Something Is Wrong With How We’re Running Businesses Up Here

There is a particular kind of pressure that comes with running a business in the North Country, one that is rarely acknowledged out loud because it doesn’t announce itself as stress in the way we’ve been taught to recognize it. It doesn’t always look like crisis or collapse or even burnout, at least not at first. More often, it shows up as a low-level hum that never fully turns off, a constant background noise made up of responsibility, expectation, visibility, and the unspoken belief that you should be doing more than you are.

It’s the pressure to perform, even when no one is explicitly asking you to. The pressure to create, to communicate, to stay relevant, to prove that what you’re building is working — not just to others, but to yourself. And in a small, interconnected place like this one, where your customers are also your neighbors and your reputation travels faster than any ad campaign ever could, that pressure can feel deeply personal.

I’ve been thinking about this a lot as the year comes to a close, especially after a recent conversation on North of Normal with Paige Roberts of Tailswag. What stayed with me wasn’t any single quote or insight, but the shared recognition that so many business owners here are carrying something similar: the exhaustion that comes from loving what you do while feeling constantly measured against an invisible standard you didn’t consciously choose.

For me, that pressure has been amplified by the constant presence of social media, not because I believe everything I see there, but because of how relentlessly it reinforces a particular story. Even when I’m not actively scrolling, the message lingers in the air: you should be posting more, you should be doing reels, you should have a content calendar, you should be leveraging this platform or that strategy, you should be growing faster, louder, bigger. Every suggestion carries an implied judgment — if you’re not doing these things, you’re falling behind.

What makes this especially insidious is that it rarely arrives as a single, dramatic thought. It comes in fragments, in moments between tasks, in the quiet space before sleep. You notice someone else’s polished post, their apparent ease, their consistency, and before you realize it, your nervous system has absorbed the comparison. Not consciously, not logically, but emotionally. The result isn’t motivation. It’s erosion.

I’ve had moments this year where I could feel that erosion happening in real time. Moments where I caught myself thinking not about what I wanted to say or share, but about what I wasn’t doing — all the things I’d been told were necessary to be taken seriously. And even though I know better, even though I understand the mechanics of algorithms and attention economies, the message still landed in my body as a quiet accusation: you are not enough, you are not doing enough, and whatever you’re building isn’t measuring up.

What struck me in my conversation with Paige was how clearly she named the exhaustion that comes from trying to override your natural rhythms in order to meet external expectations. Creativity doesn’t run on demand. Neither does clarity. And yet, so much of modern business culture treats both as if they should be infinitely available, ready on cue, unaffected by season, energy, or circumstance.

Here in the North Country, we understand seasons in a way that isn’t theoretical. We live them. We know what it means to slow down because the weather demands it, to adapt because conditions change, to respect cycles whether we want to or not. And yet, when it comes to our work, many of us hold ourselves to a standard that ignores those same realities. We expect constant output in a place that has always required patience.

There’s a quiet grief in that contradiction.

Many of us didn’t start businesses here because we wanted to chase constant growth or visibility. We did it because we wanted a life that felt grounded, connected, and real. We wanted to be part of a community rather than a market. But somewhere along the way, the noise of “should” began to drown out the quieter voice that led us here in the first place.

During the show, I spoke about how, over the past few weeks, I’ve intentionally stepped back from that noise. Not as an act of rebellion, but as an act of self-preservation. I noticed how often I was being bombarded with reminders of what I wasn’t doing, and how quickly those reminders translated into a sense of personal failure, even when nothing tangible had gone wrong. So I stopped. I didn’t announce it. I didn’t justify it. I simply chose not to engage with the part of the system that was making me feel smaller.

What surprised me was how uncomfortable that choice was at first. The absence of pressure felt almost wrong, like I was neglecting something important. But as the days passed, something else emerged in that space: relief. And then, slowly, perspective. Without the constant reinforcement of external expectations, I could finally hear my own thoughts again. I could feel what was actually working, what felt aligned, and what had been draining me without my fully realizing it.

This is the part of the conversation I wish more business owners felt allowed to have — not publicly, not performatively, but honestly. The part where we admit that being constantly visible doesn’t necessarily make us more connected, that productivity doesn’t always equal purpose, and that the pressure to perform can quietly disconnect us from the very reasons we started.

As the year turns, I don’t feel called to offer resolutions or strategies or tidy frameworks for improvement. What feels more honest is an invitation to pause and take stock, not through the lens of achievement, but through the lens of sustainability. To ask yourself not what you should be doing next year, but what you can no longer afford to keep doing.

What needs to stop, because it is rooted in fear rather than intention?

What needs to start, because you’ve been postponing it in the name of keeping up?

And what needs to continue, because despite the noise, it still feels true?

These aren’t questions that demand immediate answers. In fact, they resist them. They require time, quiet, and a willingness to sit with uncertainty — all things that are increasingly rare, and increasingly necessary.

If there’s one thing this year has made clear to me, it’s that feeling understood is not a luxury; it’s a form of support. Knowing that you’re not alone in this tension, that others are also negotiating the space between passion and pressure, can be enough to loosen the grip of self-judgment. It can remind you that the struggle isn’t a personal failure, but a shared experience shaped by systems that were never designed with places like this — or people like us — in mind.

As we step into a new year, my hope for North Country business owners isn’t that we do more. It’s that we do less of what disconnects us and more of what brings us back to ourselves. That we remember why we chose this place, this work, this way of living, and allow that memory to guide us more than any algorithm ever could.

You don’t need to perform your worth.

You don’t need to earn rest.

And you don’t need to prove anything to be allowed to pause.

Sometimes the most meaningful way to begin again is simply to stop long enough to remember why you started.

-Amanda