On the morning of Dec. 9, Carly Beaumont—self-described visual artist and entrepreneurial Starbucks employee—snapped as she realized that her life was going nowhere.
While staring into a freshly brewed tall caramel macchiato, Beaumont looked up and discovered what she had known all along: her custom graphic tee business was bound to fail.
In the last six years, Beaumont said she has only finished a financial quarter in the black once, but that was due to a timely death in the family in which she inherited $6,000.
As an artsy kid, Beaumont grew up knowing that she was pretty good at drawing stuff. In late 2010, she started her own business drawing cool decals for bumper stickers. Then, in 2013, she stepped out on her own as she realized that there were probably more people than cars and founded a t-shirt printing enterprise, hand drawing 100 per cent of the graphics herself.
While staring into her coffee one morning, something that she has grown to love as she frets through the long hours of no emails and building debts, she came to the realization that her life was probably going nowhere and she might be better off staying at her Starbucks job where she has perfected the art of knowing exactly which customers are going to need lactose-free milk and which ones will immediately Instagram the cup if their name is spelled slightly wrong.
Currently, Beaumont is dancing around her one room apartment that she set up to look like a loft—with a very unhappy cat. She has plans to go out and get totally smashed at the local dive bar as she comes to terms with the reality of her situation.
Photo by Mariah Bridgeman.