Typical Day
Clara Bowemaker wakes up at 6:00AM to the dulcet tones of her alarm clock. She wishes she could just hit snooze repeatedly for the next four hours. She doesn't. She gets up, splashes some cold water on her face, brushes her teeth, and stumbles into the kitchen, where she sets out bowls of food for her two dogs and fixes herself a pot of strong coffee.
She inhales the first cup, just to kick-start her brain, and immediately starts on a second. She nibbles on a stale doughnut from yesterday and shuffles along into her office, the dogs following at her feet.
Clara fires up her computer and checks her email for orders. She's got twenty new ones—yay. Two of the orders are for everyday bows, but the other eighteen are for her specialty: elaborate party bows for little girls. Somebody must be turning five soon.
Before she gets too excited about the big order, Clara checks the payment info. Both parties have paid via PayPal, which is pre-approved by Etsy. Good start. The big party bow order is going to Maryland, but the little one is going all the way to Germany. Thank goodness, the German customer has included enough money for international shipping. It's always awkward to have to contact a customer and ask for more money, even if it's not money Clara will get to keep.
The good news is that those fancy bows cost a lot of money. At thirty-five bucks apiece, Clara's looking at over six hundred dollars' worth of work—and it's not even 7:00AM.
Clara had been planning to spend today making more of her simple bows. They're steady sellers and she's only got twenty left, which isn't nearly enough to guard against a big order. She really doesn't want to run out. She also needs to design some new bows, both plain and fancy. She tries to roll out at least one new design for each month to keep the store fresh and exciting.
However, when somebody drops over six hundred dollars on her party bows, Clara drops everything else and makes the best darn party bows in the whole darn world.
Just then, two more orders appear in her inbox. Clara checks them. There's a Wisconsinite who wants a Gold-Dipped Denim Bow, and a Texan clamoring for a pair of Sweet Baby Bows for her nieces. It's going to be a busy, busy day.
Clara gets dressed, ties her hair back (being sure to add one of her favorite bows), and does her makeup. When she first started selling on Etsy, she wouldn't bother to get dressed up. In fact, she wouldn't even bother to get dressed. But after a while, she realized that her pajamas were starting to smell, that she wasn't leaving her house, and that she wasn't really interacting with other people. That was no bueno.
It had been a big change, going from a nine-to-five job to being self-employed. She had hated her office job, but it was still scary when she, and half of her old co-workers, had been laid off.
Clara started job hunting right after she had been fired (well, okay, like a week after), but her heart hadn't really been in the hunt. Her office job had been so awful. She wanted a job that would give her flexible hours and not waste her time with busywork...and that would allow her to make the fancy hair bows that she had enjoyed making since she was seven. Opening an Etsy shop had seemed like the obvious choice.
Originally, the Etsy shop had just been a way to make a bit of spare cash while Clara hunted for a new job. Clara hadn't thought it was practical, or even remotely realistic, to think that she could make a living off making hair bows. However, three years later, here she is: touching up her lipstick as she prepares to go to "the office," a.k.a. her living room.
She lets the dogs out into the backyard so they can get some exercise and gets her work space set up. Over the past six months, her living room has been transformed from a place to chill out to a full-on craft room, complete with a big table and a cushy office chair.
Clara sets her laptop up on the corner of her work table so that she can double-check the orders whenever she needs to and pulls her plastic boxes of ribbons, sequins, feathers, and glue off the bookshelf. She switches on the TV, just to provide some ambient noise, and gets to work.
At 11:00AM, three and a half hours later, Clara realizes that she's getting a little stiff. It's so easy to get distracted when she's making bows. It suddenly occurs to her that she needs to stand up, stretch, and (probably, as it looks like it's going to rain) let the dogs back in.
Clara gets up and half-walks, half-staggers to the back door. Even with her comfy desk chair, sitting almost completely still for three hours takes its toll.
Clara throws open the back door. "Sorry, sorry! I got distracted!"
Neither of her Westies seems terribly upset to have been forgotten, but they still rush over to run around her ankles and head-butt her calves.
"I know, I know. I'm soo mean." Clara gives them both scritches around the ears. "Mommy's got a very big order today, you two. She's going to make lots of money so that you can both have treats, instead of just roughing it on budget kibble. Won't that be nice?"
The dogs understand the word treat, at least. Clara decides to give them each one to ease her conscience. Even as she hands them out, though, she's thinking about all the other things she needs to pay for: the electrical bill, the oil change and tire rotations, the craft supplies. Being self-employed can be such a hassle sometimes.
Sure, there's no warthog-faced boss screaming at her over missing paper clips, but there's also no dental plan. And unlike having an office to go to and a narcissistic bureaucrat to suffer under, being an Etsy crafter means that Clara is 100% responsible for everything in her life, from paying the bills to scheduling her day.
Clara senses that she's starting to worry about whether or not she'll really be able to make a living off Etsy. Sometimes it seems too good to be true; other times, when she doesn't have any orders for days and days, she's convinced that the shop will fail and she'll be left with nothing but a big stack of bills and a lot of ribbon.
However, today's order is a big one, so Clara doesn't have time to worry about failing. She does some jumping jacks to get the blood flowing and heads back to her office to keep stitching—and to find out what happens on the telenovela that she's been listening to for the past few weeks.
By 1:00PM, Clara has finished ten of the party bows. She decides that it's high time for a pat on the back and some lunch. She microwaves some soup and eats it standing up at the kitchen counter, and then she pulls on her jacket and goes out for a quick walk around the block. Okay, two blocks. Maybe three. It's a cool, damp day and she's so sick of being inside.
The walk doesn't take more than half an hour, though. By 2:00PM, Clara's back at her work table, powering through party bows. She is on fire. She doesn't stop until 7:30PM, when her dogs get tired of waiting for their dinner and start barking at her. She's watched four talk shows, three TV series, and half a movie; she's answered thirty emails, most of which were orders; and she's made thirty-eight fanciful party bows so she won't have to pull another day like this one tomorrow.
She's also in a lot of pain. Clara's head is pounding. Her fingers are all cramped up from overuse and her arms feel like lead weights. She knew she should've taken more breaks.
Clara also realizes she never got to take a shower today, and that she's barely eaten. She also hasn't spoken to anyone other than a stray telemarketer who called earlier, trying to sell Clara life insurance.
Clara feeds the dogs and orders herself a pizza. She knows that she's got to cut back on the junk food because she spends so much time sitting still, but she's always so tired by the end of the day. Everyone always laughs when she says that she's exhausted from a hard day's work. They think she just makes cute bows. They think of Clara's shop as a little hobby, when it's actually a time-consuming, taxable business.
After dinner, Clara takes the dogs out for a walk. She's so tired that she decides to go to bed right afterwards...but just before she crawls under the covers, she checks her email one last time.
Thirty-seven orders. Thirty-seven orders have come in since she stopped checking her email for the day. That's thirty-seven bows that need to be cut, assembled, packaged, and shipped.
Clara groans and slouches back to her work table to make a few more bows while watching The Tonight Show. She really needs to hire an assistant. If only Westies had opposable thumbs.
It's 11:30PM when Clara finally crawls into bed, fingers numb and head pounding. Her dogs hop up and curl at her feet, and Clara's too tired to care. She conks out almost immediately and soon starts to dream about rainbow-like bows.