Sometimes it feels to me as if the sewing machine and the computer or phone are competing for my time. Some days I do not get behind the sewing machine at all, because web shops, social media and paperwork of every kind swallow the day in a snap and there is no time left to sew at all.
One lovely example of the bureaucracy a business owner has to deal with: now that my company is coming up to 5 years old, this delightful letter dropped into my postbox: "Submission of data on the real beneficiary". The letter itself was a whole kilometre long and contains a lengthy explanation of why and how I must submit data on who really (!) benefits from my undertaking...
It makes you scratch your head. The first beneficiary is of course my car, because driving between home and town is fairly costly, whether to buy materials, post parcels or visit the bookkeeper; even the smallest trip comes to fifty kilometres.
Well, who else benefits from my work? Certainly the fabric shelf, which keeps thriving and growing uncontrollably. And the room of finished products... I really do have a whole room for all those dear pieces (they are all so dear to me), which I sew and sew day after day from first light to late evening. With selling it is as it always is for a craftsperson. None of us are super marketers.
Beneficiaries... what a joke.
My personal benefit consists of the joy of work and creative happiness. A micro business with one board member and not a single wage earner: well, who is it that benefits? All this data is officially available, after all. But no, you still have to fill in some forms and prove that you are not laundering money. A craftsperson and money laundering. You know, I am hiccupping uncontrollably right now.
Creative joy, creative joy, what else. Saturdays and Sundays do not count when a new idea or an exciting patchwork pattern jumps into your head.
