Facebook brought my family together

This is hard to admit because I have such an extreme love hate with facebook. From a personal standpoint--I love it for business.
I love and hate that it's connected me with my past. I get dragged kicking and screaming into acknowledging it all but in the end. I deal. And it's okay, and even a tad exciting or at least fun to make fun of.
I'm sometimes a detached "live in the now" (where I am HAPPY) kinda person so I don't care to look back that often. And I also am annoyed by long threads of facebook arguing and it's outlet for sociopaths, but I digress....

When I was 8 my father died suddenly, but before he died I got more than a dose of what lied beneath in his family structure.
He moved us far away for various circumstances and were only a tightly knit 4, but we had some encounters and visits with the Bellanti's and he had a VERY heavy heart when it came to his mother and the fallout of her decisions. I must protect us all by not going into detail but if you can think of every painful dysfunctional aspect of human relationships, we got it covered. violent death. crime. abuse. mystery. family biz probs. abadonments, more death...check. There's a taste.

Death has been constant, untimely re-occuring theme. We are all far apart. Many of us live rurally. There are misunderstandings, grudges, spiritual differences, memory differentiations, all that crap. Everyone is confused or broken in some way by the history.

ENTER facebook.
We got all friended ( I was so nervous) and we decided to let it all go and start over from the NOW and figure it out.
My fathers sister and brother put it all together.
You may have seen my horrific bathing suit tags on facebook post Lake of the Ozarks Missouri gathering. Every morning I twitch worrying that there will be more.
It WAS inspiring and I feel like I belong to something bigger. I feel like we can all decide that we don;t have to drag the past around and that we can go from here instead. It is up to us. None of that crap was our faults.

My mother has a lovely family but they have always smiled and said everything is fine and perfect.
The Bellanti's put it ALL out there and I had a blast with them. I saw pictures I had never seen and all these beautiful children who share my blood.
There was lots of beer and smoking and cursing and crying and singing. These people can SING.
I didn't know I needed that but I did.

The lesson was damn you facebook! You made me brave.

Brand Management Rehab

Building a brand like Tito's with no money and no structure or boundries for 8 years was intense to say the least.
We always did more business than our employees could handle but we somehow survived...barely...and
I ended up with many benefits at the end. Any time Tito could take care of me, he went above and beyond.
This made my parents very happy. Of course I appreciated it.
When I blew up my life last fall I vowed to take it all down a notch or ten in the frantic responsibility dept.
I only want to be responsible for John and I as a team right now. I don't want to do payroll or managing or deal with overhead.
I'll never sleep in but I'd love to know that I can.
Sometimes people offer me their employees if I will take on their project and I say NO.
I don't want to build a big company. My ambition is based on the quality of my temperament now. Hell, I can't even get a website done because I STILL don't know how to explain what I do...
Turns out, John and I, by decompressing from my old state of being, need less. We revel in simplicity.
We aren't having kids and we like just being on the road together. We don't want to be tied down.

We are considering customizing a van and taking our new business idea on the road with a promotional tour next summer for 3 months and then move out a little south near San Marcos so Johnny can pick up the writing program there at SW TX State.
I hope I can keep some clients that can deal with me working from the road for the summer.
If not, I'll figure it out. The new business is based on passion, and not making a mint but I trust it.

hint: DOGS. (I've been dared to launch in November....it's possible)

The adult formula to happiness that people try to sell me on do not apply here.
I'm at capacity with clients now and when a contract is up with a client, I haven't been replacing them.
It's just making room for my new on line community venture.
That being said,
I HAVE been doing something really cool with professional trade relationships. Helping friends with parts of their business and then they teach me things about mine or connect me to more things I need to get further. No money is exchanged but we all get inspired and move further down the field.
I've paid my debts down and have a really low cost of living so that losing anything can't break me.
I want to do better for less people and not be stretched so thin that I get resentful. THAT is the goal.
Most of all, after helping other brands for so long, I AM READY to make my own. Here we go!