farewell.
Today I logged in after more than two years of being inactive. I offered a new friend a Big Bang lanyard (because I still have LOTS) and wanted to find a picture to show her – I was too lazy to take one myself and I knew it would be on this web page. When I came back to this site, embarrassment flooded over me. I left you all hanging. I said I was going to re-open the store, and I would be back with a give-away! So what happened?
The short version is I messed up. And the long version is I messed up, and this is how. I started this store in November 2011, back when I was a junior in high school. I was inspired by a friend who was a fellow tumblr store owner, and I wanted do something similar. I’m not going to lie and say there wasn’t a financial appeal, but I soon realized that the store wasn’t profitable. I remember keeping a spreadsheet (my first ever amateur excel sheet) and I was almost always in the red. Despite this, I kept with the store, because it was really fun. I added new stuff, and it made me extremely happy to come home from school and see new orders. I packed everything by hand – I remember reusing a lot of packaging from personal purchases to save money – and included a little thank-you note in each of the orders. When I got reviews from buyers later on, it made me feel all warm and fuzzy inside. Some of you guys even submitted photos, which showed a very artistic display of the stuff purchased. So this was my honeymoon phase with the store. Senior year came along, and I just got super busy. I had more AP classes, college apps, and various other tasks going on. To me, tumblr orders started becoming a burden; it was another item to add onto my constantly growing to-do list. The thank-you notes I used to write became generic, and they all said the same thing. I still wanted to write them by hand because that was more personal, but I pre-wrote a large stack, as if I was working for an assembly line. And then suddenly I dropped this tumblr page. I don’t know exactly why, when, or how this happened, and when I realized it, I just allowed it to go. I remember feeling so guilty that I wouldn’t even log-in or look at this page. I knew if I did, I would want to stay active, and I wasn’t in a position to do so while staying mentally sane. There was one time where I opened the email a few weeks later to see if there were any new messages about orders because I had forgotten whether or not I disabled that, and my heart was just aching (not medically). I felt so much guilt, and I was so nervous thinking about what I might see. Thankfully there were no new orders, which was a huge relief because I would have felt so bad had I ignored someone for probably months. Deep inside, I knew I would have had to close the shop sooner or later. I was getting ready to transition to college, and keeping this tumblr store would have been extremely difficult, but I wished I was brave enough to close it properly.
This post is long overdue, I know, and I still wanted to write this because I owe you all an explanation. I found it so humbling that someone asked if I was going to re-open again this past January – super recent relative to how long I’ve been gone. Thank you so much for supporting me when I had this tumblr store open and allowing me to be an unofficial small business owner. I truly enjoyed being in such a supportive community, and I as I am writing this post, I realized how much I missed you all. I’m going to keep this page open for now, because it shows a past of mine that I want to embrace and cherish. A lot of memories live on this page, and I am super proud to have once been so active on here.
If you want to contact me for any reason, please use the email listed [[email protected]]. I set up the account to forward all my emails, so I won’t miss any of them anymore! Also, if you’re interested in a Big Bang lanyard, contact me please! I have so many!!! And with this final post, I want to say farewell pandabazaar.tumblr.com. I am so grateful for your existence.
07/08/15
