Today was going to be my first product launch.
I can’t tell you how excited I am to have come up with an idea for something to sell here, to share with people, to hopefully offer some encouragement to you. All I can say right now is that it’s pretty cool. And it’s not an e-book.
So I started into the process of setting things up for my little Friday launch.
And immediately started hitting the roadblocks and finding out that there’s a whole lot I need to learn that I didn’t know I needed to learn.
But that’s the fun of a new project, right? You get to accept new challenges and learn new stuff. And there are parts of the process that force you to just wait. And wait. And wait some more.
This particular part of the process is out of my hands. So I’m waiting. With all my little duckies lined up in a row. Waiting. Waiting. Waiting.
The thing is? I’m really not good with the whole waiting thing.
You’d think that after writing this blog for over a year now, I’d have some insight into patience and calmness. Some magical method for slowing down and enjoying the process. My method involves hyperventilating and crying a lot. Which, while it’s a pretty good workout and releases a lot of tension in a big hurry, also tends to scare the people around you who are just trying to help.
But I’ve had a bit of time to think about it and here’s what I’ve come up with.
One is that if life happened on the schedule we set for it, it would likely all be over in about two weeks and then what would we do?
I mean, who, on their first day of university, doesn’t dream of graduation? What parent, holding their newborn in their arms doesn’t give at least a passing thought to future grandchildren?
If it all happened as we dreamed it, it would all be over so quickly and we’d miss all the little moments of delight and, yes, frustration that make life worth living.
The other thing is that waiting is temporary. Fortunately I’ve done it enough by now to know that. And when the waiting is over, when we’ve got what we were waiting for, or even when we don’t, but we’ve decided to move on, once that result has been achieved, the waiting itself fades away to doesn’t matter.
Which brings me to the picture at the start of this post. It’s a silver lace vine that I planted in my backyard in the spring of 2009. Billed as a rampant spreader, I was careful to plant it on a free-standing structure well away from the surrounding trees, stood back and waited for the magic to happen. And waited. And waited.
It didn’t grow much last summer. And it certainly didn’t bloom. I was very relieved that it survived the winter. But it took till just a couple weeks ago to fill the structure I had envisioned as being green and lush and lovely a whole year and a half ago.
And then the other day I noticed a few little flowers! The magic had happened! Yay! Cheering and photos and happy. And the waiting goes away.
There’s a bottle of wine chilling in the fridge for when my plans come to fruition (and they will and I will let you know about them). But this weekend, I will be celebrating life. And the fact that it doesn’t all happen at once. I will enjoy this moment right here.
How ‘bout you? What are you waiting for these days? How do you relax and enjoy the here and now while waiting for the magic to happen?
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