The Reality of owning a Business

People love to romanticize small business ownership as if it’s some magical lifestyle where you sip coffee, answer one email, and then spend the rest of the day doing whatever you please. That fantasy must be nice. It just has very little to do with reality.

Running a daycare center was not a flexible little side adventure. It was a full-scale operational circus with regulations, staffing issues, safety concerns, parent communication, scheduling chaos, and a building that seemed to wait for the worst possible moment to have a problem. My business was open 70 hours a week, and somehow people still assumed that because I was the owner, I had more freedom than everyone else. In truth, I had less.

When you own a business, especially one involving children, you are not “setting your own hours” in the way people imagine. You are setting your life on fire and then trying to manage the flames with a clipboard. The state required my physical presence for at least 30 hours a week, and they could show up whenever they wanted.... which meant I couldn’t just pop in when convenient and vanish when I felt like it. I had to be there. Constantly. Reliably. Legally.

And that was only one piece of it. There were parent conferences to schedule, staff issues to handle, emergencies in the building to solve, and summer planning that involved creating more than 60 straight days of activities to keep children engaged, safe, and happy. That alone could drain a person’s soul. Coming up with one fun activity is easy. Coming up with 2.5 months’ worth while managing everything else is a level of exhaustion people do not appreciate nearly enough.

Then there were the weekends, which were supposedly my time off. In theory, lovely. In reality, they were often interrupted by Sunday morning calls from staff members calling out sick, forcing me to find coverage at the last minute or negotiate with a teenager who suddenly discovered they had other plans. Nothing says “restful weekend” quite like solving a staffing crisis before you’ve finished your first cup of coffee on your day off.

What made it worse was the assumption from other people that I should be available for whatever they needed, whenever they needed it, because I “owned my own business.” As if that meant I was sitting around with endless free time, waiting to be summoned. Apparently, some people hear “business owner” and picture “woman of leisure.” No. I was working six, often seven, days a week, carrying the weight of an entire operation on my back, and being treated as though my schedule was the easiest one in the room.

That misunderstanding gets old fast. Owning a business does not mean you are free. It often means your responsibilities follow you everywhere. You are the backup plan, the crisis manager, the decision-maker, and the person who gets blamed when things go sideways. It can be rewarding, yes. But it is also relentless, and people who have never done it often underestimate the physical, emotional, and mental load.

So yes, I am absolutely thrilled to have that chapter behind me. I am 61 years old, I have common sense, a life of my own, and boundaries that were hard-earned. I do not miss the constant pressure, the endless interruptions, or the myth that I was somehow more available because I was self-employed. If anything, retirement gave me back something business ownership never did: actual control over my time.

And honestly, my only regret is simple. I should have retired sooner.

Dear me,

Dear Me,

You were never the kind of person who sat back and let life happen to you. You carry people. You fix things. You jump in when everyone else freezes. You make things beautiful when they’re falling apart. You make people laugh when they want to cry. You hold entire worlds together with duct tape, determination, sarcasm, and pure stubbornness.

But somewhere along the way, you started carrying things that were never yours to carry.

You take responsibility for everyone’s feelings. Everyone’s comfort. Everyone’s chaos. And because you are capable, people assume you are endless. They forget that even the strongest people get tired too.

The truth is, you are not “too much.” You are just someone who loves deeply, feels deeply, and notices everything. You notice when people are hurting. You notice when something feels off. You notice when effort isn’t returned. And even after being disappointed, you still keep trying to show up with love anyway.

That’s rare.

You don’t need to become colder to protect your peace. You just need to stop handing your energy to people who only appreciate it when it benefits them.

You are allowed to rest without guilt.

You are allowed to say no without explaining.

You are allowed to stop fixing situations you didn’t create.

And you are allowed to want the same loyalty, effort, and care that you pour into everyone else.

One day you’re going to realize that the people who truly love you never required you to exhaust yourself to earn your place in their lives.

And honestly? The people lucky enough to be loved by you probably have no idea how much of yourself you quietly give away every single day.

Love,

Me

Reality Check... Sometimes your kid doesn't come first!

For a long time, I believed work was life—or at least the part of life that kept the lights on, the bills paid, and my future from looking like a clearance rack of bad options. I sacrificed a lot to build all three of my business, and yes, some of those sacrifices were painful. Time, energy, missed moments, postponed rest, all of it. But in the end, it gave me something that matters more with age: security.

Not glamour. Not applause. Security. And that’s no small thing.

The truth is, you don’t build anything meaningful without giving something up. That’s not cruelty; that’s math. Time and energy are limited resources. If you pour yourself into creating a business, a career, or a stable financial future, there will be seasons when everything cannot get equal attention. That’s just reality dressed in work clothes. (From Cato's, cause they are cheaper)

I know people love to say, “My kids always come first.” It sounds lovely. It fits nicely on a mug. But real life is a little messier than that. Sometimes your kids come first, and sometimes the mortgage does. Sometimes the deadline does. Sometimes the long game does. That doesn’t mean you love your children less. It means you understand that loving your family also includes making sure there is food in the fridge, a roof overhead, and some dignity in retirement.

And let’s be honest: children do not fall apart because another capable adult steps in. That’s what dads, and grandparents, and aunt Mae down the street is for. Children can benefit from learning that they are loved without being the center of the universe every waking minute. In fact, one of the best lessons you can teach a child is that not every inconvenience is an emergency, and not every need requires your immediate personal appearance.

There’s value in kids learning patience, flexibility, and a little independence. They can figure some things out. They should figure some things out. Otherwise, they grow up believing access to your time is automatic, and that’s not love—that’s poor training. Life will not organize itself around them forever, and home shouldn’t either.

What has always puzzled me is why women are so often expected to do everything as if they were issued extra hours at birth. Build the career. Raise the kids. Run the home. Be emotionally available. Stay cheerful. Remember the dentist appointment. Bring snacks. Age gracefully. It’s absurd. Somewhere along the line, women got assigned every job on the group project.

I was fortunate that my marriage didn’t work that way. If I had a problem, we had a problem. That’s how partnership is supposed to work. Not as a solo act with one exhausted woman carrying the whole production while everyone else waits for instructions. A strong marriage understands that ambition, family, money, and responsibility belong in the same conversation.

Here’s the part nobody likes to say out loud: if you want to live well until you die, you need money. You need security. You need options. Love is wonderful, but love does not cover prescriptions, property taxes, or a broken water heater. Financial stability may not be glamorous, but neither is being old and stressed.

So no, it may not always be fun. It may not always feel balanced. It may not always look warm and fuzzy from the outside. But making sacrifices, sharing responsibility, and thinking long term are not signs that you got life wrong. Sometimes they’re the clearest signs that you understood exactly how it works.

Help I need Rehab!

There is no such thing as "enough" chocolate. We could be talking about 50 Crunch bars or two entire gallons of chocolate ice cream—it’s just never enough. At least, not for me.

I possess the iron will to walk right past cakes, pies, and the entire candy aisle without batting an eye. But the second a Crunch bar or a pint of chocolate ice cream crosses my path? I transform into an absolute glutton. I don't know what kind of dark magic these two specific treats hold over me, but there is simply no better way to end a long day than downing a homemade chocolate shake or successfully eating my own body weight in Crunch bars while crafting. Honestly, if it weren't for my complete lack of restraint around those two things, I'd be skinny as a rail!

Previously Generous

I’m not a selfish person, but life teaches you lessons.

If your friend doesn’t have a car and you loan them yours, then they wreck it… who’s the one without a car now? Not your friend — they already didn’t have one. Now YOU don’t have one either.

You can apply that logic to almost anything and the outcome is usually the same.

That’s why I don’t loan my stuff out anymore.

It’s not because I’m selfish. It’s because I wasn’t.

I’ve given away kitchen tables, chairs, dishes, TVs, computers, phones, clothes — all kinds of things. Giving is one thing. Loaning is another.

When you give something away, you already accepted it may never come back. When you loan something, people often treat your sacrifice like it costs you nothing.

So no, I’m not “stingy.” I just learned the hard way that protecting what’s yours doesn’t make you selfish. It makes you wiser than you used to be.