When I was a little girl living in rural England, I got my fourtune told by a Romanian gypsy woman who came door to door selling 'lucky' heather. Mum and dad weren't home at the time (I was 11 and babysitting my little brother. It was safe(r) to do that back then - almost 30 years ago. Nowadays - not so much) and I didn't want to cause any bad luck for myself or my family, so I spent what I had left of my allowance and she told me my fortune. It was full of the usual bullshit that so-called psychics turn out - how many kids you're going to have, when and where you'll meet your future spouse, what you'll do for a career or job, and so on and so forth. I don't remember most of it, but two things really stuck in my mind: where I'd end up living and what I'd do career-wise.
She said that I'd go to America when I was relatively young and that I'd never come home to live in England again. She was right. I first went to the US when I was 20, and I've spent 16 of the last 18 years in the States.
She also said that I'd own a store. She didn't speculate what kind of store, just that I'd own a store. Until fairly recently, I'd never even considered owning or operating any kind of store - apart from the gypsy's prediction, store-ownership hadn't even crossed my mind. I'd always thought it to be too far-fetched to be anywhere close to reality; I have no store-ownership or business ownership experience whatsoever.
Recently, though.....the prospect of store ownership has started to look like a real possibility. Not an actual store, but a web-based store. A cyber-store, an online internet store. A web-based knitting store, to be more precise. I've named it, am in the process of trademarking the name, have bought the domain name and am building the website. I still have a laundry list of things to do to make it a legally operated legitimate business, but I've started the process...and with a lot of work and determination, I just might end up making that gypsy's prophecy come true. Of course, there's the question of whether a prophecy that's fulfilled by deliberate acts is ever truly fulfilled, but that's a whole other article (one that we will no doubt talk about sometime soon; the idea is in my head now and I won't be able to get rid of it unless I write about it). For now, I'm just happy and excited about taking something I love to do and am good at (knitting, in case you were wondering) and making it into a job. Someone once told me that the secret to hapiness and personal fulfillment is loving what you do for a living, and if that's actually true....well, I'm going to be one happy and fulfilled bee-atch.
I'm not prepared to say that this store is going to happen; I'm famous for getting gung-ho about an idea then burning out quickly and never following through. I don't want that to happen to this idea, so for now I'll just join the Gallagher brothers ('Oasis' reference for those not in the know) and say that the gypsy was 'definitely maybe' correct.
Definitely maybe.
Definitley. Correct.
Maybe. Correct.
We'll see.
(anyone know of a Romanian Gypsy with some lucky heather for sale?!)