Closing the gap
I remember in my body the sinking feeling, the surprise, the embarrassment, the frustration. Yes, I had just produced twenty three bouquets from flowers I had harvested alone, from seedlings that I had mostly transplanted alone, from seeds that I had sown alone. Yet my first round of bouquets in last year’s flower CSA were not what I imagined them to be. Earlier that year from the comfort, perfection, and naiveté of my quiet winter planning, I was going to produce abundance and thoughtful combinations of flowers such as the world had never seen! Alas, instead I found I was just a person, trying a new thing for the first time, feeling uncomfortable with the early results.
Those feelings followed me around for the rest of the summer. Yes, there were many wins in my first CSA season, but they were made dull and blurry in my mind, which focused instead on what I was not doing and could not do. After the season was over, my mind was compost, so I rested and leaned into encouragement from supportive people. I still felt compelled to grow as many flowers as I could in our yard and decided I was going to do it all again next year, regardless.
During an online course I took this past winter for my business, I came across a quote from Ira Glass:
Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, and I really wish somebody had told this to me.
All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But it's like there is this gap. For the first couple years that you're making stuff, what you're making isn't so good. It’s not that great. It’s trying to be good, it has ambition to be good, but it’s not that good.
But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is good enough that you can tell that what you're making is kind of a disappointment to you. A lot of people never get past that phase. They quit.
Everybody I know who does interesting, creative work they went through years where they had really good taste and they could tell that what they were making wasn't as good as they wanted it to be. They knew it fell short. Everybody goes through that.
And if you are just starting out or if you are still in this phase, you gotta know its normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Do a huge volume of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week or every month you know you're going to finish one story. It is only by going through a volume of work that you're going to catch up and close that gap. And the work you're making will be as good as your ambitions.
I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I’ve ever met. It takes awhile. It’s gonna take you a while. It’s normal to take a while. You just have to fight your way through that.
Fast forward to now in the 2023 CSA season, as I planned smarter, harvested smarter, made bouquets smarter, I closed a bit of the gap. As I left flowers at peoples’ homes, instead of a tinge of embarrassment and disappointment in myself, I walked away from those front steps with more levity in my steps and contentment in my work. Yes, the bouquets looked a bit more abundant and curated than a year ago. I have indeed put in the work to learn more about growing excellent cut flowers. What has also happened is internal, a shifting of focus from results toward the process. Who I am to think I can skip through all the gnarly bits of starting a garden and a business? Instead, today I am choosing to join in with the humanity out there trying new things out of their authentic selves in order to walk towards the good, and maybe even the great.
What gaps are you working to close?
Leigh