a little birdie told me so

At some point, all the planning, preparation, and risk estimating has to ultimately give in to the actual thing itself. I am a do-er, so as you can imagine, having almost one year to sit on the idea of opening a retail store and it never happening is pretty much driving me crazy. Sure we've come close several times, then something (either cancer or cold feet) stopped us. So with every day the anxiety of not doing builds and builds eventually giving way to mini-explosions. Let's just call them that, rather than refer to them in the usual way as melt-downs.

This particular mini-explosion was caused by the building stress and anxiety of being about to spend nearly $100,000 to start the retail store, and the fear that it will fail, and that all this planning will be lost in the flurry of the moment we open our doors only to find our sales numbers are not what we hoped and the business slips into bankruptcy. Of course even though I have an extreme amount of faith in myself and the bakery's possibility of success, that anxiety still manages to creep in. Unfortunately, that anxiety was also fed by my dear husband asking me to reduce my startup costs for fear of imminent failure, which made me think his faith in me was lost, which led to me storming out the door and down to the water's edge. I needed some place to drain my tears!

I did the usual mid-mini-explosion crying, trying not to let it get too strong while I was supposed to be driving. I took a brief walk and found a nice little bench and phoned my mom.

My mom and I have a very unique relationship. Early in my life, she seems to have decided I was independent enough to not need the typical mothering, and stopped trying to tell me what to do with my life. It was the smartest thing for her to do because believe me, it's nearly impossible to offer me even the slightest bit of advice. My mom has had a lot of hardship in her life which has led to some instances of psychological crisis, and as a result, most of the time when we talk it's about her problems, etc. But she is still my mom and knows instantly when I'm upset and quickly turns the floor over to me.

Through our long phone call we didn't come to any conclusions, but I felt better, calmer. That and watching the sky change after the sunset helped bring me back to center. As we were hanging up the phone, I looked down on the bench to the right of me and saw the most amazing words scribbled on it.

Sorry for the bad cell phone photo, but you can sort of see somebody's attempt to spell succeed. I mean here was one of those motivational posters sitting right next to me, and I can't believe it took me two hours to notice it. I'm not usually very religious, but I'm pretty sure SOMEBODY was trying to tell me something. Well, that's the way I'm choosing to interpret this message, even though it makes me sound self-obsessed. In writing this post, talking about success just sound silly and trite, but I think I've figured out at least for this moment that success probably can't be described in words; rather, it's a drive, a feeling, and now, because a little birdie wrote it on a bench, it's an obligation.