Trying a different tactic with Don. in The Big, Blue House, year one.

He’s wanted a small business since I met him. We’ve got a heat press, a Silhouette, boxes of tee shirts and vinyl, boxes of inventory, (incense, burners, Kreepsville purses and shirts, pagan deity statues, ect, ect.), and it’s just sitting in the office collecting dust. Every month I do the tax paperwork, (well, it’s online now, but same difference), for his sole proprietorship, and the spaces are always zeros because he makes no attempt to sell anything.

Now Don is not lazy, to be clear. My mother always called him that, but few people ever got a compliment from her. That woman was positively vitriolic. He’s slow, but when there’s a genuine responsibility he does what he’s supposed to. He was at my college graduation with a camcorder, while my parents both stayed home and watched TV. He fixed an old table that was in the garage earlier today. Work, per se, doesn’t bother him.

He’s neurologically incapable of admitting any shortcomings or mistakes on his part. He won’t say it, but based on all of the questions he’s asked me over the years, I think he just has no faith in his own ability to navigate Ebay, or Etsy, or Facebook, or Instagram.

So! The reason I don’t take the initiative as I’m sure he wishes I would, is because he’s just so freaking mean to me so much of the time.

So I’ve started talking about that. Made it front and center. I told him that after Yule, I’ll be focusing on setting up my own Ebay and Etsy stores. Selling my art, making some shirts with my art on them, making poppets, (“voodoo dolls”, but I know better than to disrespect Voodoun, so I’m not calling them that), spell kits, talisman balls/bags, etc.

I told him that I don’t want us to share an Ebay store for the simple reason that we hate each other too much of the time. It will sink the first time we’re too upset with each other to ship something for the other person, or print something, or whatever. When you work together, which is what a business would require, you have to get along at least well enough to cooperate every day. Customers have to get their orders, in a timely manner.

The only way the business could work is if we each do our own thing. So if I’m too upset with him to help him, at least I’ll still be maintaining my own stuff. And the same, I presume, would go for him. (If he decides in his rage not to ship something or not to answer a question, it will only tank his store. Not mine.)

I told him that if we can get along, we can do all kinds of things. Like getting a loan and paying the lease on a building south of Cleveland, eventually. If we can’t, then, well, we can’t.

He was very quiet. I think he was actually thinking. He needs me to help him operate any online business.

This should get interesting when I start selling stuff. I don’t think he’s honestly capable of change. But when his need to bully me is competing with his long held desire to sell stuff, he’ll be hurting himself to hurt me.

I’m guessing he’ll try to be nicer, eventually the need to bully me will be too much and he’ll say something cruel, (as always), and something that needs to be done on his Etsy or Facebook won’t get done, because I’ll be too hurt or angry to do it. Then he’ll fall into a serious depression when he realizes he’s shot himself in the metaphorical foot.

We shall see.