Chasing confidence down the rabbit hole.
“Despite having tons of ideas and projects upcoming and a to do list longer than Hercules-Corona Borealis Great Wall; I still sit here staring at a blank page for two hours and wonder what the hell I am doing.”
AI artwork of a multicoloured rabbit inspired by Alice in Wonderland, symbolising creative confidence
Confidence is never a constant companion. It’s like a magical rabbit that appears occasionally and then vanishes, leaving behind the smell of rainbows. Confidence is hard and no one can do it for you.
Self-help or imaginary rabbits?
I was the type of person to read every self-help guru out there. In my fixation I have been down more rabbit holes than I care to admit. Positive affirmations are cute. But they will not change your monthly income. Doing something about it will though.
When I started The Pavement Special, I didn’t put my name up. I didn’t post photos. I had no confidence in what I was doing; because I had no idea where it was going.
I was extremely fed up of thinking about all these ideas that I couldn’t fund. I was sick of thinking that I can only start something when…when I have the money, when I have the right job.
I’m still waiting for those things, if I had continued to wait, there would be no Mongrel anything.
Confidence isn’t always flowing
I am not sitting here the other side of a bank balance that affords me this opportunity, dictating to you. Quite the contrary, I’m sitting here fighting for it. I work 7 days a week.
My husband always says, “You need to chill, you never chill”.
Despite having tons of ideas and projects upcoming and a to do list longer than Hercules-Corona Borealis Great Wall; I still sit here staring at a blank page for two hours and wonder what the hell I am doing.
If I am doing it right, if I said it right, should I have done that instead, turquoise or amethyst? Confidence isn’t always flowing, and I literally can’t afford for it not to.
That clock doesn’t slow down for anyone, not even a magic rabbit.
When you realise you put your laptop-stand upside down.
My husband might not be wrong.
Case in point; I spent the past few months using my laptop stand upside down. Don’t ask, but yup. You know that feeling when you realise you are an idiot?
Rainbow coloured rabbit droppings
While the magical rabbit Confidence is not a mainstay feature. It’s crucial to learn off that rabbit and be your own cheerleader. No one is going to tell you that you are magical, and if they do, well, lucky you. (Now I’m thinking of Aurora, the singer not the borealis, lol)
So, I guess I’m hunting rabbits.
Metaphorically speaking. That’s the only rabbit hole worth playing in. Confidence isn’t “I think my cap is the best in the world”; it’s working to design the best cap in the world. I might not do it, but maybe, that bloody rabbit pops up while I’m working on it.
Chase the work. The rabbit shows up when it wants.
What is The Mongrel Studio?
“The next chapter is finding a collaborator, making the cap and launching it.”
The first Mongrel Studio logo; the creative home behind Mongrel Logic’s sustainable design philosophy
The Mongrel Studio is where I designed my first cap. It had no name back then. It’s a physical space as much as it is a space inside my head. Where the ridiculous and the incredible are possible. I am one of those people who is interested in everything. I have the good fortune of wide-ranging experience.
I love both the light and the dark, I can easily be found cleaning with Devil wears Prada running in the background listening to Lorna Shore whilst contemplating why we’re trying to terraform a planet with no rotating core. This example isn’t exclusive.
Why did I develop The Mongrel Studio?
I can’t help with Mars. But after I designed the cap, I developed the studio to answer the design questions I have been asking my whole life. Why we do things the way we do and how I could do it better.
When I was a kid; at The Kruger National Park my brother and I slept in a one-man tent that was dripping with condensation, listening to Hyenas sniffing around the campsite. I still hate tents.
One night, there was an infestation of black beetles that stank worse than anything I have ever smelled. They gathered around lights and died in the thousands. I will never forget that smell, it took my breath away like horseradish or wasabi. I love both of those, I just mean the compound in the smell, it knocks your breath back into your throat.
I was looking at the streetlight outside the other night, it was at about midnight, and there was one lonely bug swirling around it; getting ever closer to the spider web spun across the light. It made me sad. I have always loved nature and deplore how we live with it.
What does this have to do with caps? Nothing. And everything. It’s the backbone of everything I do. It’s important to design with nature in mind. We must do things better. It can’t just be about profit and eating up resources. I don’t have an answer to it all. But I finally have a home for my mad scientist to live.
From a Cap to Solving the world’s problems
I want to help that lonely bug, and I want to help people be able to earn their own money. If you can’t afford to eat, you can’t afford to care about insects. The focus right now is making a cap that, with care, will last you a lifetime. It’s something that your kid might dig out of your cupboard in 20 years’ time and claim it as their own. Using the right materials. Not producing landfill in the form of fast fashion. Creating products that have a life on the second-hand market. Limited, capsule drops under the label Mongrel Logic™.
Transparency is key as well, I think. I don’t have everything figured out yet, six months ago there was no brand, just a blog and me trying to figure out what my next step was. Now I am madly pulling together design files and hunting for the right collaborator.
The next chapter for the studio
The next chapter is finding a collaborator, making the cap and launching it. After that, I have more tricks up my sleeve and a vision. The vision being the development of a house that empowers others to do the same and bring access to those who don’t have it.
How is Mongrel Studios going to help?
I know this is bigger than me. The hard part will be getting it done, but I’m not sweating. It starts with our signature edition cap, motivated by a desire to see people win, because we can’t solve the worlds problems if we are all constantly losing.
Welcome to Mongrel Studio.
If you are still reading, thank you. Follow along to see the cap launch unfold and watch what becomes of this space. Collaborators welcome. Subscribe to the newsletter; coming soon and follow on socials. This is just the beginning.
How to Start a Business When You Don’t Even Know What It Is Yet
“I did have a closet full of the skeletons of dead dreams. And I was determined not to add to it. I had no idea what to do, I just knew I had to do something.”
Designer drawing with a dog sleeping nearby ; early days of building the Mongrel Logic brand from scratch
There’s this peculiar phase at the start of any venture; a time when your ideas are still nebulous and even you struggle to make sense of them. You’ve technically started a business, but you don’t know what it is yet, it’s like trying to solve a puzzle with half the pieces missing. When I first started, I felt like I was wandering in the dark. You kind of hope people don’t ask you what you do; because you still don’t know and by now, you feel like you should have it all figured out.
Why did I start out with nothing?
When I started The Pavement Special, I had no capital, only a basic skills assessment, and a gut feeling. I had an eight-year-old phone that was so outdated that watching a video on YouTube was a frustrating experience, with ads overlaying the video and audio for both playing simultaneously. My laptop, with just 3GB of RAM, was barely functional. I could only afford free Google docs. I had no job at the time. I did have a closet full of the skeletons of dead dreams. And I was determined not to add to it. I had no idea what to do, I just knew I had to do something.
Not knowing what to do and doing it anyway.
I knew I liked writing, but I had always kept the idea of writing for a living hidden away, so I dug it out the closet and put a pretty frock on it and dragged it to work. I spent a year trying to be consistent and often struggled. During this time, while I worked through my existential crises and endless questions, various ideas came to me. Some ideas were fleeting, and with hindsight, not good. Others took root and are growing into projects that are now in development. For example, the birth and development of my brand, Mongrel Logic, a cap designed as wearable art. It’s a first step toward a broader studio vision.
What have I learned from this?
I aimed to achieve small technological advancements and growth whenever I could afford it. Thankfully, I found a job during this period. This job became both my investment strategy and my biggest time obstacle, which I still battle today. I have learned that doing something is better than doing nothing and waiting is pointless; regardless of what you think you need to get started, begin with what you have. I had no idea I would be sitting here with a cap and a studio six months ago. The way it all came together, one stone at a time, is still incredible to me.
Why did I do it like this?
I decided that acting was better than sitting and thinking about what might be possible if I had a thousand dollars. Or ten thousand, or fifty, or waiting till things were right. I decided that I could no longer wait until I had the money, the information or the hardware. I’ve already spent over ten years researching. I just didn’t know that what I was doing at the time, was research. After living through the worst decade of my life, I felt angry at everything. I had expected things to be different by now. And we still don’t have hoverboards. I relied on my gut instinct, trusting it for the first time in a long while.
Ok, but how does building this business, in public, help you?
Well, I’m failing for all to see, forging in the fires of…gawd…Sorry. I’m proving that it can be done, whatever that thing is you want to do that you don’t know what it is, but you know you can’t stand it here, so it’s better than not doing it. (Surely?) I’m proving that you can achieve your goals, even if you’re not entirely sure what they are yet.