Three years. When we started Lost In Drawers, it was with a long term goal in mind: our brand, our online presence for a vintage clothing store…whether it be on Etsy or otherwise. We had an idea and a blank canvas on which to write our life and build a future business. It was never about living just to blog, but just to live as best we could. This just became our little corner of the internet. At first, we were slow to add things, constantly asking what we thought Lost In Drawers was, and what it should be. Has the blog had a singular theme? No, because that would be a simplification of our life over the last three years.
Is it a fashion or style blog? Yes, in its way. Is it a lifestyle blog? Well, we do live in Fort Worth Texas and we do like to seek out adventures. So, yes it’s a blog about not one thing, but about anything and the excitement and frustration that goes along with possibility. And in trying to document an honest depiction of our life, we have tried to show that we are not perfect. Either of us have made mistakes, and together we have gone through a lot these last three years; some of it our fault, and other things came at us out the blue.
But even when it is Emory making messes about and leaving 400 toys throughout the house for us to pick up at 1 am, we love him, and at the end of the day we love each other. Because we are learning how to communicate, not just say what we think the other person wants to hear. Because we accept that we are 33 (Bo) and 27 (Heather) and we love Disney and probably too many sweet things and there is nothing wrong with that. And we have loved each other even when documenting fashion didn’t quite work, or when the writing was bad and the frustration about life seemed to get in the way.
We started the blog first and foremost because we wanted to open an online Etsy store as a tool for developing our business concept. And three years later, we are still working on the project. It is something we haven’t spoken a lot about, because we believe in taking our time and letting our actions speak for us in what we create that is up to our standards we have set for ourselves. We work, we hustle and we have been riding the three year roller coaster of trying to figure out how and were we want our life to develop and grow roots.
And in all of this, has been the challenge and joy of marriage. Like most young couples, the assumption is that love is all you need and things will magically come together and there will be this wonderful honeymoon phase. And life isn’t like that in the real world if one is honest about. It’d be easy to ignore the growing pains and try and project a perfect image of our life. But we have written at length about struggle and honesty and the search for kindness, both in ourselves and in other people. Creating a new family out of two lives is a challenge, and even more challenging is integrating this new life together with existing family relationships. And the struggle has affected us in that Heather’s school experience was a disaster, Bo’s ministry opportunities dissipated. We have documented it all, and in the hope that the struggle would birth something good both in life and in business.
And three year in, we are learning every day that finding true happiness in our life without constantly wanting something else, and not always looking for something else when our own is right in front of us is a lesson in itself. We’ve made it to three years, and yet in a way we are only getting started – Lost In Drawers is an idea, a hope and now we see it a little more clearly than we did way back in 2009.
C.S. Lewis might have said it best: “Experience: that most brutal of teachers. But you learn, my God do you learn.”
