Today we’d like to introduce you to Amy Boyer.
Hi Amy, it’s an honor to have you on the platform. Thanks for taking the time to share your story with us – to start maybe you can share some of your backstory with our readers?
I guess the question is – where am I today? I find myself here: forty one years old, jobless, and orphaned.
I started my adult life with a plan. I wanted to be an interior designer. It was the early heyday of design TV. Trading Spaces was king and HGTV was queen. I left small-town Wisconsin and went to Savannah College of Art and Design where I studied Interior Design and also threw in a Fashion minor. I loved SCAD. Savannah is such a beautiful and inspiring city. And while I’ve always been creative-minded, I’m also a type A personality that loves order and structure, so art school was perfect for me.
Cut to four (and a half) years later, I’m about to graduate, and I’m terrified. I felt completely unprepared for the real world and even though I could read a floor plan and render design elevations, I had no clear concept of what a job in Interior Design would entail. This was as far as my plan had gotten me. Now what?? I ran home and had a minor quarter-life crisis.
After about a year of floundering, a good friend that I had made in Savannah called me up – she was starting a new job in LA but couldn’t afford to move and live out there on her own…would I go with her? Hell yeah I would! California was actually always the goal! (Sidenote: I was born out here, but we moved to Wisconsin when I was a kid. I used to joke that I never forgave my mom for that move until I was back on the Pacific Ocean.)
So I packed up my Ikea futon and drove out to Los Angeles. And it was the dream. I loved it so much. I started a Tumblr called Miss Amy Loves LA for god’s sake! What was I doing with my life? Going wherever the wind took me and racking up credit card debt along the way without a care in the world. What did it matter? I was in L fuckin’ A baby.
Work-wise, I was jumping around different retail jobs and eventually landed a customer service position at TOMs. The job was less than ideal but when I walked up that little alley in Santa Monica with its twinkle light adorned garage door warehouse and cute hipster boys and girls all around, I was sold. And TOMs fostered a culture of creativity, so I embraced the creative spirit decorating my cube with found furniture, starting a flower exchange club, dressing up for themed happy hours, and taking over chalkboard walls for spirit day backdrops.
Creatively I was flourishing outside of work too. I was blogging my OOTDs and LA adventures, I started making tiny paintings of dingbat apartment buildings and other iconic architecture around town, and got really into lomography.
Then the layoffs happened. I’d been at TOMs for about four years when suddenly I just wasn’t anymore. Towards the end of my time there, I had been dipping my toes into the social media team’s pool, helping them out here and there and loving it. So I reached out to a friend who had recently left TOMs for a job at a social media agency – and they hired me! Phew.
And that’s the pool I’ve been swimming in for the last eight years – social media, specifically entertainment social media. At first it was fun – I got to work on really cute campaigns like The Fault in Our Stars and The Peanuts Movie, and really huge campaigns like Deadpool and Cocaine Bear. But it quickly lost its luster and after countless company acquisitions and two layoffs later, it’s time to move forward with intentional joy.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
To say it’s been a bumpy road would be an understatement. My dad took his own life when I was young, which prompted the move to Wisconsin where my mom would have more family and a lower cost of living to raise me as a single parent. Money was always tight, and I know we lived beyond our means (to the detriment of her credit score) but she never made me feel like we were broke. When I was in high school, my mom was in a horrific car accident. She was saved by Jaws of Life and hospitalized for weeks. She always put me first, and it was only through the settlement from the accident, and the generosity of a great aunt, that I was able to pay for college. And like I mentioned before, moving to California put me in the hole credit-wise.
The last two years have been particularly challenging. After the highest high of meeting my person and getting engaged, I was met with my lowest low – my mom was diagnosed with stage four ovarian cancer. The wedding was fast-tracked and the majority of the next year and a half were spent in Wisconsin as her caregiver. My mom passed in September of 2024 and being witness to her last days was the worst experience I will likely ever go through; I’m in tears now as I write this.
Cleaning out her house was an eye-opening experience and a wake-up call of its own. You know how they say collecting art supplies is a hobby in itself? My mom took that to a whole new level. She is where my creativity comes from, but also my tendency to procrasti-plan. She had big, big dreams for projects for herself but zero follow through beyond gathering the necessary supplies. My partner and I took literal carloads of unstarted projects to Goodwill. It was depressing, to say the least. But the experience was powerful and provoked self-reflection. Since her passing, there’s been an intentional shift in how I approach my goals. I’ve moved from talking about lofty dreams to actively pursuing them, a lesson learned through the act of physically sorting through my mom’s unfulfilled dreams.
The month following my mom’s passing, while dealing with the bureaucratic bullshit logistics that are piled on top of those in grief, we found out that our dog, Henry, had cancer. My sweet baby boy was only six years old, and it felt like a cruel joke from the universe. He underwent surgery to remove a mass the size of an orange. We were too late though. The cancer had already spread throughout his body. A mere six months after losing my mom, I lost another beloved family member to this senseless illness. He was put down in our home, surrounded by his favorite people and his belly full of steak. He was my soul dog, my sweetest friend, my fiercest four legged ally through the collective trauma of the last few years.
By that time, I was back to work (I had taken three months of FMLA to care for my mom) and I have never known a rage so deep as when clients and coworkers acted as if Instagram posts for their reality shows were life or death crises. I’ve witnessed death, and let me tell you – nothing matters except living our truest lives, following our dreams, and treating each other with love and compassion. I promise you.
Lady Layoff appeared in my life once again, and this time around I couldn’t be more grateful for her showing up. Life is starting to feel back to normal. Without the stress of a corporate job looming over me, I’ve been able to get back to creative pursuits that had fallen to the wayside while I was in the thick of grief. There were a solid 2-3 months where I couldn’t pick up a book, which is unheard of for me, but now I’m back to reading around five to eight books a month. I went down the rabbit hole of alcohol marker coloring books and have a stack of them I pick up from when I’m watching TV. I picked up a craft appliance that has been sitting on the shelf for three years (hello, tiny pottery wheel!) and am determined to produce at least one imperfectly perfect tiny vase – with lots of wonky bowls in the meantime.
Any big plans?
I’ve always had the bug to go my own way; I’ve attempted a handful of entrepreneurial endeavors in the past: closet organization, boozy burlesque cupcakes, a craft party truck, a habit tracking planner, accountability coaching. The difference now is that through my grief, I have the time, the means, and the motivation.
The current plan is multi-pronged – to scratch a couple of different creative itches I currently have. One: I’m putting together an Etsy shop where I’ll be selling embroidery patterns of my own design. I’m a jack-of-all-trades crafter but I really love embroidery. It’s a peaceful and meditative practice for me. Once the shop is up and running, I’ll be embroidering the designs and selling those pieces as well.
Two and three: I’m taking a course to pursue art life coaching and looking into becoming a freelance voice over artist. Friends frequently tell me that I’m a calming presence to be in the company of, and I think I can take that along with the art life coaching certification to help people online (see plan part four below). I’ve been told I have a nice voice and I did a couple of voice over pieces in my last job and really loved it! This prong of the plan is the most straightforward and income-driven.
Four and five: I’m refining my TikTok in order to document my journey, romanticize my life, build a community of like-minded folks, delve into the art life coaching practice, and potentially monetize my account. And lastly, perhaps a Substack version of documentation as well? Writing this was hugely cathartic and I hope it’s relatable to anyone reading.
I’m throwing a lot of paint at the wall here. What I wouldn’t give to have one big dream that I knew I wanted to pursue! But that’s never been me, and I have been given the gift of understanding that not everyone is made to be one thing. The gift my mom left me is an understanding of myself – that it is not in my DNA to limit myself to one narrow path but also that I need to push through to see projects to the end so as not to be left with only a full art supply closet years in the future. If I had to define one plan, one mission, or one pursuit, I would say that the dream is to live as creatively and curiously as possible, and hopefully inspire a person or two along the way.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.etsy.com/shop/alwaysmissamy
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/alwaysmissamy
- Other: https://www.tiktok.com/@missamytoks
