The kids are back at school, which means I can finally get back to work.
Except, obviously, I never actually stopped.
One of the slightly strange things about running BlueCyborg as a one-man business is that there isn't really an "out of office" mode. Orders still come in. Parcels still need to go out. Events don't stop happening. Products still need making, painting and restocking.
School holidays don't make any of that disappear.
What they do change is when I can get it all done.
For what seems like forever, I've been working in increasingly odd little shifts. A bit first thing in the morning. A few hours when I can grab them during the day. Back into the workshop after the kids are in bed. Sometimes packing orders far later at night than any sensible person should be looking at a roll of parcel tape.
And that's deliberate.
I've got a seven-year-old who isn't going to be seven forever.
The business is important to me, and making sure your orders leave on time is important to me, but so is actually being around while my kids are growing up. They do it alarmingly quickly.
So during the holidays the routine gets bent, stretched and occasionally thrown completely out of the window.
That's manageable for a few weeks.
But I have realised over the years that routine is probably one of the most important parts of keeping BlueCyborg running.
Not because I'm particularly organised.
I'm really not.
It's because there are an absurd number of different jobs hiding inside what looks from the outside like "running a shop".
On any given week I might be doing:
-
Product development - Making and painting stock
- Product photography
- Advertising
- Social media content creation, which I bloody hate
- Product sourcing
- Website updates
- Packing and dispatching online orders
- Customer care
- Preparing stock for pop-up events
- Loading and unloading the van
- Driving halfway across the country
- Building the stand
- Trading at events
- Taking the stand back down again
- Accounting
- Stock management
- Dealing with the seemingly endless supply of paperwork, rules and red tape that comes with running a business
- Cleaning the workshop
I'm not particularly good at that last one.
You get the point.
There isn't a marketing department, warehouse team, buyer, product developer, accounts department, logistics manager or social media person sitting somewhere behind the scenes.
It's mostly just me changing hats every twenty minutes.
And without some kind of routine, the urgent jobs have a habit of eating the important ones.
Orders obviously need packing today.
That customer email needs answering today.
The stock for this weekend's event needs sorting today.
Meanwhile the new product idea I've been meaning to work on gets pushed back another week. The thing I wanted to photograph doesn't get photographed. The website update sits on the list. The half-painted dice tower continues staring accusingly at me from the other side of the workshop.
That's why getting back into a normal school-week routine genuinely makes such a difference.
I can start blocking out proper chunks of time again rather than constantly asking myself, "Right, what can I get finished in the next 47 minutes?"
Hopefully that means more new products making their way out of my head and onto the website, more things actually getting painted, a slightly more organised workshop and, against all odds, perhaps even some regular social media posts.
No promises on that last one.
The summer hasn't been quiet. BlueCyborg has kept moving, orders have kept going out and events have kept happening.
I've just been doing a lot of it at slightly ridiculous hours.
Now the school bags are packed again, the house is a little quieter during the day, and I can get back into the office and to something resembling a normal working week.
Which, when you're running a one-man tabletop shop, is still not particularly normal.
But I'll take it.