Beautiful Journals

Inventory is fun!  No!  Wait! Let me clarify before you burn me at the stake.  Receiving new inventory is fun!  Better? J

It doesn’t matter if it is reordered or brand new.  I just love opening big boxes of beautiful journals.  Each one is wonderful.  As I prepare them for storage and shipping, I often think about the hands that will eventually hold them, write in them, dream in them.

With clean hands and work surface, we prepare the journals to be shrink wrapped so they stay pristine through the mail.  We put our inventory tag on the outside of the wrap so the journal is never marred by it.  When done with an inbound shipment, I have these beautiful gems all over my work surface, ready for new homes.

Though most of the receiving and shrink wrapping is now done by someone else, I find it irresistible.  I sneak in quietly, prepare the journal—and promptly get busted when I turn on the heat gun, lol.

I get to see, touch, and admire journals whenever I want.  Talk about a dream job!  When I get ready to review a journal, I purchase one (at retail, tax included) and enjoy it even more as I remove it from its protective cover…just as our customers do.

Every time I start a new journal, I will review it for you.  From paper quality to durability, once it’s mine, I’ll put it to the test and let you know what I think.

For now, I’m going to enjoy getting the new shipments ready and gazing at all the “eye candy” only a journal keeper can truly appreciate.  Come join me at http://www.writeyourmindjournals.com!

Reading Old Entries

About three months before we opened up shop, I spent some time going through old journals.  I started out looking for the journals I liked the best so I could contact the manufacturer.  I ended up on the floor, surrounded by memories, laughing and crying and generally having a great time.

Not all journals are meant to be kept.  There are periods of time in my life when anger was volatile and circumstances designed to push my buttons were a daily occasion.  I have a few notebooks full of anger.  The catharsis for me was in the venting, in the writing down.  I burned the journals, unopened, a year later.

The nine to twelve notebooks I filled up over the loss of a relationship and a violent physical act I suffered are still in a box in the attic.  The relationship was not a healthy one.  The attack was emotionally damaging.   I have no desire to torture myself again by reading those journals.  When they come down from the attic, they will get burned.

The journals I wrote in while working with Dr. Frank Bell are ones I will keep forever.  They chronicle the transition from working to being…the flowering open of my hopes, dreams, and career aspirations.  His counseling as a boss and mentor were priceless to me and opened up so many new ideas and possible roads, I can’t bear to part with the record of that portion of my journey.

I keep my prayer journals and the journals in which I recorded study, insights, and growth.

As more and more of my journaling makes it into electronic media, I’m not certain if my paper journals will continue to be as prolific as they have been for years.  So much of my private world finds its way into my blog and the E-Zine that I write less on paper in a personal way.  I still do, but my 140 page monthly quota now encompasses all I do for the company as well as personal writing.  There simply isn’t enough time in the day to keep up both.  The articles and blog do satisfy my need to put my thoughts into words and exercise the writing muscle, so I’m not driven to my journal quite as much as I was a year ago.  However, nothing can replace pen on paper for me and I still write a minimum of five pages a day by hand.

My old journals serve as a source of inspiration for article ideas, especially since I began taking my research notes in them about six months ago.  Zotero and Clipmarks are a great add-on to my research, but the seeds and kernels of ideas still appear from my pen.

How are you using your old entries?  Do you burn your journals or keep them?  How often do you go through them and use the words in them?

We Are Now Live!

Welcome to my first official blog entry as the owner and Chief Pen of B J Keltz Company and Write Your Mind Journals at http://www.writeyourmindjournals.com.

There are so many people to thank for getting us to this day.  Mark, I love you forever.  Pablo, I owe you one (or a dozen) forever.  Jason, Amy and Brandy, we’ll make you proud.  To all the parents, thank you for your faith and encouragement.  Will, thank you for your encouragement and support.  And to The One who makes all things possible…thank you.

For all the individuals who put pen to paper or are considering doing so, this is for you.  We put together an E-Zine that will grow into a strong database for you.  Please feel free to tell us what you do and don’t like, and what topics you’d like to see.  YOU are my priority.

Head on over to our shop for a great new journal or to the E-Zine and check it all out.  I look forward to hearing from you.  If I’m not helping you put pen to paper a little better, I’m not doing my job.  Feel free to tell me about it.

Okay, enough blab.  Let’s write!

B J Keltz

Write Your Mind Journals

http://www.writeyourmindjournals.com

How Much of Me?

I spoke with several business owners today in the course of my Day Job.  The closer I get to opening my store, the more courage I gather to ask them what they think of owning a business.

 

I asked one gentleman today how much of his personality and “self” was in his business.   While he runs a business that employs 14 people today, he started out with a truck and helper 20 years ago.  My question caught him off guard.  A look I can only describe as sadness or nostalgia passed through his features as he thought about his answer.

 

“Honestly, Barb,” he said, “My whole self is in this business, but the bigger it gets, the less personality is there.  In the early days, I got jobs based on my ‘talk and walk’ as they say.  Today it’s all about reputation and economic factors and so much other stuff.”  He got wistful for a moment, looking out the window at his new 4-door truck and the boat attached to the back.  “I miss the old days.”  He turned to me and grinned.  “But I sure like the solvency!”

 

He got me to thinking about what success might mean to me.  I read frequently about SOHO (small office, home office…typically a virtual office or web worker) businesses deliberately choosing not to grow.  Various reasons are cited, including not wanting to lose the immediacy and responsive report they have with clients and not wanting to evolve into something that would provide less control.

 

What would success mean for me?  On a practical basis, it would pay the bills and allow me to work from home full time.  This might, at some point, entail a very small staff to assist with packaging and shipping orders, stocking inventory, perhaps even the bookkeeping.  But what if it went really big?  Would I then become just another person tied to an office and a job, even if it’s my business that I love?

 

I think, for me, success means paying the bills, doing some good in the world, and having more time to research, write, and share. I can outsource some things (and already have; hubby is on board for customer support and shipping, and I have a webmaster/marketing genius working with me), but I imagine I will always stay active in customer service.  Not only is it enjoyable, talking to people interested in what I sell, but I am always aware that it is their interest allows me to be a business owner. 

 

Of course, I’d want to do as much of the writing as humanly possible.  It’s what I do and my first love.  My grand passion is writing.  My love affair is with journals.  Might be an odd set of similes, but there you go.

 

Ultimately, I’ve decided I’ll cross the bridge of growth when I come to it.  As long as we are providing a good service, a good product, and good information, I think I will always be content.