how to strategically half-ass things
Six months after moving across the country, I am still struggling with a lack of motivation.
I absolutely could not cook this summer. It’s the least I have ever cooked in my adult life. I chalked it up to several things: sharing a new kitchen, an electric stove after years using gas, the southern heat, plain old overwhelm.
But about two weeks ago, my will to cook food came back all at once. It was after I spent some time pinning recipes in bet at 1am (as part of Ash Gravity's Creative Visioning Challenge), thinking about what I would like to cook whenever I cook again. I had to accept that I may not cook anything anytime soon, and let myself daydream about it.
The next day, I realized I had the ingredients on hand, and made a chickpea tomato feta thing. My neighbor invited me to carpool with her to the local Indian grocery store and I was re-immersed in my obsession with Indian cuisine from last winter.
Over the next week, I made a tomato bean stew, marsala chai from scratch, and a new iteration of the lemony red lentil soup from the neighborhood middle eastern spot that I lived on during my first NYC summer, and I’ve attempted to dupe for years.
I had to come at cooking a little sideways to find my way back in — like most things in life.
You may have heard that Mars is now in Cancer for a while. I have Mars in Cancer natally, making this my Mars return. (Cue the astrologers smiling and nodding because of course I just started cooking again.)
When I first dug into astrology, learning that I had Mars in Cancer was a key piece of my chart that explained some things: I’m immune to false urgency, and while I am still an Aries sun that moves fast and gets impatient, I will not be rushed by an external force — I have to find my own pace.
Because of the current transit, there is plenty of advice circulating about how to navigate Mars in Cancer. Crabs walk sideways. You can’t come straight at the thing. You can’t “go out there and make it happen.” You have to do a little dance while you wait a few hours for the next high tide and backflip into it.
I always found this advice frustrating. Especially when it comes to business, absolutely none of the Mars in Cancer advice matches up with conventional “get shit done” motivational advice.
A lot of the time, my mental state does not allow me to simply “get shit done.” I get through life by strategically half-assing what I can and hoping I get away with it, as my imposter syndrome would put it.
After 5 years of selling stuff on the internet, I understand how I have to approach business better than ever, and it’s frankly not generally recommended.
Probably 95% of my business comes from referrals, which means the vast majority of my income always has and will be dependent on other people talking about my work in rooms that I am not in.
I have absolutely no direct control over when or how that happens. I can encourage it by popping my head out on the internet, posting a story or sending a newsletter to remind people that I exist, and that has proven to help. But it’s a sideways approach if I’ve ever heard one.
I have tried to shift this, to scale, to “get after it,” to “email x people a day,” and not much of the “go get em” marketing advice is truly sustainable for me. I have to reach out to people I genuinely want to catch up with or meet, publically share when I truly feel I have something worth sharing, and eventually, the leads and the work comes. It works every time. Eventually.
When working with clients, I firmly stand by the adage of service providers everywhere: your poor planning is not my emergency. We both know that branding isn’t life or death. I will not be moved to rush my work, unless a rush fee is paid.
When it comes to selling my work, I looove trying to rush the universe. I always hope that if I just turn on the marketing tap, if I just follow whatever lead gen formula I’m into that quarter, leads will instantly flow. But it turns out that my poor planning is not the universe’s problem, either. Things will flow again… eventually.
A big factor in this is the nature of branding itself. The need for a rebrand is situational, and a big decision that only happens maybe every 3–5 years, if not longer. When it’s time for a rebrand, it’s time — and I can’t rush you. It won’t work out well for either of us.
At the same time, we’ve all heard “do it before you’re ready.” When you start opening to the possibilities of a rebrand before you 100% need a change immediately, the next version of your business unfolds that much more quickly.
Honestly, if we rebrand your “now” business without any thought toward your future business, you will have already outgrown it by the time we’re done — but a refreshed brand that inspires you because it’s in alignment with the future of your business can become a North Star, a dream that you grow into.
Water doesn’t flow in the direction you want it to go unless you change the terrain to direct it — and the water will mold the path of least resistance in return, over time.
If you’ve already decided that there’s a high tide you want to catch, a new dream that will take a little extra momentum to reach, something new and big that will require the universe to meet you halfway, the time to rebrand is before it rises.
If you have questions about working together, you can book a little call here and we’ll see if it might be the right time — or not — and that’s ok.
Meanwhile, I am still not practicing driving regularly, and I’m done forcing it. I’m hoping that with enough space and inspiration, the urge strikes when the time is ready. Just like with cooking. Just like most things worth waiting on a little longer than I want to.
