Here is the mélange of my thoughts this afternoon-

I have spent the past few days blessedly absorbed by creative pursuits.
I have spent the past few days blessedly absorbed by insanity.
I am embracing and allowing.
I am avoiding.
This is going to work.
Is this going to work?
What if this doesn’t work?

I published my coaching website last Wednesday evening, which was a big step for me, and so exciting (yay I did it! Check out the link in the header above). Since then, I’ve been slowly rolling it out by messaging friends. I am not on social media and would love to remain that way by using different methods to promote my business. So I am starting the process of letting folks know that I am here (Hi!), and to share my information should they know anyone in their lives who may wish to work with a health and well-being coach.

I am calling this a soft launch, and I know I won’t have a full schedule in an instant. I have a whole line up of other coaching and admin tasks that I can also work on as I continue to spread the word.

Saying all that, I have been working hard, and this week I took some time to sit back a little. I got into amazing flow states the past few days working on a creative nonfiction essay. It was incredibly fun to get into this state of mind- I felt like I was playing. Today I planned to go to the Art Institute member’s lounge with some coaching work. I curled my hair and put on REAL pants, that’s how serious I was about going. And just before it was time to leave, I sat at my computer and pulled up my essay draft, and began making a single tweak that I had thought of while doing my hair. Well, three HOURS later, I snapped back into my body and acknowledged that maybe I wasn’t going to the Art Institute after all. I am not kidding that it happened that way. I got zero coaching work done, but I was in the FLOW and it was delightful.

It’s been lovely to allow this. But, as I mention above, I am ready to get this coaching business going. How do I keep losing my sense of time like this? Is this some type of avoidance?

On my walk to my car this morning I noticed a robin’s nest in the beams of the covered walkway from our building to our parking garage. Birds’ nests always seem so perilously close to being upended by wind or by humans, and those babies that hatch are so fragile. Seeing this actual nest got me thinking. I imagined this stage of infancy for my business to be my own nest. My thoughts around this are blue robin eggs that I hold gently in cupped hands and set carefully in the nest that I have built for them. I am reading the book Yesteryear and there is a line in it where a (very religious) mother tells her (very religious) daughter to doubt her doubts, not her faith. I loved this concept from a secular perspective. Everything is fragile right now and doubts will arise. Instead of doubting my hopes for my business and new coaching career, let me doubt the actual DOUBT first, and leave the business plan alone. I hold that doubt in my hands (‘I see you trying to protect me, thank you’) and set it off to the side (I’m imagining that scene with Veruca Salt from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory- ‘this one’s a bad egg’, the sign reads, and then off it goes).

Some more randomness to throw your way-

Today is National Hug a Cat day. That is the name I have given to May 6, which is the day that our cat Grady jumped off our balcony in 2018. We have now had the gift of him for 8 years since that fateful day. And here is my PSA, which is the real message behind National Hug a Cat day- don’t let any pet onto a balcony! Even if you think the wall of the balcony is so high that they can’t jump it- we thought that as well. Cats and dogs have zero depth perception. Balconies, back decks on suburban houses, etc etc etc- keep animals off!

Okay next thing- I have been yearning for a fiddle leaf fig tree for a long time. I don’t recall where I first stumbled upon them (maybe when perusing The Sill or something), but once I did, I saw them everywhere. We had appointments over the last year where I would sit in a waiting room with a fiddle leaf fig and I took more than one picture of it because I loved it so much (don’t mind me, just taking photos of other people’s plants…). But they are described as being somewhat finicky, and I just don’t trust myself to spend $100 for a finicky plant.

This past December we went to a local artist fair at the FieldNotes HQ and there was a vendor there whose business is named Paperperennial. And she actually had a little paper version of a fiddle leaf fig. I don’t usually buy myself things (especially at the holidays and right before quitting my job, which was the case at that very moment), but seeing as I had wanted a fiddle leaf fig for such a long time, it felt very appropriate to buy myself one made of paper.

Okay so THEN, last weekend my husband opened up the door to the recycling room on our floor and what was just sitting there on the floor, with a note taped to it saying it was free to whoever wanted it? Ummmm a FIDDLE LEAF FIG. A neighbor must have been moving because there were a few plants placed in that room over the next few days- well tended to ones at that. We looked the others up online and they were all toxic to cats so we had to pass on them. Fiddle leaf figs are also not friendly for cats but I have a stand that I have placed this new one in that elevates it up and out of reach of our cats. Silly, silly cats.

Miscellany

Reading Deprivation