Lockdown Downtime
I’m going to do it. I’m going to talk about the dreaded C word that has been dominating our lives for the past 8 weeks.
Coronavirus.
While this horrible virus has brought with it lots of fear, confusion & worry, it’s also given me time to take a step back, reflect & plan for the future. As I write this the UK is currently in week six of the national lockdown, and it is still anybody’s guess as to when life will regain any sense of normality. I’m sure I’m not the only one who found the lockdown pretty difficult to adjust to at first, but it is a small price to pay to keep our friends, family and the loved ones of everyone across the country safe.
One silver lining of so much downtime is also that many of us are getting the chance to work on things which we may not usually find the time to do. For me one of these has been to start my blog!
Between Zoom quizzes and episodes of Tiger King, I’ve been studiously working on written content to share with you over the coming weeks which cover a range of different subjects and topics relating to flowers and Weddings. Blogging has long been a part of my “business plan”, so I’m really excited to start sharing my content with you: the musings of a one-man band florist, trying to navigate her way through the trials and tribulations of a new business amidst the chaos of a pandemic (although fingers crossed the latter will be over soon).
Aside from my blog, I’ve also been working on jazzing up my website – although this is still very much a work in progress. After spending many a frustrating hour tweaking the dimensions of boxes and trying my hand at CSS, I have developed a new-found appreciation of web developers. All of the quarantine time in the world probably wouldn’t get me up to scratch with coding, so I’ll definitely be sticking with flowers for now. I have however had more success re-designing my proposal documents, so I’m very happy with how they are shaping up and am looking forward to sharing them with prospective clients and brides!
It hasn’t been all sunshine and rainbows however, so to retain some sense of reality it only seems right to share with you some of the rainier side of the past few weeks. As productive as I have tried to be during this period, I’ve certainly not been free of those anxious and worrisome days comforted by the contents of the snack drawer and multi-hour binges of Ru Paul’s Drag Race on the sofa…interspersed with breaks for the news (never watched so much in my life), Downing Street updates and more biscuits – does anyone else automatically make a beeline for calorific treats at the sign of a crisis, or is it just me?
With all the distressing events unfolding in the world, trying to manage a new business in these current circumstances is very tough as any owner will tell you. Trying to establish a steady cashflow and even make a profit in the first few years is hard enough, but with all this going on I do sometimes want to hide under a duvet and hibernate until next year. Like most other florists, and in fact any other businesses, the plans I had for growth this year are almost completely off the table. A super exciting event which I was going to be working on has been cancelled, beautiful weddings have been postponed and a fun workshop had to be called off until we can safely be in each other’s company again.
It’s been a challenge, and although I’ve had to re-work my ambitions for the year, it has also been a great learning curve. Plus, there has been a few silver linings. I was so sad to cancel the Mother’s Day workshop, but in return I had an absolute abundance of orders for bouquets from lovely customers. Weddings being postponed is upsetting for me, let alone the poor couples who have had to rearrange their big day. But in the same breath, this means more time to plan and that next year is already shaping up to be an incredibly exciting one. And although fresh flowers have been slightly amiss lately, I’ve continued having wonderful support from customers ordering dried bouquets.
So I’ve started to think - if as a new business as I can come out of this year in one piece (maybe a little frazzled but that’s okay), with all things considered I’ll be happy with the job I’ve done. That also goes out to all the other florists, wedding suppliers & small businesses weathering the storm. We just need to all hang in there and we’ll come out of this feeling fired up, empowered & inspired for what’s to come.
I realise that this inaugural blog has been a little bit of a waffle about all of the thoughts in my head at the moment. I have lots of other content to share with you all, some already written and some planned in the pipeline about floristry, wedding planning and the projects I’ve worked on, but I didn’t want to start sharing them until I’d got this post out. I didn’t really feel that I could start sharing content without first acknowledging that this is an incredibly tough time, and I’m just one of many, navigating through this messy situation.
Going forward I’m going to keep Covid chat to an absolute minimum in my online journal – I want it to be an escape for both you and I to get away from the scary daily news reports, and instead spend a few minutes getting lost in the thoughts and ramblings of a fellow flower lover.
