Clean Slate

This year, more than any other, the phrase is literally true.  I started the year by repainting our chalkboard wall (circa 2015) to allow one of the Butter Staff, Julia, to put her chalking skills to use.   The result is a fresh, new cafe beverage menu that speaks a lot to our continued development as a cafe.  

As with any removal of the past, I felt a bit of sadness at wiping away previous work and many years of referencing something familiar on the board.  Sure, there's much that didn't actually change other than placement, and yes, there had been a few adjustments to the board over the years (primarily in pricing), but I needed to give myself a little room for letting go during the process.  

It also became an "oh my, now what" moment to see the blank wall waiting for new artwork to appear.  So much possibility, hope and future attached to what was going to be placed there.  I began to wonder about what six or seven years out might look like for the cafe and especially for me.  As I prepare for my 60th birthday next month, these next few years are in many ways a "getting to the end of the working road" so I look at any projects like these as sort of a gift to future operators of Butter Bakery Cafe. 

Because the business purchase became official on a New Year's Eve back in 2005, that January first of 2006 and all the January firsts following have also felt like a fresh start - a clean slate - a sort of a birthday.   

While we mostly all tend to recognize January first as a start of The New Year, there are lots of other calendars in motion around us including the school year, the legislative session, fiscal years of many sorts, and planting calendars based more on climate than anything else.  Add to that Lunar Years and resulting cultural counting of years as well as religious years that shape themselves cyclically around not-so-tied-to-the calendar events. All of these find ways to celebrate or ritualize new beginnings.

During these past two years of the pandemic, it has made some sense to actually close down the shop for an extended time around the start of our new year - to reset, refresh, and especially this year to avoid omicron's peaking impacts.  Whether this continues into the future or not I can't say, but it has been a relief for me to step away from the day-to-day worries during these deep in the winter days.  This year it also gave us the opportunity to do our refreshing of our cafe space. 

Extended closings are always a difficult decision to make, knowing that if we're closed there's no revenue.  Perhaps the learning of these past couple years is that sometimes letting go of that revenue is actually a benefit in the long run.  Chasing after every hour and trying to keep the doors open at any cost isn't always the formula for sustainability.   In some ways it has been a kind of a letting go of past fears around revenue losses.

And so, we stay a bit more limited in our service hours this winter. We try to manage our inventory a little more carefully.  We raise prices a bit here and there. We do what we can with what we have.  

And so, with a clean slate in front of me, I start filling it in with the life that is yet to be, knowing that yes there will be some erasing and redrawing along the way.  I look forward to hearing your stories of fresh starts as we walk this fresh new Green Path together.