I shut down my business this week. Shuttered the website, deleted the social media.

Now, I also did this about a year ago. I had been toying with the idea of throwing the in towel around the same time I was toying with the idea of moving to a new province. I wasn’t having the best time with the business, and in trying to downsize my life for a move, I thought this would be a great time to close the business as well.

Turns out, I was not ready to move to a new province (and maybe I never will! And that’s ok!). So when I decided to stay, I had the feeling of “throwing away” something that I didn’t actually need to. There were a few things like that. RIP, green blouse.

I took a good look at how I could simplify the business, cut out some unnecessary costs, and tried again.

I hated it.

I hated it so much that I didn’t put any effort in to it.

These days, small business owners need to not only run their businesses, but also need to be full time content creators to get the word out on social media channels. I had a very small business making bespoke clothing. So I had to buy the supplies, make the patterns, make the clothing, photograph the clothing, maintain a website, post 3-5 times a week with different kinds of content to attract new people, answer emails and DMs, do my accounting, and probably 100 other things that never occurred to me I should be doing.

On top of that, I needed to do silly things like: work my day job, feed myself, clean the cat’s box, record a podcast with a friend, attend dance practice with another, read books, go on walks, just relax.

I was not very successful. Like, literally, the business wasn’t successful.

“I just gotta grind harder,” I’d tell myself. Set up little schedules of things to do to be on that grindset 24/7. Have 10 spare minutes? I can make an Instagram reel. A spare afternoon? Design an accessory and sew 5 of them!

But I didn’t do these things. I might sew a couple things, and then put them away, promising to photograph them tomorrow, upload them to the site the day after that. And then they’d languish in the black hole that is my sewing room forever.

I couldn’t figure out what was “wrong” with me. Why did I keep getting in my own way?! I went to school for Fashion Design – is this not everything I’ve ever wanted?

Well, as it turns out, no.

Ever since I was little, I said I wanted to be a fashion designer. I had a one track mind, that’s all I wanted. College was hard, but I finished it and then it was Time To Become a Fashion Designer.

But it was also Time To Pay Back Student Loans. And, Time To Move Out of Mom and Dad’s House. I couldn’t just screw around and play dress up, waiting to become a fashion designer. I got a series of office jobs, and would do local markets and Etsy and such, off and on through out the years.

When the pandemic hit, I had a fire lit under my ass. I got a business license, a tax ID, an actual website that didn’t end with .blogspot.com! I had a clear vision. I was excited, and convinced that This Was It.

When the sheen wore off, I realised I was putting in a lot of effort for little payback. I was miserable. And very very recently, I came to the conclusion: I don’t want this.

I love fashion (you can tell as I’m sitting here in black leggings and an Old Navy t-shirt). I love sewing. I love creating. But just because I love that and I went to school for that, doesn’t mean that needs to be my job.

Only recently did it occur to me that I’ve had this internal monologue going for years where I say “is it…. okay that I’m not using my education??” And then I’d run through my list of college-educated friends and if their jobs corresponded with their education. It’s about 50/50.

And yes, in case you weren’t sure: it IS okay! It’s perfectly okay!

I don’t regret going to school – I learned a lot, personally and professionally. But it’s just not in me to make that my career. I don’t know what it sounds like to you, but to me, when I made up my mind earlier this week, that was a huge revelation.

I’m not a “successful” business owner; not because I suck, but because I don’t want this. I wasn’t working hard at this, because it’s not important to me. I just didn’t realise it before.

One rather glum day, in college, I said to a friend “I should have studied writing”. I remember this distinctly. It must have been a stressful week, maybe I got a poor grade or something. But I was down. And I remembered that the only other thing I felt I was good at in high school was writing.

Don’t get me wrong, I was a good writer. I was – an am – good at a lot of things! But it never even entered my mind that I should go to school for writing. It was Fashion Design.

All Fashion Design, all the time.

So I put writing on the shelf. I’d occasionally blog, or journal about Big Feelings, but rarely wrote for public consumption. This past year, writing has really come back into my life in a big way. I want to write all the time lately!

However, one of my favourite Gen-Z phrases is “I’m just a little guy.” Maybe it’s because I’m not 20 anymore (I’m not even 30 anymore) (or 40. Oof), maybe it’s the pandemic putting things in perspective, but I’m really trying to honour rest and downtime. I’m just a little guy – I can’t grind and run a business and work a day job and hit the gym three times a week and keep my house clean and read two books a week.

But I can write a bit, dance a bit, sew a bit, and relax a lot. It’s not “giving up” on a dream. It’s more like refocusing. Demonetizing it. Sewing for myself and my friends is way more fulfilling than sewing for people I have no connection with, just for a paycheck. Finally putting a full stop to Being A Fashion Designer is so freeing.

I have so many projects I’ve wanted to work on, but when I had downtime to do them, I’d freeze because I “should” be working on business stuff. So I couldn’t take up a complex knitting project, or sew something outside of the style my business fit into. My energy needed to go to the business. So in the end, absolutely nothing got done. That nonsense is over.

I’m just a little guy and I want to be free to follow whatever butterfly floats past me in this little meadow. I always imagine the “little guy” being a little elf dude who lives in the Shire or something. Maybe that’s just me. But if I want to knit a sweater this week, paint watercolours next week, and do absolutely nothing the week after that, I want to be able to do that without it feeling like a waste. No time spent listening to yourself and honouring your values is a waste!

When you’re just a little guy in a world that is on fire, relaxing and having fun seems like the better solution. It’s the perfect antidote to the capitalist rise-and-grind mentality. You can’t hurt me! I have a homemade cookie, wool socks I just knit, a good book and a purring cat!

The plan for this blog is just a bit of slice of life musings, probably with a bunch of “lookit this silly thing I made today” posts. I love that it’s just my name – DeanneSchildroth.com. It does what it says on the tin! I feel like getting back into writing and art this year is finding a way back to myself.

Lets see where this road goes.