I wish I could tell people everything that has happened to me so they could completely understand where I am coming from and then you might be more willing to show me grace when I'm not how you expect me to be.
This year half my team left. The job is more demanding and overwhelming than many people even realize. Most people think marketing, or content creation, is just making some cute social media posts and making some attention-grabbing ads. NOBODY but another graphic designer can appreciate how much work is involved in creating a new logo and birthing a new brand. It was just too much and the demands of this baby business with financial hunger pangs while we grow proved too much for them. I 100% don't blame them at all.
Marketing is like being a clown being thrown things to juggle to entertain a silent crowd in the dark while keeping your balance on a burning unicycle - also you have to sing, but the lyrics change daily. You'll know if it's wrong, as the tomatoes hit your face. It's exhausting. It will make you question your own intelligence, talent, and skills. Often the results are not rewarding or produce the expected revenue, especially for the projects you spent the most time researching and painstakingly perfecting. The fury you will feel when a throw-away post you made when you oops just remembered that you didn't make a post yet and you were supposed to at like 9pm - so you just pooped something out as quickly as you could - then OUTPERFORMS everything else you've worked hard on all month... It's unmatched. Not to mention squeezed tight deadlines and clients who do not understand that you can't ACTUALLY create something from nothing if they do not provide you with the correct information or photos in time... It's enough to drive a grown woman to tears.
Designing is literally a human trying to read another human's mind. What you find as a mind-reader is that MOST people don't actually know what they want, although they can be very opinionated about it. So you have to take what they do know as you mine through their mind and put together a mosaic from the pieces. If you're lucky it will turn out to be the glimmer of an idea put into this material realm exactly as they wanted and they will be excited and in love you for it. If you're not lucky you will spend weeks staring at your screen screaming and crying, either silently or out loud depending on if you are alone, as the client requests that you change every part of your design that you liked the most and eventually be met with, "Well, it'll work, I guess."
This crushing weight, coupled with the lean months that we just didn't get any new clients and therefore had to hustle all the side jobs we could - was too much.
I managed to keep one of the friendships intact, thank goodness. I will never know what actually happened with the other. The pain I felt as these ladies who had helped create this company, whose friendship and enthusiasm fed me when I was hungry and sparked my creativity back into a flame when I felt like I didn't have anything left to give, who had been fighting at my back and keeping me strong...just left. Over the past few months I've been broken, gutted to the core as I continued to juggle, pedal, sing, mind-read and fight for this business x3 without the safety and strength of my team. I mourned. I grieved so hard as I smiled and kept the show going. I felt God bring people around me, to give me drops of encouragement for my exsanguinated soul.
My bestie and bookkeeper, Misty, and our Marketing Strategist, Donna, stepped in and did things so far removed from their job description it was insane just to help me get myself together. I made a new friend who will never know that just an invitation and sitting on her porch drinking coffee was like saving my life. Hannah did her best to send packages and encourage us from her distant land of North Carolina, but she also has a full-time, important job and life outside of 5x2. I have a friend who recently came back into my life and his support came in the form of funny memes, dark humor, and a non-judgmental, listening ear. I had a TALENTED artist friend in California who stepped out of her comfort zone and did some drawings for me, without any expectation of compensation. Then there was my husband, Taylor, who held me as I cried many nights, even though he has to get up early to go work hard every day. He has ALWAYS been my safe place and bringer of chicky nuggies. I realized I wasn't actually alone.
The absence of people you've grown to rely on is really a gaping hole that never quite gets filled back up again because it's in the shape of that specific person. But, if you're lucky, God will gift this experience to you, so that you, too, can see Him building new spaces around you and putting the exact right people in those new spaces. Revealing to you the friends and allies you have been taking for granted along the way. And ultimately reminding you, that your strength didn't actually come from these other people, it came through them from Him, and He is able to give you that strength again by other means.
What's the future of 5x2? I have no idea. I gave this business to God from the very beginning and as long as I'm able I will keep making use of the time He gives me to work for it. I keep taking it day by day. Sometimes I actually amaze myself as I ride the waves of a caffeinated ADHD high time-crunch and make things happen like a miracle, and then other times I feel like a fraud and a failure as I get knocked down by yet another disappointment or canceled contract. Through it all and despite my fluctuating feelings I see God's steady hand faithfully putting down new spaces in unexpected directions and places. To Him always belongs the glory and power, I'm just his special child that gets to watch it happen in between my panic attacks and praise Him around my mouthful of chicken nuggets.
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