It is autumn in my valley, one of the great wonders of the Cascade Mountains.
It is when the golden larches burst forth in all their glory, as do the quaking aspens, only weeks before they shiver off their leafy coats.
Everything exists in shades of gold, emerald and rust, and whenever I am outdoors, I exist in a state of perpetual wonder.
In contrast, during the quickly darkening evenings, I have often found myself rather world-weary.
I'm often afraid to check the news to see only more tragedy, more greed, more fear.
And yet, there is a light in my soul that I do wish desperately to attend and to share with others.
And so, I'm back here not to feed your world-weariness, but instead, to challenge it.
To challenge you to seek out wonder, love, and beauty within the storms.
And so here I am again, to offer videos to you.
But this time, things will be different.
Since you saw me last, I have changed.
I'm a mother now.
I'm also older.
I'm also happier, though I often feel I don't deserve to be.
And I also recently fulfilled the lifelong dream of becoming the owner of a little bookstore.
I did it!
I did it!
Ah!
Well over a year ago, I started down the path of trying to purchase my local bookstore.
I learned a lot along the way, and it was not until October 1st that I actually officially became the owner.
Was it absolutely terrifying?
Yes.
Extremely exciting?
Also yes.
Have I nearly gotten an ulcer from the stress of it all?
Yes.
Am I happy I persisted in this endeavor?
So far, yes.
And I can say I'm fiercely proud of who I've become in the process.
As someone who could barely leave their home or find a moment of mental peace four years ago due to having such extreme anxiety.
I've come such a long way.
I've healed my nervous system if only by learning how to honor my limits and who I am.
Though of course, I continue to relearn lessons along the way.
Why else live?
If I told you I simply reopened my bookshop under new ownership on a fine autumn day, right before Hallow's Eve, with not much to do about anything.
That would be a lie.
Preparing this bookstore for reopening was a daunting task that required a lot of cleaning organizing ordering scheduling, managing opening accounts, stressing over finances and being slapped in the face with just how expensive it is to survive as a brick and mortar small business.
Ever a lover of stories, I think this chapter in the life of this bookstore has gone in a surprisingly fairytale sort of way, along with the trials and tribulations.
So let me tell you the tale of reopening Trails and Bookstore.
But we must first travel back in time to October 1st.
I started that morning by having a terrible trembling in my hands and nausea that wouldn't go away.
I was nervous.
But as a highly sensitive person.
We must learn to be brave and cope in order to be able to pursue certain dreams.
Firstly, I decided to close down for two weeks in order to clean the store and reorganize, despite the dismal financial implications.
The main reason for this was that my mother was visiting my sister in the south and I knew that to start any endeavor, especially with a toddler who loves his abuelita, I would have to have her by my side.
So, we decided to open again on the 14th when my mother would be back.
Or so I thought.
This tale has some unexpected twists and turns.
Being closed for two weeks gave me just enough time, I so naively thought, to do a mammoth amount of tasks.
Not limited to repairing bookshelves, painting tables, receiving a pile of new inventory, preparing for the holidays, calling up publishers, trying to get our website up and running, getting fiber optic internet and also generally learning how to manage everything.
Consequently, I spent every evening in fervent meditation to manage my anxiety.
As you can imagine, this was impossible to do in 13 days, and it did not take too long before I was absolutely and completely overwhelmed.
My perfectionism to blame.
While I have respected their privacy by not showing them on camera.
Some incredible friends and employees came together in order to do inventory of the entire store.
It took the first whole week.
I spent much of this time trying desperately to fill my knowledge gaps, while also being humbled realizing that one can only succeed with patience, practice and imperfection.
I had a lot of computer work to do, but I did take many respites from all of that in order to have some fun decorating.
There are high shelves around the entrance of the bookstore.
They had about an inch of dust on them and a lot of the books were actually related to war.
To me, a bookstore should be a safe space where the terrors of the world are kept at bay.
So I ended up placing a lot of them spine in and getting rid of quite a few.
Unfortunately, this left me with a lot of empty space with no books to fill it.
I wasn't sure what to do.
Initially I was going to leave the shelves bare, But then the next morning my bookish father arrived with the perfect solution.
He decided to loan out his prized collection of Reader's Digest until I got the chance to collect my own set of classics to put on display.
I have much gratitude he was willing to share books that meant so much to him.
I stopped here because those are all Sherlock Holmes, except for the bottom one, which I think is okay.
You know what this box is?
It was at this point that I was just beginning to hope that we would be able to reopen on the 14th.
However, that is when I got very, very sick.
I woke up feeling like I had a terrible stomach flu.
I was not fit to work and spent nearly the entire day in bed.
This made me pessimistic about having the bookstore ready in time.
However, when I finally dragged myself out of bed and drove into town, I was greeted with something unexpected.
My mother, who was still far away visiting my sister, had heard of my struggles and wanted to help.
So she had hired an amazing cleaning crew to deep clean the entire store, everything from wiping down the ceiling to shampooing the carpet.
When I walked in, bracing myself to see clutter and dust, instead was met with something beautiful.
My heart was all aflutter once again with possibilities of actually opening this store in time.
On the 13th, the day before opening, I discovered that not only had my mother's car broken down in Seattle and she was unable to be there for opening, but our credit card reader wasn't working.
At this point I did start to hyperventilate a bit, but good friends and family all assured me all would be well, even if we had to stay closed for a while longer.
But I was committed to opening even though things felt imperfect.
Financially speaking, we really did need to open our doors.
A lot of projects I wanted to execute hadn't come to fruition.
I still had tables to paint and genre signs to design, among a hundred other things.
But it was at this point between panic and hope that I found a sense of peace and understanding.
This bookstore is a journey, a process, a story of creating a place that feels comforting and magical, that will not take days nor months.
It will take years, and that is why I wanted to make some videos for you again, to share that dream and that tale, along with the highs as well as the lows.
I hope you will join me, as I do plan to post seasonal updates on this channel.
In short, I got the card reader working only hours before reopening and both my amazing employees husband, in-laws and father stepped in to help me.
It was truly a community coming together to open Trails End Bookstore.
I think one of the brightest and most unexpected parts of the story was that a viewer, as well as a new friend named Laura, stopped by to help before opening.
She spent several hours helping me move bookshelves and was so kind and encouraging.
It warmed my heart and made me so grateful to everyone who has shown support for this new chapter of our story.
So, while I cannot say things will stay the same and I will make videos like I once did, I wouldn't want to say that.
The experience of life changes us in so many ways and I don't want to hide that from you.
And I want to share with you the ways that my life has changed.
And so I hope you come along to follow the story of this little bookstore, and I hope you will accept me, as I am, not as someone that is static or will always stay the same or make videos the same, but as someone that's ever-evolving and wants to share that with you.
Sending all my love, and I will see you this winter for a holiday update.
Thus preventing the apprehension of any real incendiaries of how we observe.
So, we are about to open for our very first day of business.
It is currently 9.45am on October 14th.
It feels so autumnal right now.
All the trees have started to turn, there is gold and yellow everywhere, and it is raining just a little bit.
And so I think it's just the perfect bookish day to cozy up with a good book and hopefully, visit the bookstore.
I am very excited.
We desperately need to open.
There are just about a thousand things left to do.
I need to create new genre signs.
I need to paint.
I need to make updates, I need to fix bookshelves, I need to decorate more, but the most important thing really is to be back in business so that all those other things can be funded, and also to take time to do those things anyway,
I felt like there is no bookish video that is acceptable without at least one book recommendation, and so, in the spirit of the autumnal season and embracing mystery and maybe just a little bit of spookiness, I wanted to recommend to you
The Fox Wife is one of my favorite books I've read so far this autumn.
It does involve murder.
It does involve some dark things.
The main protagonist is hunting for someone that has done her wrong.
However, it also has a lot of heart.
It really encapsulates just a little bit of the richness of Chinese mythology and it just goes into the folklore behind the fox spirit and it has that essence of magical realism.
I love books where normal life and normal people encounter magical enchanted, rather supernatural things.
The genre of magical realism is very close to my heart, and this is also historical as well, and so I really enjoyed it.
I found it interesting and I learned so much about folklore in the process.
I do feel like I was transported to an old world China, and it was a fascinating, fascinating experience.
So the writing as well was very beautiful and the main protagonist is so strong while dealing with loss and grief and growing throughout the process.
And so I think that you may like this if you are okay with some darker themes in your books.
Either way, I wanted to at least recommend one book.
I also have a Patreon on Book Club, where we are currently reading the Undead Fox of Deadwood Forest, which is an absolutely perfect autumnal read that is very, very cozy and not stressful at all.
If that's what you're more in the mood for, then I would recommend that instead.
Well, it is time to open.
I've talked for long enough, so let's go do it and hopefully we have a really good day.
Yay, now you see what I want.
So I may look a little bit bedraggled right now, but it's because the day has just ended.
And it was, as I anticipated, a little bit busier than usual, because a lot of people were interested to just see the bookstore, since it had been closed for two weeks.
And I'm so grateful to everyone who stopped by.
We had a good day.
It will still be months and months until we are out of the red, but I have made peace with that.
That is a natural part of starting a new endeavor such as this.
And hopefully we will be able to continue surviving and soon enough, hopefully thriving.
I'm just... so excited and exhausted and scared and hopeful.
A lot of feelings all at the same time.
More than anything else, I feel great gratitude that I even have this opportunity in the first place to do this.
And a lot of that has become reality because of all your kindness.
While taking this hiatus of becoming a new mom, I've been able to make ends meet by posting on Patreon and having a lovely group over there that has helped me and encouraged me a lot through this bookstore buying process.
And it is also where we discuss changes, decorations, and renovations.
And it is a great little community that you are most welcome to join if you want to support this endeavor.
However, I did want to announce that we are accepting purchases for our bookstore right now.
We have a little storefront.
I will leave the links down below.
We are prepared to take orders.
If you wish to support a small independent business, please consider supporting us this autumn season to help us get back on our feet and thrive in the new year.
If you follow the website and you go to staff recommendations, you can see all the recommendations that I have made, as well as baby Caspian has made, Luke has made and our wonderful staff members have made, so you can look there for inspiration if you desire.
But we have just about everything available to you if you just type in the browser section what you're looking for and and we are so happy to fulfill your order here in the store package it up and I will be making a handwritten postcard to you as a huge thank you for supporting this new chapter.
Also, you can always get an audiobook membership through a link down below, where you can support the bookstore directly with your audiobook purchases.
Bookstores are a little bit different from a lot of retail-type stores, because books have a controlled price and the margins are very small, sometimes as low as 40-something percent.
And so it can be difficult to survive as a bookstore.
So we really do rely on people who really want to help support small businesses and not monopolies.
Thank you in advance.
For anyone who wants to do this and help out Trails End Bookstore start a new chapter.
And we are very happy to be able to offer you books and well wishes in return.
So I just wanted to offer a variety of different ways that you can support our little bookshop if you are feeling like it.
However, you just being here and sending well wishes is more than enough.
I understand that not everyone is in a position to be able to support a bookstore at this time.
No matter what, thank you so much for being here.
I will be posting bookstore updates here on YouTube and I will also be, of course, as always, keeping up my patreon account, so you will see more of me here.
I'm very excited to start this new chapter and i will see you soon to share the bookstore during the winter holiday season, because so much will be going on sending so much love goodbye.
