The company I started back in 2013, Brutal Pixie is gone. By which I mean, the brand has been torched. The company is still here, but this time I’m backing myself.
Brutal Pixie wasn’t mine to begin with. Not really.
The company Brutal Pixie was a fun and memorable eight-almost-nine years. But its name and brand were not created by me. Both were gifts. They were gifted to me by a woman who was my first journalist at Metal as Fuck, a publication created in partnership with a terrifyingly psychopathic, though charming and intelligent man. The man was someone with whom I was in a long-standing, toxic, and damaging co-dependency. The journalist became someone who seemed to me unhappy in her own skin, forever chasing travel and the next intoxicating drug. Neither have been in my life for a long time.
Making new people makes you new, too.
When my little fella came along and I reconnected with myself, I felt how wrong-all-over was Brutal Pixie.
It wasn’t just that the brand didn’t fit me any more. It was too hard to explain, even after more than 9 years of operation. I became out of step with the market and its needs. I stopped caring about its services. It bored me beyond belief. Even my daily emails became a chore, its offers falling flat for more than a year, its subscribers bailing like rats out of a sinking ship.
Over the past four months I have focused on my art instead. The art of being an engaged, focused and patient mother. The art of an author and creator.
I have taken real and meaningful steps to recover my artistry. What I discovered is that I’d put my inner artist into a deep, concrete cell and soundproofed it very well. I couldn’t hear her cries as she bloodied the walls attempting to claw her way out, losing her fingertips in the process. Letting her out, healing her, has been the best thing I could have done.
As for that Other Thing —
Brutal Pixie is officially a thing of the past, with the name manifest officially at ASIC. Almost all of its digital assets will be destroyed in the coming weeks, and profiles online removed or changed over in coming months. You’ll find me dancing around the outside of the burning fire in ecstatic celebration. I say ‘almost’ because some of the tools I’d built I decided to keep. You’ll find ‘em over at Gumroad.
So what is the company now?
The company now takes my own name. I’ve pared services right back to this finite list, each of which sparks joy. (Joy is what Leticia means, did you know?).
I’m backing myself, figuratively and literally for what feels like the first time since I was 15 years old. And it feels amazing.
xx Leticia
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