Impatience is a portal
The growing pains of growing a business.
I never thought of myself as impatient until I started a business.
My child can cry into my ear for hours and I’m an ocean of calm. I don’t complain while waiting for a table at a restaurant. Bumper-to-bumper traffic doesn’t phase me at all.
But when it comes to my business? I’m antsy, compulsively checking my email and social media accounts for new likes, new followers, and booked appointments (which is probably giving my people the energetic ick.)
I launched my astrology and tarot reading business eight months ago in the heat and exhilaration of summer. Things started off with a sexy bang of new followers, email subs, and clients. But over the last couple of months, it’s been reduced to a slow trickle, and sometimes, a dry spell.
Of course, I understand that businesses take time and thankless effort to grow, especially when you’re really starting from scratch. No investors, no daddy’s money, just pure delusion.
And while I’ve got plenty of delusion, I don’t have a lot of time.
I’m a stay-at-home mom (because we can’t afford child care) so I get nights and weekends to work. Even then, there are chores to be done, meals to be cooked, and smut to be read. Somehow, despite these time constraints, I’ve experienced slow yet steady growth on all the platforms I’m on. I should be grateful and proud of what I’ve been able to accomplish with so little time and energy (these toddlers are e x h a u s t i n g)
You’d think I’d cut myself some slack right? Relax girl, you have so much going on! You’re making the most of what you have! You’ll get there eventually! Keep at it!
But no slack is being cut. Just a giant slab of uncut slack.
None of these truths about my current circumstances satiates the writhing impatience inside of me; the impatience that says, when is this shit gonna take off already?!
And the growth advice circulating online makes me feel like I’m getting a makeover from the mean, popular girls in a high school rom-com:
Post consistently. Be authentic. Show your value. Stand in your power. Do what you’re excited about but also be strategic. Be relatable but people can sense weak bitch energy so don’t show that side of you. Sell your first born in exchange for a course on how to be magnetic, you undesirable bland-ass chicken breast.
I feel like I’m hitting a wall.
This is when my impatience gallops through my body, with large, galumphing hooves of frustration and discouragement.
Because I am (unfortunately) self-aware and emotionally mature, I’ve sat with this uncomfortable feeling like a good little therapized girl. And I can say, with equal parts confidence and annoyance, that impatience is a portal.
When I walk through this portal, impatience reveals to me in real time what my desires are, what my fears are, and what I need to pay attention to. It’s showing me the parts of myself that I don’t want to see: the jealous bitch, the insecure misfit, the “why not me?” victim, and now the snarky Substack poster (hehe)
Is all of this even worth it? Why are they getting more followers and I’m not? Am I even good enough for people to follow me? Obviously people don’t care about what I have to say.
As much as these aspects of myself make me cringe and give me MAJOR ick, I can’t really avoid them if I want to grow, in my business or in myself. Because if I can’t face these truths, then I can’t be authentic, and the work I do relies on my ability to be grounded in myself.
I can’t give someone a good reading if I’m not present with my shit, first.
I can’t objectively audit or evaluate what I can do differently if I’m unwilling to admit how scared I am of failing, fucking up, disappointing people, and being canceled.
My impatience isn’t trying to sabotage me, give my clients the energetic ick, or drive me up the damn wall. In its overstimulating way, it’s aggressively nudging me into acknowledging my fears about making a fucking mistake. It wants me to face the questions: What does it say about me if I’m a failure and a flop? And why am I hinging my self-worth on whether or not I’m successful?
My impatience also reminds me of the sacred desires that drove me to start this business in the first place: to use my skills to make other people’s lives better, and to provide for my family doing something I love.
Maybe you can’t have desire without fear, and impatience is the sexual tension between those two as they dance in an empty, enchanted ballroom somewhere inside your heart.
If patience is a virtue, then impatience is a vow—that until you’re willing to step into the portal it’s opening for you and acknowledge what it wants you to see, it’ll just keep bugging the shit out of you.
Postscript: With this piece, I wanted to share a very real, behind-the-scenes snippet of my own journey through running a business. It’s easy to share my gratitude—which I do often on social media and to my clients—but it felt harder to share this “uglier” part of me and my process. I hope other growing biz owners can relate and feel less alone. Just wanted to make this note lest this piece makes me sound like an ungrateful twat!!! okay love you thanks for reading xo