Remember how I said that I was going through a work crisis? Well, here’s the skinny: The shopping center where my sip and paint studio lives was sold. The new owners are, well, assholes. Our lease is up at the end of August, so in May, we asked the new landlords if we could resign for another year. After a few weeks, they came back to us and said that yes, we could, but they wanted to double our rent. DOUBLE our rent. We counter-offered, and then checked in regularly with the property management company, who kept saying they were still waiting on a reply from the owner. We explained that we needed an answer, even if it was “no,” so that we could start the closing process if necessary, or, if we were going to be able to stay open, order more business cards, renew our insurance, book more parties with customers, etc.

Then the owners of the restaurant next door came over and told us that the landlord had offered our space to them. So we told the property management company that, since we hadn’t heard anything and they had offered our space to the restaurant, that we would be closing when our lease was up.

We received a panicked email from a NEW property management company saying they were sorry that we’d received such poor communication through the prior property management company and asking if we could talk. So we talked and we gave them another week to give us an answer. The week came and went and still no answer. So we announced that we  were closing. A couple days later, the property management company contacted us and said they were still waiting on a response from the owner. Too late.

So, long story long (let’s be honest, that wasn’t long story short), we are closing our paint and sip’s brick and mortar location and going mobile. This is NOT what we had planned. We are in the process of opening a tattoo studio, and there’s just no way that we can open that and relocate the sip and paint studio and start over. The paint and sip studio was going to fund the tattoo studio for the first year and provide some cushion until the tattoo studio was profitable. Now, that’s not going to happen. We can make a little money doing offsite events, but it won’t be anything like what our brick and mortar store brought in. So I’m about to be very broke, very fast. Even worse, I had planned on getting trained to do medical tattooing/permanent makeup, with the goal of being able to help cancer patients who were dealing with eyebrows that didn’t grow back post-chemotherapy and breasts post-reconstruction that didn’t have areolas. But the training is expensive, and I’m not sure how I’m going to fund it now.

So everything is changing and I’m not entirely sure how to proceed – all because some Greedy McFuckfaces don’t care that they’re closing down a small business. So cross your fingers and elbows and toes and knees and eyes that we figure out a viable way forward that doesn’t involve me selling my blood or my soul. Le sigh.