Being an Autistic Perfumer - The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

Yesterday was my 4-year anniversary of starting Morari, and it's always a bittersweet time of year where I do a lot of reflecting. This is the first year that I've admitted to myself that I don't have what it takes to be a popular indie perfume house. I used to imagine that, maybe 10 years down the road, my products might be carried in a niche perfume store or two. Or that I might become a staple among the indie perfume community. But now, if I had that kind of success, or even if just a particular scent would go viral on Tiktok, I don't think it would be good for me. 

I've been in burnout for the last year. Burnout is not pretty - autistic burnout even more so. On top of burnout, I also have chronic pain from a connective tissue disorder, and I spent a good 6 months mostly bedbound this year. I'd drag myself out of bed to fulfill orders, because I didn't want to exceed Morari's promised turnaround time. My TAT is 2-3 weeks, but that's not because I make a lot of orders. It was to accommodate the days where I physically couldn't work. I'd work for about 2 hours and then crawl back into bed for the rest of the day. And, of course, the next couple of days, the pain would be much worse. 

I've thankfully been doing much better lately, as I've slowly been building up more muscle to hold my body together, since my connective tissue isn't doing its job. I used to have to do all my exercises in bed, but now I can do standing workouts and actually have a couple of pain-free hours of movement a day! But even though the physical pain has receded somewhat, the sensory and social pain from autistic burnout is still here. 

I've only left my house maybe three times in the last 6 months. I haven't hung out with friends since February. I can't handle being social; when I try to talk, the words get stuck in my throat, and I start crying. I had to drop out of my D&D campaign, because I would start crying a couple hours into most sessions, just from the sensory overwhelm. I wear earplugs or noise-canceling headphones nearly 24/7. I often have to wear sunglasses inside my own home, even when all the lights are turned off. I can only wear baggy clothing, and shirts can't touch the front or the back of my neck or else I retch. My life has become so, so small, and existing feels distressing.

 My orders have slowed down to maybe 5-6 a week, but it takes all of my energy to handle those. It's not enough money to cover hiring somebody to help with order fulfillment. It takes me a week to handle the amount of work that most people can do in a day, and even while typing that I'm filled with the most awful feeling of shame - even while my brain is telling me that this shouldn't be something shameful. I know I wouldn't think negatively of someone else in this situation, but I can't apply that same understanding to myself. 

So, there's that side of things: how the pain and burnout makes it difficult to do my job, even with a very small number of sales. That's why I don't really do social media marketing anymore, and why I stopped posting about my perfumes on tiktok entirely. I don't want to bring more attention to my brand and possibly get more orders than I can handle, because that threshold is very low. 

So why don't I just stop? Well, this was my dream job. Perfume has been one of my special interests for 12 years now, and for a couple of years, I was doing pretty well as an indie perfumer! I've made scents that I truly love, and I've connected with so many people. The thought of giving up makes me feel sick to my stomach. At my current level of support needs, I don't think I would be able to handle a different job - and I can't imagine someone wanting to hire me when I need to wear sunglasses and noise-canceling headphones, and am unable to speak without crying. If I stop this job, I would likely have to go on disability. Giving up on the job of my dreams, which I built myself from the ground-up, to go on disability...it just hurts so much to even think about. 

Now, let's explore another part of being an autistic perfumer. Even without being in burnout, it innately comes with certain challenges. Yes, being in burnout exacerbates my sensory overwhelm, but my senses have always been incredibly strong. For instance, I was once able to detect a miniscule gas leak that nobody else in the house could smell. I had friends over that night, and none of them could smell anything. I still called someone to check it out, and guess what? They were able to find the absolute tiniest leak, right where I thought it was coming from!

So, take that super-sense of smell, and apply it to perfumery. In some ways, it feels like a superpower; it's how I'm able to make accords that smell super realistic, as long as I have access to the real thing. If it's edible, I can hold it in my mouth, and work on an accord until what I'm smelling matches what I'm tasting, and it usually doesn't take many tries. That's how I made the salmonberry accord in salmonberry season! BUT there is a huge downside: all of my perfume oils smell very strongly to me, and I can detect them for a long time (sometimes, even after a thorough shower I can still smell a hint of them on my skin). But the overwhelming consensus from people who try my perfume oils is that they are very weak and short-lived. I'd say maybe 80% of feedback I see about my perfumes is that they love the way they smell but hate the performance.

That is a huge disconnect that I haven't really been able to bridge. The closest I've come is by releasing EDPs alongside oils - to me, those are so strong that they make me feel sick. When I try wearing one of my own EDPs, I immediately get a bad headache and my right eye goes blurry. They smell so intolerably strong to me, and it usually takes two showers for me to stop smelling them...but the general consensus for my EDPs is that they have medium strength and longevity. Unfortunately, if I make products that are at a level of performance that most people prefer, I will not be able to be around my own perfumes. 

Now, there is still a silver lining to this! I think my brand has become somewhat of a safe haven for neurodivergent people who are extra sensitive to fragrance. Sometimes, people with similar sensory challenges reach out to me, and let me know that my perfume oils are the only ones that don't give them headaches or that don't make them nauseous. And every time I read one of those messages, I'm so filled with joy, and it feels like in that moment I'm connected in such a special way to another person living in a world that isn't built for them. I know that sounds cheesy, but it's how I feel lol.  

Anyways, I didn't write all that to try to convince people who don't like weak perfume performance that they should give Morari some leeway. (I do NOT want people to spend money on a perfume that they won't be satisfied with, especially when every last penny is being squeezed out of us for just the barest standard of living.) Rather, I was trying to illustrate the sad reality that, unless somebody is very sensitive to fragrance, they probably won't be satisfied with my perfumes. And that if I change my perfumery style to be more satisfactory for the average person, I won't be able to handle being around my own products. 

I've considered doing a complete pivot and marketing Morari as a gentle perfume brand for people who are sensitive to fragrance. That way, people know what to expect, and they can avoid my brand if strong performance is a priority for them. I've also considered moving to being a customs-only shop, to lower the mental load of keeping track of 60+ different scents and the hundreds of ingredients to keep on hand to make each one.

Custom perfumes also fulfill what I truly wanted out of being a perfumer. I used to daydream about living in a cottage in the woods, with people bringing me food and other necessities in exchange for one-of-a-kind perfumes. That's not really a feasible lifestyle, because bartering can't pay bills, but making customs brings me a similar sense of satisfaction. I get to put all my focus on one person, and make an idea for a scent come to life. And it's way easier to navigate the fluctuating prices and availabilities of ingredients when making custom perfumes.

For instance, I can make an apple accord a dozen different ways depending on which ingredients I choose, and they'll all smell like an apple but with different nuances - maybe one will be more tart, another will be more waxy, one will lean more Granny Smith, another will smell more Red Delicious. When I add a perfume to my catalog, that accord becomes set in stone. If an ingredient becomes really expensive, I just deal with it - because if I change the accord, it will smell slightly different, and I would hate for somebody to buy a perfume that they sampled a year ago and find that doesn't smell exactly the same. But when I'm crafting a custom perfume, I can consider all the ingredients at that point in time. Maybe the price of a certain natural ingredient is up by a few hundred percent that year because of a bad harvest - so I'll use an alternative ingredient when crafting the accord. 

By the way, whenever I do custom perfumes, I'm not just dumping in pre-made accords. Going with the same apple example - if someone asks for apple as a note, I look at the other requested notes in the perfume, and then build the accord off of that and my current ingredient availability. For instance, let's say they also wanted rose as a note. Well, my rose accord and apple accord both use damascones - but I wouldn't add more damascones just because both notes are requested. The notes would "share" those molecules. The more overlapping molecules there are between notes, the smoother and better blended it will smell! And you can't really get that same smoothness by just combining pre-made accords, because those aren't made while taking other notes' synergy into account. 

Gah, now I'm geeking out - see, this is why I don't want to give up perfumery. I'm at my happiest when I'm geeking out about it. When I eat food, I think about perfume. When I smell a flower, I think about perfume. When I look at art, I think about perfume. It permeates my entire life, and stopping feels like cutting out a part of my soul. And if I only made perfumes for myself, I would lose out on the connection I feel every time I make someone a custom scent. 

For right now, I'm not making any big changes to Morari. To make a big change, you need enough mental energy to handle all the logistics, and that isn't something I can muster right now. But I think writing this post is a good first step. Putting it out there that I'm struggling, and illustrating the reasons why I might make future changes, makes the thought of those changes feel less intimidating. 

Thank you for reading, 

- Vika