So long, farewell
Well friends, we have come to an end.
Cashmere & Plaid has been one of my favourite creative outlets for the last 6 years. It’s connected me to all sorts of people and allowed me to come into myself as a maker, a photographer, and a writer. But after much thought and lots of writing, I’ve decided that now is the time for the two of us to say goodbye.
I’ve been sitting with it for a while, making sure that it’s what I want and what I think is right. I haven’t talked about it with many people partly because it feels really personal and partly because it makes me feel a bit sad. But even though it feels sad it also feels right. So I’m trusting that feeling while I acknowledge my sadness and say goodbye.
Since 2013 Cashmere & Plaid has been everything from a virtual scrapbook to a networking tool to a coping mechanism and a mask. It holds some of my favourite memories from the last 6 years, it got me not one but two jobs, and helped me stay afloat when I really needed the help. It allowed me to take my love for photography, my creative spirit and my longing for connection, put them all together and create something special for both me and you.
When I first started Cashmere & Plaid it was simply a place for me to document the things that were going on in my life while I was living the dream in a dingy basement suite during my first year at UVic. When the blog was at its peak Cashmere & Plaid was a place people came to for DIY projects and brief weekly shares about what was going on in my life.
At one point, the blog was also a space that offered me sanctuary. There were times throughout the life of this blog that I didn’t know how I was going to make it through the day. On those days Cashmere & Plaid gave me a reason to be creative and allowed me to remain engaged with the world on my own terms and in a way that I could handle. For that I will always be grateful.
Over the last little while, however, it’s started to feel like the blog has come full circle and reached its end. I don’t have the need or desire to create for the sake of my own survival anymore and sharing snippets of my life over here has stopped feeling right. So today I am thanking and saying goodbye to this corner of the internet.
Writing this goodbye felt both completely unnecessary and like the most important thing in the world. There aren’t tens of thousands of you who would message me begging for more content so I could have easily just abandoned it, ghosted you, and left you wondering if/when I’d be back with a new post… But since you’re sitting here reading this, I know that you care and because of that I feel like you deserve a proper goodbye and a thank you. Thank you for allowing me to grace your inbox, take up space on your Pinterest boards, and occupy your newsfeeds. Thank you for taking the time to read what I wrote and for sharing your own stories in response to mine. It’s been a wonderful experience for me getting to both share and receive in this space and I don’t think it would have existed for as long as it did had it not been for the back and forth that we shared.
I plan on leaving the blog up until next year so that all of the DIYs people are loving from Pinterest will still be accessible for a while. But come January 4, 2020 (7 years to the day since it all started) Cashmere & Plaid will be shut down. So soakl up all you can for the next 337 days!
And now I am officially saying goodbye.
Thank you for everything you were and for everything you gave me.
Thank you for holding me, my memories, my photos, and my thoughts.
Thank you for allowing me to find and use my voice in this cozy little corner of the internet.
If you’re interested in continuing to follow along with whatever I get up to next, you can find me on Instagram and over at Emily Johnson | Unparalleled, my new business where I offer unparalleled digital support in the form of branding, web design, and all things virtual.