It's been a while since the last post. I'll put it down to the weather, but really it's a number of things. I've been busy, there haven't been any geological stories that have particularly prodded me to write about, and I'm struggling for motivation a little. Doing the Facebook page most days is good for keeping me up to date on relevant stories, but it's added to the list of things I should be doing and sometimes I begin to resent that list.
I'm awful at the mailing list, for example. I know that's supposed to be good business practice; building a mailing list and keeping your customers informed. But I've always felt these sort of things can be intrusive, and almost never sign up to such lists myself. I forget that (in most cases) people are actively subscribing and may actually want to learn of new stock. I think I've only sent out about 5 mails in four or five years. The last one was the other week and the first reply was nearly instantaneous - an email saying simply 'Unsubscribe. Cheers!'. Kind of demoralising. Clearly an email a year is just too much for some people. Wonder why they wrote their name in the book... That said, I did get a couple of sales from it, as well as a trade offer. At the moment, I'm getting an email every day from an online florists, despite never actively adding my name. Now it's easy enough to ignore these things and send them to the spam folder, but that level of frequency is annoying. I've tried to unsubscribe twice. No luck so far.
So there's that. What else? Hmm. Well, I had my first Tucson-related nightmare last week, which means it's coming closer. This was one I've had before - arriving at the room of my main Green River fish dealer to find it empty; everything sold. There are other dealers I buy fish from, but my reliance on a few particular dealers is pretty heavy, and the thought of not being able to buy the quality and quantity of fish I need does actually scare me a bit. Most things I'd be able to source similar quality and numbers some way or another, but there are a few lines that I need to get to before they've been picked over too much. It's a great concern in the preceding month or so: hence nightmares.
Another significant thing in the Mr Wood's world lately has been a staffing issue. Riley, who has been here for three years or so now, will be leaving for a job in Turkey in February and I've had to find a replacement. I've been incredibly lucky in recruitment so far and I think I've found someone to continue the run.
So. Bit of a scattergun post this time. Back to geological things next time, most likely.
