Be prepared to be unprepared.

Sometimes I can forget to be grateful and appreciative that I have a fully functioning business.

There were so many years where I kept the whole enterprise alive by sheer willpower, or so it felt. I mean, by all rights I should have crumbled, but I refused to and no one took the trouble to come lock my doors.

So when I enter in a new invoice of product into my computer and I see the varied and interesting array of material, I'm impressed. I'm satisfied that I can leave the store for a day or two and it will continue to generate money. I'm proud of what I've accomplished.

I was watching a thing on C-span the other day where the author was talking about how he describes Google as an adolescent, but actually it's 12 years old which is a long time in 'tech' years.

"General Motors has been around for 75 years, which is an impressive run, and it almost went out of business last year..."

And then I compare it to Pegasus Books, which has existed for 31 years, and I'm kind of boggled.

I'm also thankful that I'm earning a "living wage" and that I started earning a living wage about the time I started this "minimum wage job" blog; (It seems silly to change the title now, especially since 80% of my career it was true.) And I'm somewhat puzzled that this has happened while the economic world around me seems to be at an all time worst -- the Great Recession has kept me from earning as much as I could, but it's still better than it was.

I think, as I mentioned above, it's because I have all the pieces in place, a fully functioning store.

It doesn't seem like that should be unusual, but I know it is -- especially when I think back on all the stores that were downtown when I started and how very few of them are left; or how few of the ones that followed are left. It sometimes seems to me that NO stores last very long.

I have constantly morphed the store over the years -- it turns out to be one of my strengths. I'm constantly developing new product lines that may or may not ever pan out; and I'm constantly keeping old product lines on life-support in hopes they'll have a resurgence.

New books are becoming more important to my store at a time when the challenges in the industry seem to be at an all time high.

But, I've always thought -- it's easier to enter an industry at the low point, or the most challenging point -- with one's eyes open to all the pitfalls. I can't tell you the number of times I've gotten into a product line when no one else was -- spent lots of time developing it, only to have the bottom fall out because the mass market suddenly takes over.

For instance, I'm holding my own on boardgames, but it's becoming obvious that the customers no longer consider my store an oasis of material they can't find anywhere else -- they are now "pricing" the games (I sell at suggested retail) and walking away instead of being happy that I carry the material at all. At least this time, I've been aware of that danger since the beginning and have fully taken it into account.

It turns out, though, that by carrying six or seven different kinds of material: new and used books, games (rpg's; card and board), toys, comics and graphic novels; cards (sports and entertainment) and ancillary material -- I can constantly adjust the mix.

Anyway, I think I'm prepared to be prepared for anything that might or might not happen. Or maybe I should say, I'm prepared to be Unprepared for what might or might not happen.