Warning: Some Assembly Required
Issue #57: An Amtrak ticket, $14, and the most literal lightbulb moment imaginable.
Many chapters of my life have closely resembled the experience of assembling an IKEA dresser with an umlaut-riddled name: following vague instructions that read like a foreign language, jumping to step #5 before I’ve finished step #3, and never once using that little nylon safety strap to permanently affix the dresser to the wall.
But hindsight doing what hindsight does, once the clunky thing is built and my socks and undies are safely stashed away, it’s easy to understand how each piece led to the next — even if I definitely have more cam locks leftover than basic engineering logic could explain.
During the fall of 2019, with screws and bolts scattered everywhere and not even a picture on the box to guide me, my future felt like it could become anything. This native East Coaster was living on the opposite side of the country for the first time in her life, and she was eager to explore. I checked off every corner of San Francisco, my calendar was dotted with weekend trips to Big Sur and Lake Tahoe, and the billboards for $59 flights to Maui plastered along Market Street had my wanderlust wheels spinning even faster.
The irony that just a few months later, I’d be resigned to online yoga classes and Zoom happy hours in my tiny living room is not lost on me. But before anyone knew what the word “quarantine” entailed, I discovered the world-expanding magic of solo travel, and an adventurous seed was planted that would quickly outgrow its pot.
I went to Salt Lake City for a graphic design workshop, I spent a week beach-hopping in Orange County, and after visiting a friend in Vancouver, I decided that instead of flying home, I would mosey my way back down to SF on the train by way of Seattle — another city I had never been to, and a trip that would turn out to be way more significant than I realized at the time.
As a first time visitor, and with no plans besides to wander, I felt obligated to play tourist. After grabbing a grande flat white from a cute local coffeeshop called Starbucks, my next stop was predictably Pike Place Market.
Once I got past the scent of raw fish that slapped me across the face upon stepping inside, I was instantly hypnotized by the countless neon signs which line the halls of the market. It was a quintessential wet, gray, Pacific Northwest morning, so these signs really seemed to jump off the walls.
Dozens of shops thrifted, several bookstores browsed, and a gallon of clam chowder chowed down, I finally set off on the relaxing 22-hour1 train ride back home. Amtrak’s lousy WiFi became a forced digital detox, and I found myself doodling recreations of those Pike Place neon signs I was so obsessed with. Without much thought, I fired off a few sketches to some native Seattleite friends, and they nearly fell out of their chairs begging me to turn it into a poster.
The following week, I put the poster up for sale online, snuck a promotion-disguised-as-storytelling post by the r/seattle subreddit mods, and within 48 hours, I had 800 upvotes and sold over $500 worth of my little neon sign doodles.
The money was cool, but more importantly, it sparked the idea to turn this one niche poster into many, many more — it was a literal lightbulb moment.
Throughout 2020, when I wasn’t baking sourdough or drinking wine in my tiny living room, I made a few more posters, but among all of the things that seemed to go down the drain during the pandemic was my creativity. Instead of pouring my blood, sweat, and pixels into this new side project, I dragged my feet for over two more years, mostly under the procrastinational guise of letting the idea marinate and because I couldn’t think of a good name for the business. Ugh.
It wasn’t until another WiFi-less travel day when I re-read one of my favorite books2 that I would snap out of this dilly-dallying, thanks to Elizabeth Gilbert’s blunt reminder that WAITING TO TAKE ACTION ON A CREATIVE IDEA IS BAD BAD BAD (she may have phrased it ever so slightly more eloquently).
When I arrived at my destination — I’d be spending eight full weeks in the laptop-friendly-café-lined streets of El Poblado in Medellín, Colombia, wanderlust now activated to level 100 — I was pissed at myself for having made zero progress on this project during the pandemic, and knew it was time to finally get to work.
Motivation and creative juices freshly refilled, I unpacked my bags and gave myself until midnight that same day to come up with a list of names from which I would ultimately choose. And on March 11, 2022 around 11pm — four years ago today — I purchased the domain “backstorymaps.com” for $14 from Shopify.
Purchasing a domain for a side project is always a symbolic moment — it’s like naming a child, it provides a date of birth to celebrate, and it turns all of those messy scribbles in your notebook into a real, live business.
But the funny thing is, that it wasn’t this self-imposed deadline or any baby-naming book that suddenly got the creativity flowing. Instead, the actual backstory of how Backstory became Backstory is much more ridiculous than that:
True to the name I accidentally stumbled upon finally decided on, Backstory Map Co. was built on five continents, in a dozen countries, and now sells to customers around the world. Already in 2026 I’ve re-infused new life into things by launching a brand new website, several new poster designs, and just earlier this week, Backstory was approved as an official wholesale vendor on Faire.
None of this came with an assembly manual or grand master plan. In fact, from the funny naming miscommunication to the idea falling into my lap in the first place, I’ve been winging it at every step and building my eCommerce skillset as I go, with lines of code and pixels acting as my screws and nails.
Creativity, motivation, and free time have come and gone in waves, but four years into it — six and a half if you count back to that initial Seattle trip that inspired the whole thing — I’ve learned that when it comes to side projects, some months you sort out the pieces on the floor, other months you learn how to build the drawers, and sometimes, you spend an entire month just searching for that damn Allen wrench that keeps going missing.
Because even if things take a little longer than expected, or even if you don’t know what to name it, or even if you don’t quite know how those wooden slats will eventually all fit together, you just have to start building — otherwise you’ll never know which of the hundreds of pieces to pick up next.
Happy birthday, Backstory Map Co.!
Thanks as always for following along as I grow my eComm empire in 2026.
-Emily 👩🏼💻🏗️
PS: If you’ve got a side project idea of your own that you’ve been sitting on, I’d love to hear about it — please please please reach out!
PS x2: Was this another promotion-disguised-as-storytelling post? You bet your ass it was! No, definitely not. But as a thank you for reading this far, here’s a $10 code good towards any purchase at Backstory Map Co: STORYTIME10 📍🗺️
Related Side Project(-ish) Posts:
Yes, I know it’s like a 90-minute flight from Seattle to SF, but I wouldn’t have seen the rainbow-gradient peak of PNW fall colors from an Alaska Airlines middle seat. This timing was unplanned of course, but yet another unforgettable experience that can be chalked up to the magic of solo travel.
Surprisingly, even given my globetrotting ways, my basic white girl cliché Elizabeth Gilbert book of choice has always been Big Magic, not Eat, Pray, Love.
As a fellow side-project connoisseur, would you be willing to share who you use for print-on-demand? I'm considering using it for one of my side-projects as I keep pausing my Etsy shop for 6 months when I take off to thru-hike 😅 I always feel a bit guilty because I enjoy packing orders, but the sustainability and ability to keep my shop open while I'm gone is motivating me to try a print on demand service.
What a backstory on Backstory! Proactive serendipity at its finest.