It's ALIVE, It's DEAD, it's a stranger, killing a kindle.

I sit in the beast of my creation. I do this 5 to 6 days a week and do it mostly alone. It's a beast on the inside and a princess of light on the outside. It's metaphorical and it is true. I spend all my time physically and mentally here. I plan for it, nurture it, avoid it and hate it all the same. It's my bookstore and I don't know what to do about it.

It was a life long dream to have a bookstore to call my own. From the time I was really small I was always surrounded by books, either at home, the library or the local litte bookshop in my hometown. Book equals freedom to me. These were the place I was always free to explore and move around without being held back. I could open any book I could reach on the shelf. I could read any book that I wanted. I began reading at the age of 3 I am told. I would pick words out of Reader's Digest magazines, moved by the charactures and cartoons on the short story pages. As long as I remember I've always been working on one book or two or three. Reading is my life and books are my passsion. They opened me up to the reality of writing and reciting poetry, and that is what I do. That is what I am.

So now we are coming up on 2 years of being business owners. We've survived floods, community apathy, bad deals, loan rejections, broken pipes, debt, rotton landlords, and the most miserable thing of all.. not being known. Still to this day we are stunned by how many people in our community don't know that we actually exsist. I know this is partially my fault, since I don't have the extra money to advertise on a large scale, but slowly and surely we seem to be gathering momentum. I just don't know how much longer I can stick with the 'slowly and surely'. I need some business now!

And our friends, well they have been our rock. But how many books can they buy? How many events can they come to only to see that no one else is there? Depressed. Yes. Anxious. Yes. Is this how I have gotten to this state? Probably. I don't think it is the only reason, I've been unballance for a long time, but it is a big reason nonetheless.

Why is it important to keep going? The community will miss us when we are gone. I will miss us when we are gone. If we give up how will that feel to me for the rest of my life thinking I was a quitter? Can I in good conscience leave and let a Christian bookstore or worse a big box bookstore come in and change the personality of my neighborhood again? Who are we benefitting now? What have we done that has been really good here? Why can't I think of these things when I am sitting here for hours all alone and my till is empty. I haven't paid myself in 2 years. Things are getting bad, if not already there.

Things are dire. Things must change and change quick otherwise I won't be able to sit here and try to decide what to do. The decision will be made for me.

We are working class people in an upper class surrounding. They can smell us from a mile away.
Of course, I am a bit paranoid about that kind of thing. Don't you think that what is going on now in our country is not so much of racism as it is a class war? Don't get me started on that! Just look at the attacks that are being made against the working class as we speak. Well sometimes I wonder just how much of this is going on *now* *here*.

I spend most nights thinking about these things. No wonder I need the wine.

So the question is, hold on or let go?