Where the f*** have I been? That’s an excellent question. I don’t even know if
I actually know myself to be honest. Or how to even answer this question.

If you are here reading this, you saw the title of this post and thought “actually yeah, where have you been? I didn’t even know Almost Zero waste was still a thing”. Or…you really haven’t noticed I have been absent and you are just looking for something to read. Either is totally fine with me.

So, if you are wondering where I have been, you will have noticed I’ve been completely MIA. Probably around 3-4 months to be exact. And while that is normal time span between my blog posts (horrible, I know) and while I am not the ~most~ present on social media, 4 months from the business and social media is a little too long for me.

So where have I been. To put it bluntly…figuring my shit out. 4 months ago, the entirety of how I thought my life was going to turn out, completely changed. My life did a complete 180.

I have never wanted to bring anything too personal into the business. Because honestly, personal shit is going to happen and that’s just life and being a business owner, you have to preserver. But working a full time job, working a second part time job AND being a one woman small business owner, it honestly took me down. And I could not get back up.

Now if you know me, a change in my plan? That is a no for me. Once I envision something going a certain way, I am completely thrown when it doesn’t turn out like that. It sounds like I am a brat, I know. Maybe I can be a times. Whatever.

So when things completely changed, I had a VERY hard time adjusting and there was a lot going on behind the scenes, all at once. Unfortunately, this meant some things in my life were falling through the cracks. One of those thing being this business. I didn’t find joy in it. Quite frankly, I didn’t find joy in a lot of things. And every time I tried to pick myself up and put in effort and time into making my products, you could tell in everything I produced that my mental and physical well being was not 100% like it use to be. Every product, every ounce of me that I would put into this business, the end result was just complete trash. Which only further produced even more terrible work and produced even less joy. Which in turn, made me completely step away from the business all together. I even contemplated closing Almost Zero Waste for good.

But here is what I realized: I was trying to pick back up where I left off. I was trying to run a business the exact same way I was before my life had completely changed. I was trying to scrape together anything I could of my old life that gave me an inkling of my old routine, just trying to find some normalcy. But as it turns out, you can’t always do that.

So here is what I did instead. I started a new routine. I started running things different. I found the joy again. I found the motivation. I found what works for me NOW, not what worked for me before. And honestly, I am still kind of figuring it out as I go.

So all of this to say, where was I? Figuring it out. And as a reminder: figuring it out is OKAY. So bare with me in the upcoming months. Almost Zero Waste WILL be continuing. Almost Zero Waste may stay slightly the same. Almost Zero Waste may slightly change. We shall see!

Stay tuned!