Day 16: January 16, 2016 - Is it Worth the Pain

The third child, second daughter....crazy woman!

January 16, 2016
Day 16 Is it Worth the Pain


Robyn and I started a homeschool endeavor called the The Wider School. She is my oldest child and the oldest daughter. She sends me quality articles to read and mull over and her latest did not disappoint. She is one of those deep, yet practical, highly organized, woman in her late twenties. I would follow her into a mess anywhere. If there is order to be had, she's on it. The article swirls around this question, "Is it worth the pain?" She is encouraging me to process this in light of the Wider School endeavor, and I will, but immediately I thought of our Twin Valley Coffee company.

Is it worth giving up our December to serve coffee customers? Yes.
Is it worth giving up the ability to just hop in the car, on any given weekend, to do what we want in order to sell more coffee and toddies? Yes. We love it. Is it worth stopping the lawn mower after hours to serve a late coffee customer? Yes! We love to sell. And, c'mon, they need their coffee.

Is it worth the time we spend on the company and not home maintenance? Yes. We can always do the maintenance later. Is it worth the heated conversations discussing the business? Of course, growth is always good. Is it worth giving up significant vacation time because we have to hire folks to run the joint and money is tight? Yes, loss of significant vacation time is replaced with daily personal freedom. We are the bosses.

Living the way we do, trying to run Twin Valley Coffee Company IS worth the pain. Our family's path or trajectory is not predictable. You can't look at us and assume much of anything.  You can't study our habits or our patterns for a month, let alone a day, and be able to determine where we will be in five years. And, of course, this is exactly how we want to live, we like it this way. We love life, we love opportunities, we love spontaneity.

Even the most organized, most scheduled, highly driven older child in the family has a thirst for owning her own business while working a significant chunk of time for a company in Florida. Florida? See, I told you. We are full of surprises. Funny thing about this Twin Valley Coffee Company, though....we kinda need predictability. And so the probing question is, is the need for regularity worth the pain? Yes! Growing the company requires more scheduling.  It is worth the pain.