P is for Patience, Patience is not my strong suit! Being self-employed and working in an industry with tight deadlines and turnaround times I am used to jumping. There are times when I have less than a day to take an illustration from concept to delivery. In. Out. Bill it. It suits my ADHD personality. Now I'm in a venture that has me feeling like I'm growing an oak tree from the acorn. Water, wait. Fertilize, wait. Stake and wait. Waiting does not mean doing nothing, just that there may be long passages between an action and the visible or tangible results of that action. I've had to break my successes into teeny bite-sized chunks to be able to see them at all. But this means I can also break any difficulties into equally little, and consequently negligible, bits. One day's business at a time. My venture started with an idea for a thing. I wrote the business plan that same day. Then came the hunt for a manufacturer. When it took several days or even weeks for people to get back with me I knew right away I was not in Kansas any more. It took almost a year (YEAR!?!) for the manufacturer to correctly replicate the prototype I'd made in 15 minutes. I was on hold for that year. There was no point in pushing a product if I wasn't sure I had one. Prototypes were arriving, we were trying out materials and printing processes, and working toward consistency and reliability. We were doing something, but for me it felt interminable. By the end of that year my body-clock had reset itself. This was going to be a long-haul project and I was writing in terms of years in the business plan. I've watched trees grow. It's worth the wait. Pruning is an art and if you don't do it right you may never get the blossoms or the fruit. Still, resetting my expectations did not mean I felt any more patient. Patience started to come when I realized that when something took longer than it should I was given the space to look more carefully, or rethink an approach, or catch an error. In retrospect I've learned to be grateful when I've been held back. More than one business has gone under from things happening too fast and systems not being in place. With time you can tweak your whole machine, so the gears and conveyors are functioning smoothly. It's much easier to correct something which does not yet have huge momentum. During several waiting periods I've met just the person I needed to proceed, or seen a resource which has led me gently where I need to go. Impatience is not a flexible or receptive state of mind. Patience allows for serendipity and synchronicity and a relish of subtlety. My oak tree is still just a stick, but it has some buds. I can't wait to see it leaf out, but I will.