There’s a particular kind of joy in lighting an incense you’ve made yourself and realising that it’s right.
Not nearly right. Not “maybe if I add a little more of this next time” right. Just… right. One of those Goldilocks moments.
I had one of those moments recently with B5 — which is still called B5 because apparently developing incense is easier than naming it. It burned beautifully, smelled magnificent and, for a brief shining moment, I felt like I knew exactly what I was doing.
Then there’s Frank & Rose. I name things. Cars, coffee makers, plants, blenders… most things in my life eventually score a name. So naming an incense blend should have been easy. My dad was Frank, and my Grammy was Mrs Rose, so when a blend of frankincense and rose came along, the name was obvious.
Frank & Rose. And frankly, they’re giving me grief.
Rose powder, it turns out, doesn’t necessarily care about your sentimental attachment to a name. Too much of it and the incense doesn’t want to burn properly. Change the balance and it burns, but suddenly there’s not much Rose left in Rose. Frank is there somewhere, but he’s not exactly shouting either.
There have been notes, percentages, test batches, cones, sticks and more sniffing of smoke than I ever imagined would be involved in this particular chapter of my life. And somewhere between the magnificent B5 and the increasingly complicated relationship between Frank and Rose, a familiar little thought creeps in.
Who exactly do you think you are?
Dreams are much easier before you start chasing them
Dreams are wonderful when they live in your head. In your head, the business works. The products are beautiful. The workshop is gorgeous. People come. They love what you make. Everything smells incredible and presumably nobody has ever had to scrape failed incense mixture off anything.
Then you decide to actually do it.
Suddenly the dream has measurements and costs and ingredients that don’t behave the way you thought they would. There are things to learn that you didn’t even know you needed to learn. You look at people who have been doing it for years and wonder what on earth made you think you belonged in the same space.
Hello, imposter syndrome.
It’s an odd thing, starting something new as an adult. We’re used to being reasonably competent at life. We know how to do things. We have experience. We’ve solved problems, changed direction, started over and accumulated all sorts of useful knowledge along the way.
And then we choose something new and suddenly we’re beginners again.
I’m learning incense properly — not simply mixing nice-smelling things together and hoping for the best. I’m learning how ingredients behave, how they burn, what happens when ratios change, why something works beautifully in one form and refuses to cooperate in another.
Some days I feel like a maker.
Other days I’m staring at a small lump of fragrant dough wondering why it has apparently developed a personal vendetta against a bamboo stick.
The temptation is to look at the people further down the road and assume they possess something you don’t. More talent. More confidence. Some mysterious qualification that officially gave them permission to be there.
But I’m beginning to suspect most of them simply started before I did.
The failures are part of the craft
The strange thing is, the failures are becoming some of my favourite parts. Not necessarily while they’re happening. There’s nothing particularly enchanting about making something you’re excited about and discovering it won’t burn. Or cracks. Or falls off the stick. Or burns perfectly but smells nothing like you expected.
But every one of those little mishaps teaches me something. Change a bit here, tweak a bit there, watch the percentages. Batches get adjusted. Notes get scribbled. Ingredients go up or down. Something that failed as one type of incense might work beautifully as another.
And every so often, you light something and think:
Oh.
There it is.
That moment wouldn’t mean nearly as much if everything worked the first time.
Maybe that’s the difference between dreaming about doing something and actually learning a craft. The dream is the beautiful finished picture. The craft is everything underneath it — the mistakes, repetition, curiosity, frustration and tiny discoveries nobody else ever sees.
I’m still very much in that part.
Wild Hollow isn’t arriving fully formed with a polished collection and years of expertise tucked neatly behind it. It’s being built while I learn. There will be things that work and things that don’t. There will undoubtedly be more batches with names like B1, B2 and B5 before I work out what on earth to call them.
And Frank & Rose?
They’re still together.
For now.