Origins
With the relaunch of Wildling Studios I wanted to have a place where I can send people to learn about our humble beginnings. So, for those of you unfamiliar with the entirety of the story, here it is:
Chapter One
Post uni
All throughout university I ran a blog called Cashmere & Plaid. It was my creative diary and I loved it passionately. It connected me with my community, took me ever so slightly outside my comfort zone and actually landed me my first job post-university. After graduating from the University of Victoria with a BA in psychology I was feeling pretty stoked with myself but also super confused about my next steps. I had put off a computer science course until the last semester of my last year and ended up falling in love with the web design portion of the course. So although I’d just spent the last four years working towards what I thought was the first step in becoming a play and art therapist for kids, now I was contemplating changing the trajectory of my life and going back to school — and not for a masters in counselling as I’d planned, but to a trade school with a design and development program.
I posted on my blog that I was ready to work for a while before making a decision and that afternoon a local architectural and interior design blog that read my blog reached out and offered me a position as a content creator.
I worked there for a year, contemplating my life, learning about architecture and interior design, blogging here and there, and then ultimately decided to move back to Vancouver to immerse myself in even more design, tech, and relationships.
Chapter Two
Back to school
Back on the mainland, living with the parents, I spent a year in an intensive program learning everything from basic Adobe Illustrator, coding in HTML and CSS to advanced Illustrator, JavaScript, PHP, and even audio and video production. I have a certificate to prove it (“with distinction,” no less) and a cuuuuute student loan that I’ll be paying off for years to come.
While I was going to school I was also in the first grown up relationship of my life. It was fabulous and in the time not spent coding or using the pen tool or fighting with Adobe Premiere we were exploring gulf islands and working our way through Game of Thrones (a significant reason why I went with Wildling as our studio name). It was one of the best times of my entire life. But, as many things do in your early/mid 20s, it eventually came to an end.
At the end of the year long intensive, I once again found myself a recent grad feeling unsure about a lot of things, but certain about a few: I was going to keep blogging because I loved it, I was going to work for a very cool company, and I was going to move back to Victoria.
And so I did.
Chapter Three
Back to Vic
I moved back to Victoria in October 2018. For a few blissful weeks I was in love with every aspect of my life. I was stoked with where I was working, I was making a modest but comfortable salary, and I felt like I was really nailing the whole “adult” thing. But it suuure didn’t last.
Shit hit the fan for me in late 2018/early 2019 when, for lack of a better and less cringey concept, I had an “awakening.”
Suddenly things had way more meaning and at the same time, had lost all meaning at all. I explored depths I hadn’t been in before and found solace in things I knew my “audience” wouldn’t relate to. And at that time, I didn’t want to relate to anyone. I was relearning how to exist in the world as a being who felt like she couldn’t trust anything she had in the past. It really rattled me and I couldn’t balance taking photos of DIY projects, sharing my existential musings on source energy, and posting playlists on the first of each month. So the first thing to go was the blog.
With so much chaos going on inside of me it only made sense that eventually my external world would match it. After about 3 months of being back in Vic I was forced to make a quick and very unexpected pivot from being securely employed to suddenly being self-employed. It was jarring but I was very much in a “I fully trust that the universe knows what’s best,” phase and so I went with it.
At the expense of my mental and physical health, my financial wellbeing, and the majority of the relationships in my life, I vehemently did everything I could to make self-employment work — I removed myself from the online space, started focusing on my internal landscape, cut pretty much everyone out of my life, and was just very messily navigating life as a 20-something trying to figure out how to build a business on a foundation of quicksand all by herself.
Chapter Four
Here we are & where we’re heading…
Fast forward 3 and a half years, 3 business names, SO MUCH learning, SO MUCH scarcity, SO MUCH growth and here we are.
June 2022. The next phase.
I’ve gotta say, this definitely feels like the best place I’ve been in a very long time. I’m the most secure I’ve ever been, I’m the happiest I’ve been in a long time, and things feel, dare I say, stable…? And with that stability comes freedom. And openness. And excitement. And when I’m feeling those things, I know I’m in a place where I can share more things.
So, it is with great excitement and joy that I share, the blog is making a come back!
I’ve consistently put out email newsletters for the past three months and they’ve been the absolute best way for me to start my months. I feel connected to my business, I feel connected with my people, and I feel like I have a reason to create more content that actually lights me up (aka not a stupid reel)! The newsletters aren’t going anywhere but I feel like I could amp things up a little and make the blog a more regular thing. So far the plan is to share life stuff, biz stuff, and whatever feels right because that’s just how I’ve always done it (anyone keen for interviews? I feel like that could be super fun). It’ll be informal, no mailing list you have to sign up for to get the goods, just check in whenever you feel like it, and I’ll do the same!
(But if you ARE keen to join the newsletter, there’s a box down in the footer)
So that’s where I’ll leave it today! No wise quips, no CTAs, just with a “see ya real soon!”
🤘🏼
