I don’t have to tell anybody what an emotionally straining year 2020 has been. We all know that. Yet there has been so much good with the bad.

what did 2020 do for me?

In February I went to the Design Influencer’s conference in San Francisco which was to be my last trip for the year.

Back in March my business and therefore income, stopped dead in it’s tracks when the news of a pandemic and lockdown hit. I was inspired to cook and clean for about a week and then I decided to just take the time to figure out what it is that I wanted for myself and my business. As a one person business it is sometimes hard to find that middle ground. My home is my office base and I still found myself working all the time.

I had just finished a remodel that was extremely taxing and exhausting. My client was a micromanager and I felt deflated after the project.

who was in this with me

I was feeling rather depressed and now also had our 17 year old son home since the beginning of Spring Break. My husband works for a big box store and never stopped working. The stress was very tough for him. People were rude. I made masks to sell. My husband’s manager called him into his office because he wore a mask to work! Customers at his store started getting angry about the fact that numbers were limited inside the store.

For the first time in years I made no contribution to our household for a while. Our son started the haphazardly-thrown-together online school which was really only him doing projects on his own. He soon lost interest in school when he discovered that it was a pass/fail grade. He really had good grades before the pandemic so then just did as little as possible to pass.

here’s the good that came with the bad

Suddenly my husband and I started working together as a team again. We realized that we were in this together and we could get along and things would be great or live in misery. Yes I know the divorce rate is up 34% since the pandemic started.

After about 2 months a local furniture store (essential business) offered me a job to do their store displays. It was exhausting work but not emotionally taxing. I did that for about 3 months and then burned out. At least I had an income.

Meanwhile I had been working for 8 months on pulling together a huge beach remodel. My regular contractor did not want to do the job because the homeowners changed their mind on the scope of the job after the initial bid. I scurried and with the help of a friend found a new contractor. The good news with this contractor was that she also found a sponsor and co-sponsored the tile for my Spring One Room Challenge for my back porch.

A repeat client (we’re on house no 3) called and said she is so tired of her husband baking and constantly getting flour all over the kitchen and immediately needs part of the garage converted to a bakery before she divorces him!!! That was a fun little project.

We evacuated during one of the hurricane scares and on the way back was asked to stop at a repeat client’s second country home as they all saw all the things in their 100 year old house that had to be replaced. This is still ongoing for me.

Our son has been having a hard time with doing online school but we have felt it best to keep him home since he is an asthmatic. It is very difficult for a teen to be isolated. He does see his friends on occasion but they all go to brick and mortar and have had to quarantine a few times.

Here is what i accomplished in 2020

I gained 15lbs. I am Covid15!

I kept our family together and healthy

I hired somebody to get me organized and work on my paperwork.

I had my website redone

I did the Spring One Room Challenge for my back porch and yard

I did the Fall One Room Challenge for our master bedroom

I have almost completed a whole house remodel at the beach

I did a garage/bakery conversion for a client

I learned new rendering software.

I grew my instagram account from 79 in January to 1000 plus with minimal effort.

I am currently refurnishing a country house for a repeat client

A former beach house client hired me to redo their primary residence.

Lots of little consulting jobs.

I have started blogging more.

I realized once again that adversity can have a positive effect

What I learned this year

It is ok for me to turn down projects and slow down. Money is not everything.

Family is everything.

There will always be people with a snotty better-than-thou attitude.

Live in the moment and savor the joys from being with family and friends.

There will always be people who support you. Some might even be only acquaintances.

Live in Gratitude for the joyful moments of life.

It is still grand to be me