Staying focused on the negative.

I know, I know. That sounds strange. For readers of this blog, it may not seem like a problem for me.

But you'd be wrong. I've never been under-confident or timid in my business. I've never lacked for ideas or energy. No, I tend to get brainstorms and pursue them. I tend to believe that can think or willpower myself out of any disaster.

So I'm trying to hold back and say to myself, "Why go there at all?" It's as if I'm in the batters box and I see a flaw in the pitcher's motion, and I say to myself, "I've got a good chance of knocking the ball out of the ballpark!" But the game situation calls for a bunt to advance the runners.....

I'm not above looking around myself and seeing negatives in the local economy and still thinking, "Yeah, but I can do better than that." Then arrogantly ignoring my own advice and pursuing some plan or another that will cost every available resource. And the most likely result? Higher sales and an improved store -- and a zero bank balance.

So I look at the way my brother in law Ernie loses his job at the age of 60, and tell myself -- hold your horses. The future is now. You need to prepare.

I suppose I just believed that things got more predictable and secure as one got older. Instead, I'm seeing the opposite. Friends and family move on, or run into difficulties. The market gets tighter and tighter and it seems like you've got to work harder just to stay in the same place.

I had a guy in his mid to late thirties come in and say, "I used to come in here when I was a little kid and buy baseball cards!" His mother was with him, and started asking my how I had planned this little venture, and I found myself blurting, "I never thought it would be a freaking career!"

Which they thought was pretty humorous.

I still feel like the outsider, the underdog; and yet, here I am -- an 'institution' in this town (or maybe just in my own mind), nearly the last man standing downtown. And it still seems like a day to day proposition to me.

So I'm trying to be 'adult' about this, and take a step back, and try to wrangle some money out of the store.

Temptation is everywhere. More new books, more games, more cards, possibly Warhammer and so on and so on.

So, staying focused on the negative keeps me in check.

If you take out all the extraneous information, it seems pretty clear to me that Bend is dramatically overbuilt; that way too many of my customers were making their living from that growth; and that tourism is at least iffy with gas prices.

Stay focused on that, bucko.

But I'm having a really good month in sales. I had a really good month in sales in February. If I take the huge drop in January out of the equation, I'm really not doing so bad.

But that isn't the point. The point isn't the local economy, or the sales level, or anything like that. The point is to make this store profitable in a cash sense. It is a relatively short period of time I'm trying to do this -- I hope to be able to look back on this time and say, "There is where you finally got ahead."

Part of it is, taking the credit cards down to zero just isn't all that satisfying. (Linda is amazed by this, but I just don't get a frisson out of it.) Not going into debt in the spring is not exactly the same thing as actually making money. (Though, by the end of summer, it will mean more savings.) It's such a slow process, with such little emotional payoff -- that I can only do it by staying focused on the negative.

So much more fun to buy a bunch of 'good' product, and see it sell, and watch the happy customers and humming business.

So, every bit of bad news is savored. I add it to my little motivational talks to myself every morning. "See! Look at That! Be careful, don't be a bozo!"

I only have one more month of this, and then I had planned to loosen the purse strings for summer, as long as I stuck strictly to a budget (which Paul-doh immediately doubted I could do). But the latest news has got me thinking again, and I've decided to raise my spending by 50%, instead of doubling it like I planned.

And just keep reminding myself to be careful.