The Wheel Keeps On Turning

2015 by all standards could well have been considered an absolute suck-fest. I have been ill for a couple of years, not really able to find relief. I was finally blessed this year to find a doctor who believed in my symptoms, and was able to help pinpoint the issues to a medical device I had implanted several years ago. I found some measure of relief in May after undergoing a full hysterectomy. Most of my issues have subsided, although I now find myself being initiated into the sisterhood of fibromyalgia sufferers. I can take each day at a time, and be thankful that this job and Red Dragon Apothocary allow me the flexibility to work from home.

I spent my first FULL semester at the local college, and realized quickly that my aggressive blogging schedule and school were not getting along. Although, to be fair, no sane person should schedule Intermediate Algebra at 8am anyways. My husband, wise goober that he is had warned me that I might be biting off more then I could chew. Naturally I will be the LAST person in the world to tell him that he might have been right.

I took some time these last couple of days before the new semester starts to really evaluate what I learned in 2015, and what you can expect from Tarot By Tiamat in 2016. Ready? Here goes:

1. I SUCK at answering emails in a timely manner. No one likes to admit it, especially when their business is conducted primarily through email. At first I made excuses to myself "I was busy with school", "my cellphone isn't great for answering emails", etc... The truth of the matter is that I simply have too many email addresses. I operate several different websites in addition to this one and each has their own email. Instead of checking one mailbox, I was having to check six. And before you know it, at least one mailbox was getting missed, only to log in and find 150 emails staring me in the face. So here is my commitment to you in 2016:

2. Videos are not my forte.  I really wanted 2015 to be the year that I took YouTube by storm. Sadly, some people are not meant to operate video equipment. And by some people I mean ME. I consider myself fairly technically evolved - so much that family members tend to use me as tech support. But for whatever reason put me near a video camera and disaster happens. Videos don't load, camera craps out, you name it. Then when things DID work, I struggled with sounding like a total goober. I have never liked my picture taken, and it turns out I hate seeing myself on video even more. So rather then force something that we all end up hating this is my commitment to you:

3. K.I.S.S  Some of you may have heard this before. It stands for Keep It Simple Stupid. I am guilty of over-complicating things that don't need to be so complicated. I set up a Tarot 101 class on this fantastic course web software and it looked AWESOME. Problem was, it turned out to be difficult to find, temperamental to work with, and all around a pain in the ass. So I moved the entire course here to the website. It took FOREVER, but I am really happy with how it turned out. It is easier to find, navigate and interact with. Best yet, you never have to leave our website! Another issue that we encountered this year was with the website itself. We focused so hard on the content and offering something for everyone that we forgot the most basic part - the website. It seems it was clunky and ugly on mobile devices - which surprisingly account for about 80% of our visitors! YIKES - how many people came to us and immediately left simply because the site wasn't user friendly? So we found a nice, clean and RESPONSIVE theme that displays really well on both desktops and mobile devices. Finally we had an extensive web store full of tarot decks. It added an incredible degree of work to maintain and sync the stock numbers with that of Red Dragon Apothocary. In the end, it was just more work then it was generating ROI. So we still have a link to purchase tarot decks, but it sends you to our sister site instead. Way simpler, and better equipped to handle things like international shipping, taxes, etc. So here is my commitment to you for 2016:

Just for laughs, I decided to pull a tarot card to see what they had to say about all of this. When I started shuffling, one card jumped out of the deck. I put it back, only to have it jump again a few seconds later. Clearly this card had something to say and I had better listen up! So I turned it over and this is what I saw:

In reality, this is only my top three issues. I am sure there are some that you may think I missed - so we'd love to hear from you. What are your favorite things about Tarot By Tiamat? What would you do differently if you could? Comment below - and then join us for the awesomeness that will be 2016.