One Year At Folkling House
We hit the 1 year mark this month with this old 1870s house.
Buying a house for a shop is a rather unconventional way to do business to be sure.
The fact that we don’t live here, but our business does, is something that surprises most people.
Then again, we have always done things a little differently around here.
I was talking with a friend recently, who is on the cusp of starting a new venture, and we were commiserating on the complexities of creating a business from the ground up that you have in your head, but that doesn’t have any comparable examples to hold it up to. No models that fit quite right for you to emulate.
You would think perhaps that starting out with no map, there would be more bumps in the road, more wrong turns, more break downs and false starts…
And while I would certainly not classify the road that has been Folkling these last eight years as *easy*, it has still entailed ease.
Each big step, each new door, was right and obviously and clearly so when the time came to walk through it.
And part of me believes that is because when you listen to your heart, over your head (and most definitely over other peoples heads…) you end up on the path that you’re supposed to be on.
I have never worked so hard in my life as I have these last five years of Folkling having a physical store.
My life does not entail traditional weekends, I have spent years working all day every day. Giving up and doing without and living with a type of frugality that perplexes many.
But it was for a dream.
A dream to continue to be able to live a life I was proud of, created with my own hands and my own hard work.
A life that entailed my own version of what success and living well looks like.
I know many of us have a vision in our head of what a well lived life looks like.
It’s hard at times, not to look at the highlight reels of those on Instagram and surmise that it would ideally look something like that.
But what I am positing, with this overly verbose post, is simply that most often the thing needed to get us there, is to stop looking around for someone or something to emulate, and instead listen to that voice inside of us that’s telling us where the next door to walk through is.
Admittedly, the unfolding of Folkling House hasn’t gone the way I initially thought it would.
It’s taken longer. There have been more hiccups than I anticipated.
I ran out of steam and energy (and sometimes money) for the various projects I thought I would be able to execute easily and quickly.
And yet, as we enter yet another phase of this venture, I look back and see that everything has happened exactly as it was supposed to.
But of course.
It always does.
That’s typically how life works.
