Every Time a Bell Rings
I’m so fucking stressed out. I’m moving but it’s not just moving into a building it’s moving into a candlemaking studio, and opening a retail shop, and opening a museum all in one building and I’m a mess. I don’t have any help (besides my amazing husband who assembles the giant boxes that randomly show up via tractor trailer at our house). I am just completely overwhelmed. Everywhere I go someone asks me “when I am opening” and at first I said 4th of July which was a complete joke because of county permitting and building renovations, so I started saying Labor Day, because it seemed far away until it didn’t.
I found Conner. He’s a museum curation expert and he is helping me plan the layout of the museum space – he’s a godsend and I don’t use that term lightly. One day I was in tears driving to work and I said, in full “It’s a Wonderful Life” mode, God, I need help I can’t do this, and that same day he responded to a Facebook marketplace ad I had placed trying to get rid of bookshelves from when the building was a bookstore. It turned out he was a museum curator with a masters degree specializing in international shoreline finds, his passion. He, literally, was a godsend. He is fabulous at graphic design and labeling for the finds and he is going to help me interpret the finds, tell the story, and make the museum space great. I was in over my head and losing a lot of sleep until he came along, and I’m going to call him Clarence from now on and he’s too young to even know that reference and dammit I’m going to make him watch my favorite movie of all time and learn why.
I’m setting up my candle space now because I need to be able to work to be in the building – it is how it is getting paid for- in order to get everything else done. Kim Hannon, NASGA President, baller businesswoman owner of Ophiuroidea, president of St. Michaels business assoc and most importantly my good friend is helping me navigate the retail space in the building.
I’ll get through it somehow. I have a vision for the backyard space as a Beachcombing garden (cough, tiki bar, cough). It would take a local committee of people to make it happen and I don’t have that committee. Maybe someday I will. Until then, the mantra repeats:
One. Day. At. A. Time.