How Can I Tie My Interests into my Home Business?
My brain is constantly working on ways to tie my interests in with my writing/illustrating/speaking business. Right now I’m brainstorming about connecting my interest in one-room schools to my writing and speaking. It seems whenever I mention my connections to my one-room school education (grades 1-4), I have interested responses.
For starters, I’ve decided to post a blog, One-Room School Heritage. For my one-room school connections consisted of more than myself. My sister, brothers and I attended the one in Poughquag, NY. My mother taught at schools in Gardner Hollow, NY and the Brewster area of NYS. She attended one in Milan, NY, as did her siblings. Her cousins and mother attended and then taught at one-room schools in the Milan/Red Hook/Rhinebeck area. My dad’s grandmother Olive attended a one-room school in the Triangle/Lisle area of NY. His great grandmother taught there. Grandma Olive also was a school teacher.
When I begin to research my heritage, then also express interest in schools where I now live in NH, I find the interest extensive. Would there be ways to create a business from this or tie it into my home business of writing and speaking?
- Research and write the stories for my family heritage, starting with blog entries.
- Find photos, if any, that add significance.
- Sketch and paint pictures.
- Compile a book or booklet from this research. It would first be for my family. However, others might be interested in purchasing.
- Through programs, like Cafe Press, sell items with my sketches on them.
- Give talks about one-room schools, my experiences and my heritage. Research the groups that would be interested and approach them.
- Write books for children about the one-room school. My mom’s experience, falling through the ice on the pond near the school and rescued by her sister, would be exciting for youngsters. Add my illustrations to it.
- Write a novel about my mom coming to teach at her first school, 45 miles from her home, in the late 1920s. There she met my dad and, after some more schooling at a 3-year normal school, married him and remained in that town the rest of her life.
What else could I do to develop my fascination into a business interest, yet one that will entertain and inform others?
Consider an interest of yours and brainstorm how you could tie it in with your home business.
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2 Comments
[...] my previous post, I pondered on how to tie my enthusiasm for my one-room school heritage into my blog and my writing/speaking home business. I listed [...]
[...] Unfortunately, one of the grim realities of working from home is that burnout can become a problem. One way to combat burnout is to look at your home business and find a way to tie in a hobby or something that you enjoy. I enjoy writing, so it’s lucky that I work from home as a freelance writer. Mary Emma Allen at Home Biz Notes recently wrote a great article on what she has done to tie in her interest in heritage one-room schoolhouses to what she does to earn a living working from home. [...]