Things are normal at the Market, normal for the indoors scene. We weathered the break-in situation very well. I've never been so glad I fully packed up and hauled my stock and didn't have a single valuable thing to worry about, unless someone thinks pushpins and duct tape are valuable. That's all relative I guess. You never want to feel too safe or too complacent.
I did have to adjust my behavior to fit, though. I got a little paranoid that there was hatred being shown toward us, but as others pointed out, indications were that the paranoia was a lot more destructive. Our enemies are truly within.
When we go indoors our worst tendency is to point too many focused beams on our group and personal dynamics and lose the focus we are there to maintain. This fancy retailing we are doing is our work, the work we need to do to get through the winter without Markets. We need to support each other, not be selfish or competitive, and help each one of us shine our brightest for the next two weeks. It's essential that we be at our best.
We get scared when we see that the success of the Market might be leaving us behind. I watch Levana sell pair after pair of tie-dye underpants and I envy her...and sell another tote bag. I have my niche, as we all do, and its popularity wanes and peaks. Nobody can sell consistently well every Market day in every Market season. Just do your best and keep working to improve.
Presentation is my particular challenge, and I struggle constantly with balancing what I want to sell with what people want to buy. People-pleasing can be a tough character trait in retail. I had my shelves trimmed down to be quite manageable but one person wanted one of that old design I'm trying to phase out, so I brought those back. And someone else asked for that little item, so I brought ten of them. At least I learned that as fun as the Jell-O Art is, it distracts customers from the work I brought to sell.
I wore my Queen outfit for favorite color day, since my favorite color is Jell-O. Although I looked adorable it confused a customer or two. We have to remember that sometimes our culture doesn't include the customers, and they get frightened by us. The fashion days have been fairly well-integrated but some other aspects of our culture aren't meshing that well with the culture the customers are coming out of, to visit us.
One thing I do recognize is that bad-tempered complaining vendors don't succeed. People come attracted to your "juice" and the more of it you share, the more they want. They want to be part of your success, not part of, or even responsible for your failure. They want a happy interaction in which they get lots of value for their money. Even if they are just looking.
And your issues may not be anyone else's issues. Someone posted recently about their intolerance for children's behaviors; we've all worried when rambunctious young people enter our carefully controlled space. But remember that many people have children, take them places, and in fact feel invited to our Market. Some of us sell toys and clothing for them! Complaining about children in our space is as pointless as complaining about couples or about men, or about people who enjoy bad jokes.
Everyone is welcome at our public gathering. We have a most special place on the weekends, a place people meet their friends and families, by accident or design, and the warmth and joy of that gathering is very precious and has nothing to do with commerce. I find the children delightful, and actually enjoy distracting them so their parents can shop. I have a harder time with the bad jokes, but it is not about me.
Let me shout: IT IS NOT ABOUT ME! So, so much of what is going on in the world has very little to do with me and what I want and what I fear. I find it particularly important to work out my fears before I bring them to others.
It was destructive for me to be thinking paranoid thoughts about whomever disturbed our space. It wasn't going to improve the situation, so I checked myself and reframed. I hope it didn't spread too far.
Please think about what you are saying during the duller moments of the Holiday Market, when you are wishing for customers and watching your neighbors and the aisles. Do you have questions about the Board, or about the Kareng Fund Board? Why not ask one of the people who sits at the table during those meetings, rather than just spread your fears around? You might find easy reassurance in a short conversation. Feel like the HM committee made a wrong decision? Go to the evaluation meeting and join the committee to make the decisions with the group instead of second-guessing them.
Our organization is so transparent you'd be surprised how easy it is to find out the facts to support your view or see another. People are very willing to talk details or philosophy or process or vision, but that is what we do at meetings. We can't do it during the selling day, at least in a complete, fair manner. At Holiday Market, or on any given Saturday on the Park Blocks, we gather, but some of our most important work has to wait to be done during the week.
There is a long personal journey to be taken between "us" and "them." I've been working on this in recent years with my role at OCF, where I often heard myself use the clanging dissonant term of "them." Clearly it was often a hidden, frustrated desire to be "us" or at the least, to feel like "us."
I've been "us" at the Saturday Market since I served on the Board in the late seventies and early eighties, and in fact was just reminiscing about when "we" started the New Holiday Market in around 1987 or 1988. Clare Feighan was the manager, and she and assistant manager Margo Schaeffer called all over the place to find a venue for us to get us indoors in December. We first landed reluctantly in the old quonset building, but the first New Holiday Market was one weekend in December. One weekend, in which we all made the same amount of money we had made the previous year in six weeks on the Park Blocks.
This was a revelation! Things didn't always happen the way we expected. We took the plunge and landed in the big room where we are now, and you can believe there were many who were not happy about it. It was a huge stretch in our self-concept, but look how right we were.
There are always people, thank goodness, who have vision and wisdom and experience and are willing to participate, as a group, to guide us down our river (sometimes even upstream) to where we need to go. It is never easy. That is why we don't do much as individuals in the structure of our organization. We sit at a big round table, usually filling it with ten to fifteen people, and we make the decisions together. We sometimes take a very long time to do it. Sometimes we might have been working on a particular issue for years, and you might just hear about the last part, and feel it was rushed. Generally we do not like to rush.
So next time you hear yourself saying some small thing that comes from your fears or your disappointment or your personal list of grievances, think about the rest of us, about the forty-three years of hard work many people have stretched themselves and their lives to accomplish, and re-establish your respect. Think about those who are selling for the first time, or their first few years, and think about the impression you might give them. Think about those in the public who know little about us.
Leave them with the right impression, that of your best self. Be your favorite color, be in our rainbow. As Beth likes to say, you're in the basket. I love that. Stay in the basket. It's nice and cozy, and we can all fit. Just be extra kind, because some of us can get a little tender, especially in the last two weeks before Christmas.
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