Goodbye, old space

I dropped off the keys and said goodbye to this studio space in downtown Ann Arbor this week. As I wrote before, it was a bit of a surprise move, owing mainly to the sale of the building last fall to a new landlord and a subsequent rent increase. Is it a bit of a bummer that I just repainted the space less than a year ago? 100 percent. But fret not, I’ve made my peace with it, sunk cost fallacy and all, and am happy to be moving on.

Moving - the packing, sorting, purging, and searching for a better space - has understandably brought up a lot of feelings and reflection about what I'm doing and why. Trying to sum up what these past ten and a half years is tough; it’s been truly a unique phase in my life. I've been self-employed as a pattern designer, fabric designer, sewing instructor, blogger (soooo many hats) for 15 years -- that's more than twice as long as I worked as a physics and math teacher in my post-college, pre-kiddo life — and a big part of it has been spent here.

A few numbers, to try to sum up this place:
10 years, 7 months (in this space)
16 (new sewing patterns launched since I moved in)
13 (print patterns launched)
6 (pattern size expansions/updates)
4 (weekend workshops held)
too many to count (sewing meetups/nights hosted)
and:
1 (baby birthed. Not technically *in* this studio, BUT IT ALWAYS COUNTS!!)
3 (children raised from ages 0-16)

In particular, I can't think about this time without viewing it through the lens of my identity and work as a mother. During the time that I rented this space, I raised (am still raising) three kiddos from ages 0-16 years old. It's almost mind-numbing to try to wrap my head around those years, and all of the parenting involved, bandaids applied, fingernails clipped, doctor/hospital visits, illnesses and conditions diagnosed, surgeries, braces, family "vacations" planned and taken, birthday parties executed, parent teacher conferences attended, field trips chaperoned, camps and daycares, tears, hugs and snuggles…it's so much. Sometimes too much. Did it overflow with love and blessing and wonder and laughter? YES. Was it also full of hard, unpaid, thankless work? YES.

When I started renting this space it was the very beginning of Instagram and I shared a lot more of those everyday details, parenting snafus, life with kiddos, both on that account and here on the blog. As my follower count crept upward...10K...30K, over 50K…it definitely felt weirder and weirder to share that stuff with strangers, or spambots like "michael518" planting comments like "hey sexy" in my DM's on the regular. The tension between wanting to connect and not wanting to overshare was and is real and ongoing.

{I'd like know how many of you reading this right now are spambots versus actual humans, or even the ratio of actual humans to spambots. No...scratch that...I really don't think I want to know}

With this move I'm downsizing my studio, and I think it’s going to be a good change. This space was too big, too expensive, and too hard to get to, in the middle of downtown Ann Arbor right next to the university. I love having tons of restaurants and museums nearby, but I hate finding parking, missing my bus that only comes once every half hour, and UoM's Move-In Weekend.

I do have a new workspace lined up that is closer to my house, smaller and less expensive. It's also going to be easier for private sewing students to access (no stairs! accessibility ramp! free parking!). The smaller size will mean no sewing meetups or workshops for the time being, but I'd love to figure out a way to make that community piece fit back into the puzzle. That part has always been really important to me.

One of the things I love about the internet is the freedom to toss off the old and forge a new path for yourself, and that's certainly been the case for me - when I graduated from college, I thought I'd be a science teacher for the rest of my life. I never imagined I'd own my own business and be able to sew for my job.

I love new beginnings (don't we all?) — the freshness and possibility of new directions, projects, paths, and potential. I’m also very tired from moving. But I'm excited to see what this next phase has in store! It's been a beautiful, wonderful journey so far.

PS. Please enjoy some “before” and “after” photos from the old space. You can also click on each photo to see the blog post that I wrote for each one.