Entry 1: A Day in the Life of a Lolita Designer

This is a new project/thing I’m going to try to stick to and make weekly entries for, to help me reflect and sort of vent/document what I’ve been working on. Besides, I thought it might be an interesting (read: boring) glimpse into my life and what I actually do on a weekly/daily basis as a full-time Lolita Designer. I think that sounds a lot more fascinating than it actually is though, ha. Unfortunately I don’t dress in full OTT Lolita and surround myself with cats and doilies, as I delicately stitch lace onto a dress with Bach playing in the background, while a butler fetches me tea every few minutes (lol dresses would take like a month to get finished at that pace). I actually wear the comfiest/rattiest of clothes and sweat in my stuffy, fabric-filled studio and do pretty much the same thing everyday - (try to) manage my emails/messages, maybe order fabric for a new project, and most importantly, sew. Occasionally I’ll go to a con, which means nothing but panic and chaos as I try and prepare for it, but mostly my life is pretty tame as I work from home and don’t have to deal with the real world most days.

Since this is technically the first entry, I suppose I’ll quickly go through what this past week has been like.

Over the weekend was Otakon - that huge con that takes place on the east coast. Leading up to this con I’ve only heard (mostly) good things, and I’ve only heard about how popular and huge it is, and I’ve only been excited yet nervous as I prepared for it. I’m not here to write a con review, but I will say I probably won’t be returning next year. It was a lot of stress and a lot of driving for not a ton of return (as in, I’ve done better at much smaller, closer cons).

We drove back Sunday afternoon/early evening, and finally made it home a little past midnight.

I spent the early part of the week catching up on sleep and basically, just taking some time off. The past several weeks (few months?) have been nothing but GO GO GO, and I really just needed to take some time to recoup. I finally saw Inside Out (loved it), binged a good deal on Reese’s cups, and spent a good deal of time playing Divinity with the bf (definitely our favorite way to spend time together - we have nearly 100 hours of playtime invested, ha. Unfortunately we only get to play maybe once a month though /: ). I also accidentally fell into Her Story and ended up finishing it in one sitting.

Oh, and Eat Your Heart Out reservations closed early this week too! So all of Monday was spent gaming + dealing with last minute emails/payment plans/questions and such about the release.

Once the middle of the week rolled around I realized the month was almost over, which means the first half of the year is nearly over, which means… sales tax time -__- Which is always super boring, but needs to be done because laws. In addition to some bookkeeping, I also had to finally get my junk together from Otakon (seriously, I still had my merch and stuff all over the house because I’d simply been too tired and meh to deal with it), take inventory, and all that responsibility stuff that needs to be done post-con.

The end of the week was spent catching up on a Melancholia order that was SO super delayed due to getting more orders for that dress than I was expecting (honestly those dresses take about double the time to make as any standard dress), and Otakon and Eat Your Heart Out taking over my life temporarily.

Uhm.. so I think that’s it? A pretty boring, pretty standard, post-con week.

Welcome to my life.