It’s a warm sunny Spring morning, I’ve been out of bed with coffee in my hand since 4:30 this morning because I couldn’t sleep- my mind full of churning, bouncing thoughts. I’m in front of my fuschia house, and today is my first day moving in to my first ever private tattoo studio. I owned a shop in Tallahassee but I couldn’t have kept it open without other artists paying in, and I truthfully wasn’t ready artistically or emotionally.

Over the shut down I really started meditating on the ideas of owning the fruits of my labor and having something to pass on to the kids, without relying on other artists to trade away their hours for my retirement. Tattoo artists pay the host shop roughly 40%-50% of their sales and buy all their own expensive equipment. In most cases, we manage our own social media for promotion and do our own booking and customer relations. We pay so much for the privilege of a location or a more broad customer base, even just having some company at work. It can be a valuable trade off.

Going out on your own is a big gamble. You’ve got to stay on the grind to keep the client base fresh and expanding. If all goes well I can hire someone to focus on getting me new clients so I can focus on the things that matter most to my clients- the art and the experience. If it doesn’t go well… well let’s not even think about that today.

Today is about hope! Hope that I can support my family and still have time to make memories with them, to know who they really are when they leave my nest and know I did the best I could. Hope that all the people I haven’t met that will come find me will have a positive experience with lasting impact. Hope that I always have enough tattoos to do but not so many I start to compromise quality and burn out.

I had an amazing, happy time at SinnerG and can say without a doubt that my time there was worth every penny, that my friends have always been more than fair with me there, and this is probably the first shop I have ever left with nothing but good feelings. It’s weird to walk away from something that feels like exactly how you would want a tattoo shop to feel. I just don’t want to work in a tattoo shop right now. That might change though. Who knows?

For now, I think it’s important that all my clients rest assured all their booking fees still apply and my new location has convenient shopping, free parking, and privacy. Can’t wait to see how this whole adventure rolls out!