Overdue status/life update, Sep 2023

COUPON/QR CODES

Simplest thing first. If you got a printout with an order this year saying something like “sorry for the chaos” with a QR code on it offering you a dollar amount off your next order, and if it has a deadline on it to use the coupon code, you can ignore the deadline. I don’t even know why it originally had one – force of habit I guess. But I got rid of the expiration date. The code is good until the end of 2023.

LIFE UPDATE

Now the more complex thing(s).

What I’ve been telling the public is that I was going to split my time between Louisiana and Alabama in order to do research in both places for my Bayou Hoodoo Herbal. That was not a lie. But it wasn’t the whole story, either.

The rest of the bigger picture is that my partner and I were at a point in 2021 where we had to figure out if we could still work as a couple. In January of 2022, we finally determined that we could not, but we had to figure out what we were going to do about that, practically speaking, since we have 10 years’ worth of financial entanglement, plus joint responsibilities for our animals, plus the fact that I need a lot of these plants I have growing here for my work, etc. In addition, it would be absolutely impossible to maintain this place if only one person was doing the work, especially if their day job kept them away from it during daylight hours. And of course I was without my own reliable transportation at the time.

I figured we were adults who could communicate, and we’d known each other for 35 years, and we were both operating in good faith and with a benevolent attitude, so we could totally make this living-with-your-ex thing work. But I also figured we needed to get used to this new reality after 10 years and have some time to figure out what we can and want to do, so my spending time in Louisiana would give us some space for that. So that was the plan.

Y’all, ABSOLUTELY NO PART OF THIS WENT ACCORDING TO PLAN.

The year or two preceding our breaking up had a lot of rough patches. But the time since we broke up? Has been total hell at a level I simply never anticipated or could have imagined. The Dante kind. With, like, serpent-headed mythological creatures and fiery lakes and some shadowy bastard who likes to preach aphorisms at you until you want to punch him in the throat. It has been painful and chaotic and frustrating and unhealthy and a financial and logistical nightmare.

So things have been hectic for a while, and my last stint in Louisiana was *desperately* needed at that point, but then in May, shit basically went off the rails. All my plans got shot up because we had to make some adjustments for some family emergencies. Among other things, there was some stuff going on in Louisiana that essentially meant someone else needed that space I was occupying more than I did.

So I came back to Alabama ahead of schedule on very short notice in May, and I not only wasn’t caught up – I walked into a house that immediately sent my allergic asthma into overdrive, and for a little lagniappe, there was a severe flea infestation that was not being dealt with at all. So that was about 6 weeks of hell and poison and constant vacuuming and laundry, all of which I did by myself, and during which the dryer decided to commit suicide.

No sooner do I get the dryer thing and finally the flea thing resolved, and a storm fucks up a bunch of our trees, fences, and electronics. We lose internet, and getting it back is going to be both expensive and a commitment, one I was iffy about making since I don’t know if I’ll be living here long enough for that investment to be worth it.

Then the fucking AC goes out – you know, in Alabama, during a long spell of extreme temperature advisories. I *had* to get that sorted regardless of how much longer I’ll be living here. But there went my “operating expenses cushion” that I had in business savings – the money I had set aside to ensure that I could absorb the impact of the stray chargeback or paypal dispute and still stay in operation, order supplies, ship packages, etc.

So of course, right on cue, here come some chargebacks and disputes. So I’ve been sitting on a big bin of packages that are just waiting on shipping labels, which I’m printing as I can as funds become available.

This has been… er, well, a real workout! And it’s been going on for like 18 months now. I take spiritual baths like they’re gonna be illegal next week, but I’m gonna be real, y’all – this is some serious uphill battle territory and I’ve been sucking wind. I have been so far behind that trying to be logical and organized about it wasn’t even working anymore – I just ended up running from emergency to emergency, reacting to All the Things but never getting in front of any of them.

I still have a ton of stuff in Louisiana, and about once a week I look for something, fail to find it, and figure I must have left it there so I have to order some more. If there’s some larger cosmic lesson here I’m meant to be learning that I just haven’t convinced the universe I’ve absorbed yet, I don’t know what it is (except I’d bet folding money it involves *living by myself*).

But I’ll tell you two things I know for sure:

Splitting your time between two different states when you are running a business that isn’t super portable and you don’t have your own transportation? Recipe for disaster.

Living with your ex? I’m sure the people exist somewhere who are mature enough, level-headed enough, compassionate and forgiving and patient enough, for something like that to be genuinely workable and not involve constant misery for one or both parties. But it turns out that we are not those people.

So that is why I have been a total disaster of a human being for a while now — basically the long, drawn out, and painful dissolution of a 10-year partnership and the loss of everything I’d poured all my money, energy, sweat, and time into for so long, as it became clear over the course of 2022 that I cannot continue to live on this land, followed by my hopes for Plan B — aka Louisiana — going up in smoke (though not until after I had spent a significant amount of money and time getting the “field office” set up over there).

As for internet, I’m limping along, though it’s slow going. Obviously I have a phone, but all my platforms and data are in the cloud, and a lot of them don’t work all that well or have full functionality on mobile. So I’ve spent a nauseating amount of money on data trying to use my phone as a wifi hotspot and a significant amount of time researching other options. And I think I’ve finally found an affordable data plan that I can have in place by the end of this month.

And I should have a vehicle that runs and is legal pretty soon.

I still don’t know exactly when I’m going to have the means to move or where I’m going to live when I finally do. However, I’m definitely not even going to consider splitting my time between two different places, never mind states, until I’m finally, totally caught up.

Getting Caught Up

At this point, what I need in order to get caught up is a much more reliable cashflow, a clear head, time, and the lack of any more unexpected expenses for a while. Not all of that is within my control or is something I can order off Amazon, of course 🙂 but I do have a couple of ideas I can put into play pretty much right away.

Phone/chat appointments to take care of the backlog for readings and consultations. With how crazy everything has been, it’s become painfully clear that if it’s going to happen, it has to be scheduled and that time has to be locked in. The days of my fitting a few email consultations in when I have a few minutes are apparently long gone, because those “few minutes” simply never exist. Sonia and I have been working on the logistics of how folks can sign up for appointment slots and how to manage the actual phone calls or chat sessions or whatever. I should be making a decision and getting the signup links to folks with existing bookings over the next few days. But I am still totally clueless about a lot of the new apps and tech that exist now, so if any of y’all have any recommendations, I would love to hear them.

Support me via Ko-fi. If you would like to help me get this ship floating right again after the storms it’s weathered — or you’d just like to see me have the time and headspace to write some actual blog posts instead of just stuff like *this* — you can make a one-time or recurring donation to support my work via Ko-fi. In the near future, I plan on establishing some rewards and early access bonuses to thank my supporters, and I’ll announce that once it’s all in place.

Order backlog. This is a problem that only money can solve, so I have the funds free to order materials and supplies and to buy shipping labels. But one thing that would help is if people would stop with the disputes and chargebacks. They are 7000% a violation of the Client Agreement and Terms of Service and they fuck things up for the customers and clients who are patiently waiting their turn.

Packages going out late have little cards in them with a QR/coupon code good for a dollar amount off a future order. Ignore any expiration date on there – you can use it all year. If you run into any problems using it, contact us and we’ll figure it out for you.

Light setting reports. I have finally cobbled together a system that mostly works pretty well to avoid any more problems with getting different apps and platforms to talk to each other, so photographs are matched up to their respective order numbers much more easily now. This has been such a giant problem that light setting reports are in some cases so late that the report itself will probably be of very little use now. In those cases, I will be sending the pertinent photos along with a very brief summary and a gift card to make up for the fact that you didn’t get a report you could use within a reasonable amount of time. Those have already begun going out and will continue to go out until I’m caught up them.