24/07/2026
This latest tariff might be the last nail in the coffin for me. The only underpaid worker making my stuff is *me* so I’m not sure why Trump has decided that US customers now need to pay 20-25% more for what I create. I ate the last tariffs and didn’t increase my prices, but as lovely as what I make is, I have no illusions that people are going to pay $25 for a coin and another $25 to ship it to them. I closed my website down a few weeks ago after only getting eight orders on it for the last few months and instead of feeling sad I just felt relief that I wouldn’t get that monthly Shopify bill.
I found my work journal from 2020 (and yes, it’s covered in stickers because stickers are cool and I will stand by that forever - work is way more fun if you can give yourself a gold star for getting it done). Back then I could ship to the US for $3.40 (it costs me $23 now), fabric was more affordable, my voice wasn’t being drowned out by bots and AI slop, Instagram didn’t constantly remind me that I could be so much more visible if I just made this photo into a video or added some sh*tty music. This book is a weird little time capsule of optimism, despite being in the middle of a pandemic, vignettes of me hitting goals and celebrating them, of feeling like I was achieving SO much. I was SO proud of everything I had built.
It felt like I was making for a community. And now we’re all drowning in this overwhelming sense of doom, who’s buying a scrunchie when you’re not sure whether you have enough money for food by the end of the week? Why should I shout about what I’ve made when there is literal genocide happening? Are my parcels even going to get to their destinations once this seasons bushfires start? I’m tired and I miss everything that my business, and the social media around it, once was.
Most of all I think I miss that feeling of hope and the sense that as a collective humanity was working towards something good.
