I hardly have any words to say what has happened over the past few days. (The aftermath of one hell of a Mercury Retrograde!!!). Your'e on a path, or you think you are on a path—you dream big, even huge sometimes and in your mind you can go to places you never dreamed of. But the reality is hard. You wait, wait, wait, wait and more waiting. You become bogged down by inertia, self-doubt and uber frustration. And you can stuff as many “positivisms” in your head to get you up out of the frustration but it pulls you back down in the muck—like black tar you can’t get rid of. And then after it all seems to be possibly put back in place and you have a high of “this is happening! this could happen! this could really be real - it feels great,”—suddenly there’s the last straw that broke the camel’s back and it completely crumbles, falls apart and unravels before your very eyes. And you think, “what the hell happened?"
Over the past two years, one of my closest friends and I were trying to build a company together online. It was to be the foundation of a great partnership and it had a lot of high hopes. We envisioned big, then bigger, then even bigger until it became too scary. And it doesn’t wasn’t meant to be—at least right now in this form. And circumstances changed.
There are no hard feelings so to speak after this aftermath but we definitely both feel like we’ve gone through the ringer. I told my husband through tears of disbelief it’s like breaking up in a relationship! You plan and plan and plan your future together . . . and then one day without warning, one of the partner’s says this isn’t working and I’m done!
BUT. In the wake of a seeming crappy situation, the core ideas we shared are still gold. And if I can brush off the appearance of mud and wipe off and examine what I already know I have inside myself, I can see that this is just a realignment. The core ideas of our business was always to find a way to support a creative community and BE CREATIVE OURSELVES.
And after so much waiting and waiting and waiting on things to happen and get going, what has been crystal clear to me is that you can’t wait on anyone — YOU have to put your head down and DO THE WORK. YOURSELF. Rely on no one else but YOU. And if YOU have a passion, if YOU have a vision, if YOU have a feeling that you have a gift to give, then YOU have to DO IT. Step by step by step.
It seems SO freakin obvious. But you never learn until you go through it. I’m sick of waiting. I’m sick of waiting on other people who haven’t delivered and said they would and they never did. I’m scared to go out on my own. I loved the partnership and support. But this is awful wasting away thinking that you’ve done nothing and you feel like you have so much potential.
We both have learned a great deal — and most of it is what not to do, which is still extremely valuable. But now, with as little risk as possible, I start my own future one step at a time.
I’m a painter. I know I’m a painter, and I’m good at it. But I haven’t painted in almost 2 years since my son was born and efforts to start this business took priority. SO this blog post if of course for myself —get back in that studio and PAINT!! Find the time and paint! Even if it’s just 30 minutes at a time. And do the work. The work will pay off. The work will show promise and find opportunities. But it has to be the work otherwise you have nothing but ideas and dreams.
A new beginning.