Introducing, Cocktail Slob v.1
The first of five introductions & the only free post
Hi Everyone!
I know it has been quite a while. Thank you for your patience and all of your wellness checks the last few months! It has meant a lot to me. I’m writing today to share some updates on the end of Moop Shop and let you know about something new: Cocktail Slob.
The last twelve months have taken me on quite a journey. A truly wild series of events since moving to Seattle. Combined with the prior two pandemic years, plus most of 2019 and I have navigated almost four years of endless challenges, rupturing my otherwise relentless optimism and making me wonder what I’ve done right since March of 2020. I have written fifty variations of how to share the story of what the pandemic did to my business, then what Seattle did to me, but I can’t bring myself to publish any of them. There is no way to shorten the complexities of the many things I took on as one lone human in the world. These stories are long and deeply personal, with a few wholly sociopathic encounters mixed in and while I can typically see my way through challenging situations, I lost my ability to envision how to reinvent another time. So, at the start of 2023, after a massive manufacturing failure, I started making hefty decisions. With the support of my attorney and consults, I made myself extremely vulnerable and started a process of trying to close down what I had spent the prior 16.5 years building. I shipped off the last Moop bag in late June and by the end of July, had sold or relocated all of my equipment and shop fixtures, locked up the rest in a storage unit and sat down at my kitchen table. It took me a solid eight weeks to stop feeling like I was trapped in a box having just had my hamster wheel taken away from me, still feeling like I needed to be constantly running. I did not know how to slow down, how to stop working and in turn, how to combat the extreme guilt I felt about not having work to do. Mind you, there has been an endless flow of things to handle in this process but, I no longer have a studio, a shop, a brand or any tools to make anything, unless it comes out of my kitchen.
I took a few weeks to build a personal website, write a resume and learn the landscape of job hunting, the hierarchy of titles and how to craft my personal pitch as to why someone should hire me. Which is where I sit now, several months later, still at my kitchen table, having interviewed for a bunch of jobs, received offers (sadly, not good enough to take) and am kind of loosing my mind not having work to do or a studio to do work in. From here, Cocktail Slob begins. This may start out a little unstructured as I find my footing with the stories I want to share. But, I’ll promise a story, a photo and a recipe with each issue. Cocktails, salads, things I pile on top of rice and very strong ginger turmeric juices.
I have not decided if I will be posting publicly on social media. I’m not sure that I will (don’t hold me to that). I will be posting a lot of photos directly on the Substack page, alongside stories, recipes and things I’m using in my daily life. I love celebrating well made things and I will definitely be making product recommendations. Everything will be behind a paywall. I’ve made my life far too accessible for far too long and crazy things have happened because of that, so if you want to support and read some of those wild stories, you can subscribe below for the price of a Seattle Oat Milk Latte. I’m working behind the scenes to launch another shop, with the ultimate goal to open a small bar. It’s been a forever dream and your subscriptions will help me do that.
I’ll parse out some lessons in ownership, manufacturing, wild dating stories, navigating single parenthood, relationship starts and stops (I might be a dating expert at this point in my life, you can live vicariously through me🫠) and maybe even careful anecdotal commentary on current events (election year yikes!).
Eventually, there will be merch, a storefront and hopefully a cookbook. Achievable goals during uncertain times.
This too, will be a journey.
Can’t wait to see you there!
xo,
Wendy
p/s/ read this part: I decided to publish four other variations on an introduction, along with the cocktails that go along with them and a few photos from what I was feeling when I wrote them. I’ve been working on this for a while and as of right now, it feels okay to share some of that process. Each one is a small cross section of how I was processing closing my business, restructuring my identity and future planning for the life I’m trying to build. Each version was written over the course of the last six months. They’ll be available to read for the next month or so, only via subscription as I get back into the swing of daily content production. Then I’ll probably take them down. Version 2 is very long and probably the one I spent the most time editing. Another version has a photo of my bare 🍑
Vulnerable and exciting!
Subscribe below to get into the weeds.
COCKTAIL: Cara Cara Gin for v.1 Introduction
2 oz London Dry Gin (I love Hayman’s these days)
1 oz Dry Curacao
Juice of half an orange (any variety you like. I look for Cara Cara’s but, definitely have used a few of those cuties if I can’t find them).
Garnish with a thin slice of carrot (use your vegetable peeler)
Add your ingredients to a cocktail shaker with a bunch of ice. Shake 36 times and strain into your favorite wide coupe.
