we all think or believe we know where we are going. what we have planned. how things should work. but the longer i am alive, the less certain i am of what i know, and more certain of the vast unknown.

our jobs. our relationships. our choices. most of us like to build out an ideal of what we have constructed, as if somehow happiness can be found in the mundane bits of our daily lives. having a love relationship, commitment, marriage. simply lock it in and get a move on, right? buy a house, buy a bigger one. have nice things, be social, be special. have children and insert yourself into every aspect of their lives. be busy doing soccer and dance and carpools and whatever. make your neighbors your friends, make your kid's friends parents your friends. stay busy enough that it can all be enough when you realize how utterly boring it can be. or like me, be successful at your job. build a business. build two. build your reputation, position, authority.... but at any time, pull at one of these threads, and the whole thing begins to unravel.

loneliness is always lurking just outside the line of sight. our collective sanity is bound together by a certain set of chosen beliefs, most of which are either in harmony or conflict. they rarely have anything to do with facts so much as the deafening noise fed through streams of media. who we are, or think we are, can collapse in an instant.

clarity comes to me in waves. it begins slowly but as it builds over time, i can see more clearly if i really choose, or it can happen like a zen slap. there was just such a moment of clarity at the end of my marriage when i came to realize that love was no longer enough. that although it was love (and lust) that drew us together, the gulf between the disparate desires we each held for our futures was, ultimately, the death of the relationship. though we attempted a friendship after, the more we came to know one another without the passion or sex or even the flower of friendship, all affection had evaporated. it can be corrosive. yet this particular experience greatly informs my daily life. my relationships. my choices. negative aspects like the fear of allowing vulnerability is just one by product. on the upside i am poised to be a better friend, lover, mate, partner.. the knife blade is two-sided. everything is a blessing and a curse..

i spend each day with people who have varying degrees of attachment to a common reality. everyone seeks something different. i have encouraged each to seek for their lives beyond our walls. to build relationships with clients and to excel at their craft for sure, but to begin to find whatever it is that will excite and fulfill them outside of their daily work. if it can be enfolded to enhance the work experience, all the better. though sometimes, sadly, people who have yet to discover or commit to a deeper passion will often show up with a common complaint or grudge. they nurse and protect and develop it while looking to ally with another kindred soul. it is human to be flawed and most of us, myself included, are blind to our baser motivations. still, this is where the line is drawn. in salon life, daily dissent can often be a part of the culture. sit in any salon break room long enough and you will get the full flavor of my thought. in the store, sarah and i have to work every day not to nurse a complaint or grudge. still, they exist. not feeding the little beasts is the only way to protect oneself from having them become full fledged monsters. but everything is a journey. and we both know what we have is wonderful. a great many years of toil and tears reminds us not to muck it up. i now see my salon team moving in the same direction. it offers me great hope.

as we begin 2018, i have invited my stylists to join me as partners in the salon and grooming lounge. my original inspirations and aspirations are finally bearing fruit. having enough of a solid team to build a collective, we are heading into the new year united. creating our daily work lives as a springboard toward building individual futures, most of which have yet to be fully formed. allowing others to contribute ultimately offers, i feel, a greater opportunity for everyone. but the act of change changes the nature of things, so whatever we think we might find ahead, we might find something completely different. but this i do know, i will spend each day in a house of ideas. of thoughts, and dreams and conversations in the sunlight. whispers and machinations have no place in the shadows of our daily lives, and certainly not in any house i have built. now i am greeted by the changes in the last few months, as those around me feel empowered to recreate the environment in a more egalitarian way. in the simplest of acts, my life is enriched by controlling less. by trusting. by letting go. yet always knowing my name will be the first called when something breaks or goes wrong :)  and that is certainly okay too.

the nature of retail is changing in ways almost alarming if it wasn't so spectacularly brilliant. though how we will flourish in a cyber world without aroma is a mystery beyond my comprehension. of course we will continue to expand our online presence, learning all we can about SEO and such. of building a brand within amazon.com while continuing to boost our online sales by pushing our comfort boundaries as far as they will go. this is the new world we live in, and each time i purchase from a small business online through amazon (weekly) i remember that i now have access to makers and craftsmen the world over thanks to this technology.

2017 has been some crazy shit. some would argue that president donald trump is destroying the world. i would argue that ignorance and disrespect does a far better job than any president. every time we walk into a walmart or costco or any other big box store that sells cheap goods and under values their workers, we do greater damage to the fabric of our society. that we allow our biased idealogical views to rule our political choices (left OR right) only serves to reenforce the cycle we cannot seemingly escape. that we trust a fourth estate that has veered wildly off course, and that the filters through which our information is disseminated have been created by and for profit. as greed wins, we lose. collectively, we now make our choices based upon our greatest fears rather than our greatest hopes. our need to consume is greater than our need to conserve. and i am at a loss as to how to move beyond these constructs, beyond these traits we all share together.

recently i was asked what i would do if i knew the end was only minutes away. i surprised myself in the reply that "i would go home and pour myself a hot bath and have a soak." it made me think. my life, such as it may be, all comes down to this. what i do today informs the way i live and the way i would choose to die. simple. random. basic.

something in me can't help but be convinced that the end is near. but then, the end is always near. and endings are often life's preamble to a fresh start.

it happens quietly. subtly. before you realize it, an almost imperceptible, incremental change shifts the orbit of our daily lives from the axis upon which we believed it rested. among co-workers, friends, lovers and partners are the primal elements of human interaction that seemingly ground us yet create a seismic wake in moments of change. like the wife who one day awakens to find her husband packing his belongings, shocked to have missed the clues of his misery, confronting the factual is an eventual necessity. often our lives become easier to bear while wrapped in a cocoon of delusion. but the fuzzy warm perception of ubiquity is just that. a perception. a nothingness that exists before the grip of reality's tentacles squeeze us into a jarring, awakening embrace. only then do we begin to feel the evidence of things not seen.

enlightenment, once entered into the brain, cannot be removed. if we do not handle the facts of our lives, we bury them beneath some rarely accessed memory. more often though we find a way to make them palatable. we attach a comforting explanation or, better yet, we broaden our view of life so as to accommodate this discovery. soon we may even become glad to know what we know. but our best bet is often to forget the unpleasantness of the discovery and focus on the future, no matter how agitated it may make us feel. treat it as a part of our history.

throughout my lifetime, i am sad to say, i've often let others determine my worth. a determination that should be made by me and me alone. with age i know better. self worth is a construct or concept with which i am well acquainted. yet what we feel, we often define as fact. it skews our perception of reality. fortunately my self worth is only slightly tied to my accomplishments with the business. the business is not me nor am i the business. it lives outside of me and, unlike the parents of an entire generation, my pride for what i brought into this world won't be the conversation upon which my life exists. it is not a bumper sticker designed to reflect glory. in business there are winners and losers. with children you pretend. especially if your child hasn't yet shown the outward signs of winning. but when i played baseball in 1967, there was no tee, and i struck out each and every time at bat. all season long. it sucked hard losing at bat but being a loser taught me to search to find the things at which i excelled. and now looking back i am glad. because too much self worth for insufficient reason leads to mediocrity. and the world is overbrimming with mediocrity.

successful small businesses like ours run on the energy of the staff. there are times when i feel so much swirling energy that it is difficult to get hold of. in these moments i duck into the place where i choose not to see what's going on, if only for brief respite from the cold hard truth. the big truth. capital T.  i am responsible. if everything we are doing goes well, we take the win as a team. if it goes belly up (even the simplest of ideas or actions), then the fault is mine and mine alone. parenthetically, sarah has shown a willingness to climb into my foxhole through a hail of bullets. she gets me in a fundamental way. we have agreed that our fortunes and our lives are tied together through choice. partnership. love. sometimes love is the thing that we need most in a business. if for no other reason than on the worst days, it keeps us moving forward. on the best days it makes us soar. this kind of kinship is a rare and funny thing, and not something to be treat lightly.

lately, duross & langel has been going through growing pains. it is a wonderful thing to have one's work turn out as planned. growth and prosperity is a blessing for sure, but i work very hard to make sure everyone is woven comfortably into the tapestry of our work life. two steps forward, one step back. much better that than a sisyphian rock pushed up a sandy molasses hill only to roll back down at the day's end. adjustments in our approach are called for daily, that is the birthright of any small business. my position requires me to have clarity, especially when a realization strikes that i've allowed things to wander. it is then that i must get a grip. these adventures were borne of my vision, so if it's not happening the way i planned, i have no one to blame but myself. hearing that thought in my head is what kicks me into gear, and this has a way of ruffling the feathers of those who find my need to control, controlling.

recently, i went over a few changes in production that will need to be made with a staff member i adore. i must have been communicating my needs improperly because i could feel the heat rising in the conversation, and so i worked quickly to pivot the tenor of my point. rarely is the problem that a team member isn't doing a good enough job. were that the case, i would simply pass them through the door quickly on to their next place of employment. however, this particular issue was about how growing our business requires that we move forward toward the end zone while the goal post moves and shifts. business is ever evolving. encouraging staff to see this from my perspective can be challenging. "what worked yesterday won't work tomorrow and here's why." i know it's frustrating. well, to most. to me not so much. i thrive on this kind of thing. changes are good. especially when it means we are changing from what we have been to what we dream of becoming. it is through this process that i begin to see who is a team player and who will act as an interim replacement. both have their value to the company. 

i believe room should be made for people's emotions to appropriately flow into a conversation. after all, humans are emotional beings. finding a balance with people who possess too much emotion or drama can be difficult at best (and i often think i should receive some kind of tax break for hiring people ruled by their emotions). i'm of the opinion that anyone who allows the tears of another to move them is a stooge. tears are nothing. the story behind the tears however.. that can be compelling for a host of reasons. the often tearful is just the tip of the iceberg of personality types that cannot work in the long term: the dramatic, the shit stirrer, the one who makes snide or inappropriate remarks and then counters your verbal displeasure with "i'm just kidding".. linger too long on a decision about their future and they will surely poison the lot. you never quite know who you're working with until you have some time in. conversely, most team members don't understand what the situation will be until they have been around a while. at the end of the day, i believe what we all must ask ourselves is "what is truly most important?"

building 4 floors of enterprise with a host of disparate people is a game of three dimensional chess. do i love it? of course i do. i built this life for myself. i plotted and planned and poured an excess of dollars into this dream. watching it grow and develop, seeing it take on a life of it's own, building a family of people who share in this venture is the greatest achievement of my lifetime (to date). i am not unaware of how rare it is for a company like ours to have lasted so long or so well. to not only be relevant, but on it's way to becoming a local institution. to see our names become a brand that stands for quality and service was the highest goal for which we could have reached. money is money. it comes, it goes. but reputation.. that is another matter entirely. reputation is everything, and i require that everyone in the building live into the reputation we have built for ourselves. it cannot be easy for some to be in my employ, but for those who stand with me, who are loyal to me, it is the beginning of a lifetime of endless possibilities.

one year has officially passed since i hired my first salon employee. how pleased i have become by this choice. thank you kenzie. i never know how it's going to go for sure. i forge ahead with the best of intentions and the highest hopes for the future, and then wait and see how it lands. we didn't do too shabbily with the store, so i like my chances for the future with the salon. and with any luck, i will have all the time in the world to make it so. and then we will see the evidence of many things not yet seen.