So today wasn’t my best day.
It ended with a very unnecessary breakdown, complete with very unnecessary tears. Poor Chris had no idea what he was walking into after work.
Do you ever have such a frustratingly shitty day that all it takes is one final straw to send you over the edge into a tantrum more fitting for a toddler than an adult? And even as you’re crying you know it’s very self indulgent and ridiculous but you just continue on that crazy train anyway?
I did that today. I’m not proud of it. But it happened, so I have to own it.
This isn’t intended as a “poor-me” post, but instead let’s all laugh and point at how dramatic I get in my own world when I take things too personal and need to just take a breath and back the hell away for a second.
I don’t want to go into too much detail regarding what sent me over, does it really even matter? I’m sure we all know it’s t-shirt related. OH T-SHIRT LADY WOES. Why must life be oh so difficult in the land of rayon/poly/cotton shirts?
In short, someone who “borrowed” an idea from me is sending me less than pleasant emails and saying I can’t own something when everyone else has decided to steal it as well. That’s pretty much her logic. Everyone else has stolen it, so she can too.
There’s a lot to more to the story that makes me 100 times angrier regarding principle and integrity as a small business owner, and me being taken for a fool because I was trying to be a good person and take someone’s word for something and blah blah blah. But my voice of reason (Chris) and also some advice from Helene, suggested I leave out the details. And the screenshots.
But it’s killing me. However deep down I know it’s just my ego wanting to provide you details. It always is. My ego is bruised and it is NOT happy about it. It’s shouting but but but but this isn’t fair and I want to scream and complain, someone listen to my shouts!!!!
So here’s the last thing(s) I’ll say.
I get that the MARRIED AF t-shirt is completely ridiculous (and wonderful) and that’s why I love it. I also know I didn’t coin the term AF, but I do know that I was the first to put MARRIED AF on a shirt. And COZY AF…. –my ego wants to make sure you know this.
So when people take it and admit it’s not their own but do it anyway, I get mad. And I’ve done everything I can to protect myself this time around by copyrighting this correctly- you can’t copyright a phrase for a shirt, so this falls under an entire brand of things I am working on under the title MARRIED AF. (More to come on this at a later time.) So like any smart person, I copyrighted this title before anyone else could.
What it boils down to is that I’m just not cut out for t-shirt business. I can’t handle people stealing others ideas like it’s no big deal. I hold onto my own too tightly and I don’t do well when I feel others start to grab them. I go into mama bear mode over my t-shirts because I am seriously a crazy T-Shirt Lady now. Art (or snapchat) has become real life.
I’ve let go of some of my others because I didn’t have much of a choice in the end. The Talk Herbie To Me and the I Just Want To Hang With My Dog shirts are two of the biggest that have really caused me some stress this past year. I see the knock-offs everywhere now and I can’t help but foam at the mouth when I do.
My frustration lies in the fact that I work my ass off to get my shirts out there. It doesn’t just randomly happen. They don’t just start getting traffic by chance, I’ve hustled hard to get them in front of the right people. But then it’s a catch 22 because as soon as a shirt “takes off”every one else tries to grab it as their own.
Have I mentioned I care too much and probably make this a much bigger deal than I should?
It’s just the nature of this business and I need to accept it, or I need to get out. Tuesday night tantrums don’t help anything.
But I’ll be damned if a good midnight blog post doesn’t help. Oddly enough, I feel slightly better having written this. So thank you for listening (again and always) and thank you for being a supportive AF group of people. Man, I appreciate it.
Now perhaps it’s time I try to sleep off the crazies. Tomorrow will be better.
