales on the piano in the Music History room. 

I spent weeks worrying myself sick - and everything turned out better than I could've hoped. I work a job in the mornings that is easy, quiet, and makes me happy. My second job is my survival job - I need it to live and I've learned to cope with the shortcomings there but I am grateful to it every day. It's down the road, I get rides there, it's one of the better jobs in town, I get free food and drinks, and pretty easy when it's not a terrible traffic intersection. I choose to look on the bright side, it will get me where I need to go a lot faster.

I'm limited to where I can work because I don't have a car, but I'm trying to remedy that. Over the last year I've been learning to un-isolate myself. I have not just been working hard at my job, but making real life connections. I've spent so long in the virtual reality, I forgot the value of in person relationships. Who knows, maybe I'll get a remote job again someday!

There's a whole other blog post about setting boundaries and my failure and success in making friends this year - but saying good bye to my bookshop feels like saying good bye to myself. I'm letting go but still dancing to the beat of my own drum. 



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