The Son Who Stayed

 

This past weekend we spent four days up at our mountain cabin. I swam in the river, we watched old movies while listening to rain hammering the tin roof, Jerry grilled burgers and he and our youngest son fished. We drove into town for the July 4th celebration and listened to live music, ate ice cream cones, window shopped, and watched the fireworks. 

What didn’t we do? Work. I didn’t even take my computer.

But when I got home and looked at my dashboards I saw my Etsy sales rose 200%, my eBay sales rose 275% and my website sales rose 743% (and this time the orders weren’t fake!). All while I was most definitely NOT spending my life online.

That’s the secret of the Simple Sales Ecosystem… it sells for you while you live your life. And I’m teaching it for free in the 4-day Sales While You Sleep Challenge. It’s pre-recorded, so you don’t need to attend live. Register here and start building your own sales system today. 

Just to be clear, the sales ecosystem is not entirely passive income. It does take some work to set up and maintain. But once you get it in place and get into your routine you will find it brings consistent sales and leads with no constant social media posting or obsessing over SEO. It’s quite literally the easiest business system I’ve used over the past 26 years.

So, last weekend was great… much better than the week before. But then we came home.

Last week we got word my uncle had an aortic aneurysm and he had surgery to correct it. Unfortunately during the procedure he lost a lot of blood and did not recover well. On Monday we got word he was going into hospice care and then on Tuesday he died in the night.

So the rest of this week has been filled with messages and calls back and forth with family in Ohio and planning our trip to the funeral and rescheduling business meetings and calls for me and Jerry and cross country practices for our son.

Besides my uncle’s funeral, my aunt and cousin on the other side of the family want to meet up to scatter my father’s ashes and those of the rest of his family, who have all passed on now. It’s emotional and the logistics in such a time are burdensome.

I am sad and tired and I feel like I’m coming down with something. I’ve been coughing and sneezing. We will leave for Ohio on Sunday and will return late Tuesday night. As usual, you will be able to make purchases from my shops but shipping will be delayed. Amandaline, my Redbubble boutique (which is on sale up to 40% off right now) has no delay since they handle fulfillment for me, and of course digital products like my ebooks are instant-download so there is no delay for those. You should expect belated response to messages.

My Uncle Rick was one of my mom’s baby brothers. He grew up to be a policeman. When I was a little girl my mom and I lived with my grandparents after my father died. Uncle Rick would stop by every day on his beat. 

He would come in an drink coffee and tell us all the gossip about who got arrested and who wrecked their car or drove their snowmobile out on the ice too early and fell into the lake. About the lady who was raking her yard in the nude: When the police asked her to get dressed, she went inside, put on a bra, and came out and continued her yardwork!

When you live in a small town humanity’s eccentricities are very much on display, and we enjoyed our personal window into it all. I will always think of Uncle Rick laughing and telling his stories over his coffee mug, with all of us laughing along.

Now that I am a mother and my kids are growing up and getting married and moving away I realize how lucky my grandparents were to have a son who stayed in town and stopped by every day. All the rest of their children moved away, including my family. We left for North Carolina when I was 10 and then we only saw them a couple times a year.

I wish our oldest son and his wife were closer. They are in the same state but about 3 hours away and their work schedules don’t let us see them very often. I would love it if he could stop by every day.

Our society glorifies upward mobility and building glamorous careers and searching in far-flung cities for opportunity. But there is something to be said for the slow and steady work, for becoming a pillar of your small hometown, for visiting your parents every day. Uncle Rick exemplified that. He built a quiet, steady and ultimately, a wonderful life. He will be missed.