Finding yourself in the perfect chair

Perfection in design is subjective. Perfection is an ideal each person has to discover for themselves. Like it or not, the perfect chair only exists in a moment in time, in the eyes of a single person. For me, it was 2012. I was a junior in high school when my mom found a vintage orange chair at a garage sale. I was only vaguely familiar with MCM back then, but orange was my favorite color. I obsessed over that chair.

I took a metal and wood shelf from our garage, part MCM and part industrial, set it up with my books, and felt like I was set. From then on, I was always hunting for the perfect pieces for my home. In college I convinced my roommates to each chip in $50 so we could buy the perfect large sofa I found on Craigslist. On my own I thrifted furniture, bought a few new pieces, and even built my own wonky bed frame and custom wall unit. My prize was a vintage brown vinyl sofa with three equidistant tufts, which I centered in my living room. This was 2018 in Helena, Montana, and somehow I managed it all on $14 an hour working at the local TV station.

I loved that apartment. It was on the top floor of a three story walk up, just a few blocks from multiple trailheads into the Montana foothills and three blocks the other way from historic downtown. Years earlier they had blocked off a few streets downtown and turned them into a quaint outdoor mall. I could walk everywhere. I could afford to live alone as an almost-college graduate. And still, I felt a deep sense of depression that almost took me out.

I slept 12 to 14 hours a day that winter. I had moved away from all my friends in Seattle and gotten a job directing local news, my supposed dream job. On paper I should have been happy. I was doing what I once dreamt of as a kid (and to be clear, I had a lot of different dreams). But I didn’t feel like I had a purpose. I was lonely and unsure how to handle a life that was suddenly 45 hours a week working for other people. I was stuck in the kind of environment most people know too well: working on projects you’re not passionate about, with little control over quality or direction, realizing a corporation doesn’t notice the difference between 100 percent effort and 10 percent effort. Honestly, I think most companies are perfectly comfortable at around 50 percent.

One day I decided to test what would happen if I put in the least amount of effort possible. Two months later, I was offered a promotion and a raise. Conflict with coworkers eased. Watching Netflix and YouTube for seven of my ten hours a day was apparently a winning strategy. That’s when I knew I had to get out.

Back in college I had already been gaming systems for maximum reward with minimum effort. My second semester I overloaded on credits: a marketing internship with my college, a photography class, newspaper staff, yearbook staff, and one philosophy course. Each counted as a class. The catch? They all required photos. So I just repurposed the same photo sets across them all. Meanwhile, the philosophy professor was famously face blind and only took attendance via a sign in sheet. A friend signed me in, no one questioned my progress in the other “classes,” and I skipped an entire month. I still pulled a 3.8 GPA.

But here’s the reality: that left me just as depressed. It took staring into the eyes of mediocrity and boredom to realize my whole philosophy of life was trash. Instead of taking the raise and promotion, which would have given me even more time with Netflix, I quit.

In my apartment I at least had full control of the space. I could arrange it however I wanted. Back then I had a 780 credit score and never worried about rent. A few years later my score dropped to the mid-500s, I was nearly evicted, but I still never regretted leaving that job.

Now I have my choice of chairs. My favorite one is the one I’m sitting in right now: a pleather and plastic mass-produced office chair in the parent lounge at my son’s physical therapy clinic. My little girl is in my lap as we wait for him to finish his session. And I’ll tell you, the rarest Knoll or Herman Miller lounger doesn’t come close to the perfection of any chair I get to hold my kids in.

The Wide World of Burnout

I’m five years into furniture next month. Five years and I’ve just started to peel away the layers and complexities of business, design, and management that come with owning and running your own business. I’ve had more failures than I’d care to admit. Every mistake a payment into the tuition of a solo venture with nearly no rules. In year five I’m seeing other business owners struggle and drop off, some with a quiet ending to their Instagram posts, others with more public posts on ending their business.

Burnout hits us all. I took a long break from refinishing this spring. As we all do, I took stock of what I had done and where I was going. I just moved to Denver and was lucky enough to have a break. My business partner in Seattle largely took over the storefront I had opened and I concentrated on family for a few months.

It has taken me about six months to fall in love with this again. My store in Seattle closed. I could and may write a very long post on why and what I learned, but the short version is this: I wasn’t great at picking the right people to work with. I brought on folks who weren’t a good fit, and I didn’t stay close enough to daily operations. That mix caught up with me. Closing the store ended up being a relief. I had been buried in logistics and sales, grinding out 60 hour weeks without doing the parts of the business I actually love.

I can also be honest here with myself and all of you. I wouldn’t, don’t, and won’t for a long while consider myself an expert on design, furniture, or business. Ironically I was more confident in my knowledge and skillset after the first year than I am now. There is so much to know. I have a wide range of knowledge, but I still easily get lost in obscure designers, exotic woods, and art.

On a recent trip to Los Angeles I went to many antique and thrift stores. I met people who have been in the business most of their lives. I found art I loved. I got to go to the beach with my family. It was a refreshing trip that let me rethink how I do this and where I would like to be in ten years.

Burnout has a way of making you pause and ask if what you are building is really what you want. Sometimes it takes closing a store or walking away from certain projects to see the bigger picture. What matters most to me now is building a business that supports my life, not a life that gets swallowed by my business.

Five years in, I still love furniture, design, and the thrill of finding obscure and interesting things to give them a new life. I want to keep that love intact. If I can do that, maybe another five years will look less like burnout and more like balance.