In September 2023, my hours at Bare Necessities Thrift moved with me to Liverpool. I'd be the one writing captions, planning posts, and approving stories, but I wouldn't be in the shop, and the shop's whole appeal was its specificity. The mismatched corners, the chalkboard signs, the way a particular jumper looked under the back-room lights at four in the afternoon.
So the first job was honest: figuring out what I could and couldn't do from my desk.
Photos and short clips, the team in store could send me. Captions, scheduling, story sequencing, performance review: I could do those at any time of day, between lectures, in the library. The thing I lost was reaction speed. If something happened in the shop on a Thursday afternoon, by the time I'd seen it, written it up, and got it scheduled, the moment had passed.
The fix wasn't to try harder at being spontaneous. It was to plan for steadiness instead. I built a calendar that ran four weeks ahead. I batched the shoots I needed during weekends home. I kept a running document of evergreen caption ideas that would still feel fresh whenever they went out.
I stopped trying to make every post feel like a moment. The moments came back on their own.
The brand stayed coherent. I stayed sane. And looking back, this was probably the period that taught me the most operationally: about the difference between work that has to happen now, and work that just feels urgent.