The title of this post is from one of my favorite movies,”The Royal Tenenbaums”. Something to it’s affect was carved on Royal’s grave stone at the end of the movie. I find it prescient at the moment. Not the grave stone part, but the action of it’s prose.
One of my “big” ideas when I started this one sided conversation with myself was not just to create enough material to thoroughly bore the hell out of it’s readers, but more importantly to compile an accurate account of what goes through the mind of a small business entrepeneur during both good and bad times. Not from the side of “hey look at me, look how I did it” but more importantly to illuminate how god damn difficult things can be and to share total gratification from the process with all of the other type A unemployable types out there. Yes the voyage is more important than the destination, unless you should find yourself on the deck of a sinking battleship….in a storm.
Running two small shipyards in Southern California during a recession has proven to be the most challenging experience in my life….so far. Customers have disperesed to points unknown and bankers have become let us just say, timid.
It is so damned slow right now I actually called the CI yard with my cell phone today to make sure the phones were capable of receiving an actual phone call. Sadly, the phones proved to function just fine. My coworkers have been asked to only work the hours required to complete their tasks. God bless them as they have remained here for us and our customers. Unfortunately, their hours have shrunk by over 35% this year over last and we cannot say the same for their personal financial needs.
Yes times are tough and appear to be getting tougher. There is no vanity in holding back our truths. I can clearly see that my competetors are experiencing the same dismal journey. The only difference I can guess, is that they are much larger and have much deeper pockets.
So here I sit and write in front of an enormous chasm, both deep and wide. I will throw these notes into the well not knowing who may read them or why. All I ask is that if you do happen upon my words, that you understand they are written merely to provide a view in time from the perspective of a hard working soul, attempting to keep a sinking battleship off a lee shore during a storm.
Fair Winds
