New Year, New Style

The one nice thing about pandemics - just kidding, there’s nothing nice about pandemics. You’re pretty much stuck at home, shuffling between fridge and screen, boredom and anxiety, frustration and depression, sprinkled with fun outings to the bodega to stress eat and Duane Reade to bloodsport over toilet paper.

Spending a lot of time at home really makes you scrutinize the smallest details of your life that you never really noticed before, like slanted floorboards (the bane of every prewar building in NYC), how much your neighbor likes to play terrible 1990s pop, and the lack of a cohesive brand for the small soap business you started to sell the fancy soaps you really just make for yourself.

I imagine that last one might have less people nodding in agreement, but once I saw what was missing, “nothing” was all I could see. No color scheme, no consistent product style, no real logo - and no real expectations of what my business should be doing. Luckily, I “earned” a master’s degree in marketing a few years ago (by-proxy through an ex - that still counts, right?), so a little SEO here and a little branding there, and it’s coming together a little more cohesively. So here’s to a new beginning, with a little less half-assing and more genuine effort. That seems to be the theme for 2021 in general, really.