You only fail, if you never try.

I kept imagining my life, years later with a husband and a family telling them. “You know I used to want to run a coffee shop…(sigh).” And then proceed to describe it to them in full detail, as if it actually existed, every idea, every color, every menu idem in the coffee shop. This horrific reoccurring nightmare actually scared me to move into my next step of craziness. I decided to breathe this self-proclaimed job description of running a coffee shop into reality. I left for college with zeal, and expectation of learning how to start a coffee shop in my Business 101 class…talk about disappointment! “You mean this eighty dollar book I just bought won’t just tell me how to do it???” One semester and a headache of business terms later, I was ready to come back home and figure it out for myself. “Mom, I’m 18, I can do what I want! (typical) college isn’t teaching me a thing about coffee shops. I just feel like I need to come home and work so I can make money and buy a building and…” I looked at every abandoned window on Main Street during Christmas break, though I had no intention of starting the coffee shop in Visalia. “Colette, please, please finish college, I never did, and I could kick myself for it. It’s just four years, and if you still want to start a coffee shop, then do it.” My Mom begged and pleaded with me to finish college… and so I did, and all the while I dreamed, and drew, and journaled about this imaginary coffee shop with brick walls, and metal fencing, filled with regulars and seekers of truth, lecture givers and music makers. Yes, brick walls…yes, lecture halls…the scary thing about dreaming, I found out, is that it can leave you feeling kinda crazy…a little nuts…and deffenantly annoying. “Here, she goes again, telling people about her coffee shop.” I figured if I told enough people I was sure someone was going to “hear” me, I mean really “hear” me.