Sol Scents

During the pandemic my wife started a candle business. It was called Sol Scents.

It does not exist any more, and it is coming back, and both of those need explaining.

What it was

2020 was a year when a lot of people started something, mostly because there was nothing else to do with the hours. Most of those did not survive contact with the world restarting.

Hers was good. She made it, named it, built it, and it was hers entirely — I was not in a state to be much help to anybody during that stretch, which is its own page and not a flattering one.

Why it stopped

Two things, close together.

Somebody else in Texas claimed the name. That is a thing that happens, and it happens most often to small businesses who built something before they registered it. You find out when you find out.

She got pregnant with twins.

Either one alone might have been survivable. Both at the same time meant a decision, and the decision was to let it go.

I want to be careful not to make that sound tragic, because it was not. It was a choice two adults made with a reasonable look at what the next few years would require. Twins are not a setback you work around. They are the thing.

What it costs to let something go

I have spent ten years refusing to let go of a record, so I am poorly placed to be objective here.

But I watched somebody put real work into something, hit two unrelated obstacles at once, and make the call. That is a harder and more adult thing than what I did, which was to grimly refuse to stop for a decade and call it dedication.

Not every project should survive. Mine happened to. Hers happened not to, for reasons that had nothing to do with whether it was good.

Candles are coming back

Under the Rebel Lion Music umbrella.

Not yet — nothing to buy today, no date to give you. But it is the plan, and it is in writing here so that it is harder to quietly not do, which is the only scheduling technique that has ever worked on me.

The logic is simple enough. The coffee started as a song and became a real product with a real roaster. The things around the music are part of the project, not merch bolted onto it. A candle line that started as my wife's and comes back under this roof fits that exactly.

Sol Scents was hers and the name is gone. What comes next will be something else, with her hands in it, and it will not have to be built in the worst year either of us had.