No More Wearing White

Post-Labor Day, kiddos and kidlets. Back to school, back to work, back to reality, back to .... business as usual. (As for the white after Labor Day debate, I humbly abstain. My winter wardrobe is FULL of cream and ivory and .... well, whether those shades constitute white is another topic for another day, potentially a topic involving Pantone chips and a trip to Neiman Marcus for "market research.")

Anyhow. We hope our Dear Readers had as lovely of weekends as we did! My radiant business partner enjoyed the long weekend at an exclusive screening of film classics, dining al fresco at a birthday extravaganza, and hiking in Afton State Park with the kids. Yours Truly had her inaugural Minnesota boating and cabin experience (I know .... took me awhile), chowed down on lobster and foie gras (it's a hard-knock life, eh?), and went for long walks with Pushkin. It was a wonderfully relaxing weekend, but not entirely without work .... both Erin and I carved out time to work on the biz end of things, in preparation for a busy week.

This touches upon one of the greatest joys (and occasionally the greatest challenge) of owning one's own business. Bad news first: if something needs to get done .... you need to do it. Not your boss, not your temp, not your intern, not your colleague down the hall: y-o-u. The buck stops here, so to say. It doesn't matter if it's 11 o'clock on a Saturday night or 5 a.m. on Tuesday — it's your reputation on the line, and you have to find a way to make it happen. (I should note, though, that if you plan your work schedule intelligently, you'll rarely be in such crunch-time situations. But we all know, sometimes there are last minute changes, and these things happen.)

But the trade-off for a bit of added stress is .... glorious. How wonderful — how emancipating — to determine your own calendar, your own working rhythm?! You pick your clients, you choose your projects. If we're not in meetings, we can wear pretty much whatever we want — which, for me, vacillates between high fashion and homelessness, depending largely on how much coffee I managed to ingest in the hour between eight and nine. Our workdays are filled with laughter, errand-running bike rides, and trips to the coffeeshop in addition to plenty of business. We find that this balance keeps us refreshed, energized, and on our toes: particularly in the creative industry, you need to be able to approach your work with a grin and a gleam in your eye, or you'll never find inspiration in anything. It comes back to the simple but oh-so-true mantra: Do what you love; love what you do. At Crazy Savvy, there's never any doubt about it!