A Confession Pt. 2

It was never fully my intention to completely step away from this space. This particular corner of the internet. This curation of my creation and dreams and thoughts.
Over a decade of work displayed on a platform that I kept paying $200+ a year to keep alive.

I’ll come back one day…

I kept thinking to myself.

I am more than just Folkling…

And yet— it very quickly seemed otherwise.
My identity became so wrapped up in this shop, this business, this brand that I had created from the ground up.
So much would transpire in three and a half years that I never even considered before then.

I would make more money than I ever dreamed of.
I would pay in taxes what I used to make in a single year.
I would get so low and out-of-my-mind unhealthy to a degree I never thought was possible.
I would be so fiercely proud and exuberant over what has become a career for me.
I would work harder and longer than at any other time in my life thus far.

When I hear about how overworked finance guys on Wall Street are, how demanding the pace and the hours, I think: I know what that’s like.

I have worked 16+ hour days, every day, for months on end, years on end. My brain is never turned off.
I am always, always, thinking about Folkling. About what I have to do to make it work. To make it succeed. To keep paying my bills.
”Vacations” are just picking trips rebranded.
I am writing this in the present tense because, indeed, it is still true. I have made huge shifts since the height of the shops success in 2022, but even still, it is so hard for me to step away. To not check messages. To think about something other than that space.

This makes it sound as though this entire brand and business was something calculated, a sham, a facade of my own creation.

But it was the opposite.

Folkling is one of the most genuine and whole hearted and honest things I’ve ever created.

Which is the problem of course, when it comes to creating and running a business.
My lack of ability to separate myself from this thing that I created nearly destroyed me to say nothing of many of my relationships.

I have thought for a very long time about sharing these thoughts and feelings on the Folkling Instagram, pretty much the only corner of the internet I keep up with on a regular basis nowadays.

But I think that in order to be able to speak more openly and honestly, apart from what is my job and what literally puts food on my table and a roof over my head, I need the freedom of this platform—largely unseen by most anyone, to process this upcoming shift and season.

Admittedly I am also exhausted by everyones thoughts, opinions and voices on my thoughts, opinions and voice.

I very much miss the early days of the internet. When you largely just shared into an unresponsive void. Before like buttons, hearts, comments, threads, direct messages.

Now I wake up to DMs where complete strangers correct me on how I should be behaving, what I should be doing, how I should be feeling, what I should be saying.

As much as I am on the internet for work, I actually rarely, if ever, engage with it outside of the Folkling community and the necessary communications I have to implement for work.
And so it truly baffles me to have people so vehemently and cruelly tell me what I can and cannot do.
(I would absolutely never dream of doing such a thing with someone I didn’t know. Honestly— even someone I did know.)

But oh how quickly we forget that what we see on the internet, especially Instagram, is only a fraction of the story.

And even now, as I write this perspective, share these thoughts, this is still only a fraction of the story.

But the gist of this fraction is this:
I created this thing that people drove across the country to see and experience.
I put immense pressures on myself as a result.
And now, after doing it full time for four years, I am questioning— What else is there?
What else makes up a life aside from the work that day in and day out has largely been for others?
What comes after this, amidst this, because of this?

What now?