As we reach our eighteenth year in business, my mind automatically goes back in time to when the number eighteen was a big deal. The number eighteen was a coming of age, a rite of passage, a time where thoughts of crafting your future was now. You were legit! Like any other business owner one looks to recognize a new year with scheduled events, activities, specials for patrons, and last but not least some small token of memorabilia for the business owner.
We search our contacts for new products and search for new contacts, hoping for the greatest. We explore, re-examine and ask “what if” just to see if something new sparks within. We drown ourselves in information from new books to old, stacks of magazines, online sites, and catalogs, looking for that one thing to complete the project or to jump start a new one. This is what we do. We look for the swatch with the texture and tone, the fiber with loft yet sleek, and the color that intensifies from one direction and becomes subdued from the other. While this is how we earn our living, doing or making decisions for others we have no problem; do for ourselves, personally I become paralyzed! Why?
My answer, I have too much information or TMI!
Area rugs are my business specialty, my pain and my love. I have more than a ton of information. I have chosen this year to be my coming of age year in the rug business and will commemorate it by designing my own area rug. I’ll have to find the right type of wool that creates the perfect tone of color so that when viewed from one end of the rug the light is absorbed to create a richness unlike any dark chocolate ever tasted. The color palette, while highly personal, will be dessert for the eyes and the hand will be that of a fine piece of clothing only found in European boutiques. This is My Dream Rug. I will wade through the mounds of TMI and somehow come up with MDR!
This is no different than an artist painstakingly selecting the perfect value of ochre, the chef fretting over the many different olive oils for the salmon or the barista’s time preference for roasting beans. I love it whether perfect or not, and will sort through the TMI.
I invite you to join me in my design journey of MDR. The next exercise will be a gathering process, where anything will be considered, but few will make the cut (there’s that TMI thing again).
Let’s stay in touch,
Miriam