Life update: Surviving :')

Hi everyone! I wanted to give another little update since I have hardly shared anything at all this month.

There's no other way to put it - I've been struggling with severe burnout since September. To speak frankly, the sudden tariff changes, which have prevented me from shipping to the US since summer, sent me into a spiral.

When I made my sticker "Crying but Productive" it was both a joke and also true. I was having daily panic attacks and constantly crying for no reason, all the while having to power through to keep my small business running. Crying while working became the norm, which is an awful thing to admit. Plus the daily news of the current state of the world compounded on top of that, and I was hardly getting by.

It felt even worse because this all began right after I was feeling so happy and proud of how things were going at the end of summer. We had just finished our biggest conventions ever, my business was finally feeling stable, I was paying myself regularly with REAL paychecks and I had just finished signing a huge deal with a popular Swedish shop (SciFi Bokhandeln).

But it wasn't even 2 weeks after I was at my highest when everything terrible began happening all at once. Preorders became delayed not once but TWICE due to manufacturing errors, new tariff policies came into play and PostNord (our equivalent of USPS) suddenly suspended all US shipping.

The last month has been exhausting as I tried to figure out how to ship 200 preorders, manage daily customer service emails, shift all my marketing plans and stop my YouTube schedule.

I ended up taking some mandatory personal time to visit my friends and family in the US, and personally fix all the outstanding US orders.

I'm trying my best to get through this holiday season, when my shop is usually at its busiest, but it's quite hard to stay motivated right now.

Anyway, here's a cute photo of Shrimp to take off the edge cause I know this hasn't been the most fun post to get through :') I'm slowly getting back into a normal rhythm and hope to be back on track by November when we do our annual shop sale.

I'm extremely thankful for your support here, and I really want you to know that <3 Take it easy today and treat yourself to a tasty snack. You deserve it.

<3 Birdie