Happy New Year and thank you for following my blog all year long. I want to write more regularly in 2021 as 2020 left me speechless to say the least. The topics were controversial and polarizing centered around racism and politics with an extra layer of the horrors of the West Coast burning and Covid-19 threatening to kill us all. The morning that the San Francisco sky turned red will forever be at the top of the list of the most frightening days of my life. Then there were all of the things we missed; weddings, graduations, celebrations and so on.
However, 2020 was not without it’s blessings. It was a year that gave me deep gratitude for the basics like clean air, blue skies, and hugging my friends. Having both my daughters healthy and close to me, and for my own health and well being. I was thankful to be able to teach my leadership class at UC Berkeley via Zoom and run my business with the plethora of technology that make online businesses thrive. I am thankful for the friends that I have that have stayed close during the year and for my family far and wide who stayed in touch.
Unexpectedly I doubled my Ocean SF traffic which proves that people really do care about sustainable and ethically produced clothing. I also sold more than ever before and had many new customers many from the East Coast. I was able to make more inventory, providing jobs to the seamstresses who work for me in San Francisco. I was able to gift Ocean SF to people I love like my Auntie Pat who lives in Toronto and my friend Ellen Torvi founder of Gold Bar who I met when I was bottling liquor on Treasure Island. She was an amazing inspiration to me then, and I drank a good deal of her Gold Bar whiskey, so I was happy to have enough inventory to send her something of mine.
On New Year’s eve I boarded a plane for John Wayne airport in Santa Ana and spent four days in Newport Beach. As I walked out of the airport I remembered that I was there on New Year’s Eve two years before on my way to Rome, Italy for New Years. Same day, same place, but a different world altogether. This time, I was on a plane with fourteen people and L.A. is basically closed for business with the hospitals overflowing with Covid-19 patients.
This part of Southern California is stunningly beautiful and I was very thankful to be there and walk the beaches in the warm sunshine. I returned to the Bay Area to a rainy and fogging morning which was equally wonderful. I am grateful for the rain that we need so much in California and I am enjoying a cozy morning snug in my warm house with my dog by my side and a steaming cup of hot coffee. Yesterday, I was at the beach and there were small groups of families playing in the sand, some surfers, beautiful birds running in and out of the surf and a group of sea gulls standing together along the water for no apparent reason. The sky was a clear ice blue. After the black skies of 2020 clear blue skies are a precious sight.
Today I am working on my marketing plan for Ocean SF and getting my calendar in order. I am happy to have survived 2020 and taken with me the gifts it offered; an ability to overcome fear, an enduring sense of hope for the future, and love and gratitude for the smallest of things.
Happy, happy, happy new year. Love and blessings to all.
Sydney 