Entry #19 • February 24th, 2026

Siiiiiiiiighhhhh

The number of times I’ve said “I’m tired” this week feels almost unparalleled. Not energy-wise. Not the kind of tired a nap fixes. The specific kind that lives in my bones as a business owner.

Before I go any further, a quick reminder. This is a personal journal-entry-style email series that I’ve invited you into. I write these the way I write in my journal, just edited a bit for readability. The difference is that here, I type. In my actual journal, I write by hand. Typing keeps pace with my thoughts. Writing slows them down. It makes me process differently.

I’m saying that so no one reads this and feels alarmed.

This is a processing ground. That’s all.

I also know some of my staff read these. So let me say clearly: in the big picture, everything is fine. Your job is secure. The store is fine. It’s all okay. But there are heavy, unseen sides of small business ownership, and this week they’ve felt weighty. That’s what I’m sharing.

The entire week — really the last couple of weeks — has felt like one long, continuous sigh between deep gasps for air and held breath.

Gasp. Hold. Sighhhhhhhh.
Gasppppp. HOLD. Siiiiiiiiighhhhhhh.

Every single year, this is a hard season for me. And I know it. I know it’s coming. I know the rhythm. And yet it still hits.

Coming off the holiday season — which is fun and fast-paced and energetic and rewarding — into what feels like near death is jarring. The two seasons are opposites.

In January and February, nearly every year, I question the existence of Colorado Baby.

I wonder if it’s going to make it.

I wonder if it’s worth the constant fight.

I wonder if it brings enough value to this valley to keep pushing.

I wonder if it’s worth the stress load I carry.

Every. Single. Year.

I question why it’s so hard.

For nearly three months, we don’t make enough to cover regular operating expenses. We survive by dipping into the reserves from the holiday season. It makes it feel like we’re never building — only surviving — within a slim margin that constantly feels like life or death for the business. Every year I wonder if I’m missing something.

Am I doing something wrong?

Why is this so hard?

And when someone walks into the store and asks, “How’s it been?” I wrestle with how to answer.

Do I give the standard line — “It’s been good, could always be busier” — or do I tell the truth? That it’s hard. That I have an existential crisis every February.

I usually go with the former.

They didn’t ask for the full diatribe of my small-business-owning life.

The other day I was talking with a fellow small business owner, customer, and friend (hi, Sara!) and, without shame, whining about my current woes. She gets it. She’s living it too. Wondering if they’ll make it another year.

But in the same breath, I told her something that even as I said it, made me pause.

I think I’m a few screws loose.

Because I actually love the challenge of small business.

There was something oddly thrilling about standing there, talking through the stress of it all. You know how some people are literal adrenaline junkies? Maybe you are one. Maybe you’re married to one. They chase insane stunts just for the rush.

I could never. I hate the adrenaline I feel when I have to slam on my brakes in the car.

But the way they chase that rush?

I think I do that with business.

As much as it stresses me out — as much as I complain (to trusted friends) — I love the thrill of it. So maybe I am an adrenaline junkie. Just not the skydiving kind.

Jumping out of an airplane? No thank you.

Riding a motorcycle at 150 mph? Absolutely not.

But feeling stressed about my business while simultaneously dreaming up five more I want to start?

That sounds fun to me. It's addicting.

Make it make sense.

This Has Always Been My Baseline

I was chatting with a friend today and said the same words I opened with:

“I’m tired. I’m just really, really tired as a business owner right now.”

As we talked, I found myself sharing something I’ve known for years but don’t often say out loud. I’ve never worked for someone else as an adult. Outside of a high school job, I’ve always been self-employed. The minute I graduated, I launched into running a business with my now-husband. We started and operated a school in Mexico for a few years. Then we moved back to Colorado, and within six months I started what is now Colorado Baby.

None of that was new information to me.

But what struck me — what I realized in that conversation — was this:

I don’t actually know adult life without the stress of owning a small business and depending on it for my livelihood.

This has always been my baseline.

This threshold of stress.

Maybe not knowing another way is to my advantage. Maybe that has built a higher tolerance. Maybe it’s given me a larger capacity to carry it alongside everything else in my life.

But today? These past couple of weeks?

I’m tired.

And I told her that, too.

“I’ll be okay in a few days. I already know this rhythm. But for now, friend, I’m tired. I’m not asking you to fix it. I just need someone to hear it. I’m tired of the risk. I’m tired of the weight. I’m tired of the not-fun sides of it. I just want to do the fun stuff.”

But that’s not reality. I know that.

Still.

I’m tired.

I can’t afford a therapist or a business coach or anyone like that, but I can afford ChatGPT (twenty bucks a month, yeehaw) and I can surround myself with good people and dear friends.

And that matters.

Moments like this require a safety net of listening ears. Not fixing mouths. Listening ears. People who can process with me when I’m ready, but who can simply listen when that’s all I need.

I mentioned a couple of entries ago that this is always a very busy season in my personal life. It makes it hard to keep up with friendships and even basic connection with my husband. And I know that layers into this annual hard stretch in business.

Some of my closest friends — the ones I’m usually in steady rhythm with through texts, audio messages, and walk-talks — I’ve barely talked to in the last couple of months.

If you’re familiar with The Five Love Languages, my top two are quality time and words of affirmation. Those two things feel like oxygen to my soul. And the quality-time bucket is running on empty with most everyone in my life right now.

I feel that. It wears on me.

It’s a season. Our family’s current chaos will mellow in about a month. We’ll have open evenings again. Right now, four nights are basketball. Two are church. That doesn’t leave any margin.

I’m not a physical touch person — it’s low on my list — but I will absolutely go for a hug with the right person.

Side note: I’ve tried to analyze this about myself. I’m a hugger when I haven’t seen someone in a long time. Or casually with a friend. Even sometimes with a customer. It feels natural in those moments — almost like a punctuation mark at the end of an interaction. A physical way of saying, I see you. I’m glad you’re here.

And yet, afterward, I’ll sometimes spiral.

I’ll replay the moment in my head. Did they lean in first, or did I? Did they stiffen slightly? Was that half-second pause hesitation? Did I misread the tone? Should I have just smiled instead?

You know that mental rewind where everything feels worse each time you replay it? Where what was probably a perfectly normal interaction slowly morphs into something cringey in your imagination?

But with my close family or the friends I see all the time? We don’t really hug. And [for me] it doesn’t feel strange…unless I start to overthink it. Just like the above.

Is that weird? Is that just a me thing?

Physical touch ranks low for me, yet I default to hugs almost like a handshake. But inside my inner circle — the people I’m around constantly — it doesn’t show up the same way and I'm not upset about it, haha.

There’s probably some psychology there. Maybe I’ll ask ChatGPT.

Anyway, the reason I went down that rabbit trail.

Yesterday — not your yesterday, but mine as I’m writing this — was especially hard. All day I felt like I’d been kicked in the gut. I spun my wheels at work, accomplishing very little. I had a busy evening ahead with basketball and a loose but workable plan for how everything would fit.

Then I found out my husband had to be at a game earlier than I realized. It threw a wrench into my carefully crafted carpooling itinerary. I felt frustrated that I didn't have this information sooner.

In the middle of all of it, I knew I’d see a dear friend briefly between schedule shifts.

And all I could think was:

Man. I just need a hug.

Just a brief moment of sharing the weight through something as simple as a hug.

The Quiet Loneliness of Carrying Things

They say being a business owner is incredibly lonely. An isolating role. That you carry hidden burdens and risks most people have no idea about. And it’s isolating in a very specific way — you can’t carry those burdens to your staff. You can’t carry them to your customers. You bear them quietly.

Which is why befriending other business owners is so key. You need people who understand the weight without you having to over-explain it or polish it to make it less ugly.

You know what else they (who even is “they”?) say?

They say motherhood is lonely.

An incredibly isolating season. A complete identity shift you can’t deny. A time when you “need the village.” But don’t forget — to have a village, you have to be a villager. It requires showing up when you’re exhausted. It requires vulnerability. It requires saying, “I’m not okay,” in the middle of the night spirals or the midday “lock yourself in the bathroom just to breathe for ten seconds” moments.

Both roles — business owner and mother — carry this quiet, internal weight.

But maybe everything does.

Maybe everything in life is lonely in its own respects. Maybe that’s not a glitch in the system. Maybe it’s part of it.

Perhaps that space of loneliness is something God has allowed to develop in each of us — not as punishment, but as invitation. A space where we become aware of our need. A space that nudges us to draw nearer to Him.

Maybe if we stepped outside our own self-absorption in loneliness, we’d hear from our Maker. The One who created us. The One who intricately designed everything in this world. The One who sees the unseen burdens we carry.

They Were the Journey

And as I sit here yapping and whining, I can’t help but ask:

What is God trying to teach me?

What is He trying to show me?

Maybe, just maybe, if I could be still for a bit. If I could quiet the mental noise and just listen. Maybe I’d gain more from these seasons instead of just enduring them.

This is life. This is literally life.

When I got to be near my grandpa at the end of his life a few weeks back — “on his deathbed,” as we say — I couldn’t help but think about what that moment will feel like for me someday. When I’m the one lying there, looking back.

The part I’m living right now will be gone. Finished. I won’t get it back.

As he lay in that hospital bed during those last two weeks, all the years behind him were what accompanied him. The struggles. The wins. The hard times. The good times. The precious moments. The disappointing ones.

They weren’t distractions from the journey.

They were the journey.

And eventually, the journey ends.

So why resist it while I’m on it? Why resent it? Why keep telling myself it will be better when xyz happens?

The journey is happening right now.

There is no true arrival.

I don’t want to waste my life thinking, It’ll get better when…

When the store feels stable.

When the kids’ schedules slow down.

When the stress eases.

No.

I don’t want to tell myself that lie.

I want to live in this moment of the journey. To embrace it — even when it’s hard. To appreciate the hard because it means I’m still here. Still moving. Still being shaped. Still ‘journeying.’

Love the journey.

Don’t despise it.

Don’t wish it away.

Be content.

I know…I’m the pot calling the kettle black. I see the irony. I’m preaching contentment while confessing exhaustion.

I’m just trying to put words to real feelings. To the real, everyday thoughts I wrestle with.

This life…what a wild ride…or rather, journey, it is.

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Thanks for being here,

— Just Me[gan]

If you regularly enjoy this email series, would you please share it? Forward it. Whisper about it over coffee. I’d be grateful. ❤️

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