You ask for help.

They say you have to spend 10,000 hours building a business.  With about 6,000 under my belt (with time off for things like giving birth and the occasional vacation), I’d have to say that’s a pretty accurate number.

Things are getting to a point where major decisions have to be made regarding focus, long term goals, and overall personal satisfaction.  (Am I really saying things like that?  It still trips me up and makes me giggle to hear myself say things like that.  Like I should be wearing a suit and wine colored lipstick rather than a beat up pair of Levi’s and bare feet.  heeeee)

Anyway.

You know when you have a series of events that have a profound impact on your life?  I’m sitting in the middle of one.

I was introduced to Fibershed by what may be a family trait in psychic phenomenon involving news stories.  Time will tell (the general rule with matters of psychic phenomenon).  The work of Rebecca Burgess, a textile artist from the Northwest, is completely mind blowing and utterly awe inspiring.  I can’t even wrap my head around it enough to explain it, but the bottom line is that she is making an entire wardrobe from local fibers, all by hand.

And then I finally sat down and started reading about Anna Maria Horner, an artist and textile designer who takes color to the end of the universe and returns with an armful of quilts and dresses.  She’s beautiful, down to earth, and blows the lid off of the perception that sewing is an old-fashioned, quaint skill that is best left to little old ladies and Halloween costume attempts.

Finding real life superheroes that do the same stuff you do feels pretty good.  Superheroes that don’t host tv shows on cable, you know?  (Superheroines?  Either way, I bet they both have wicked awesome capes.)

The thing is…before I put 6000 hours into developing this little endeavor, I probably would have just tried to emanate their greatness.  I would have believed that I could create the same picture using the same pieces of their puzzles, I would have put all those bits together in a similar form and when all was said and done, I would have wondered why it didn’t work.

It doesn’t work because it’s all about process.

You can’t sit down and weave up a storm of local fibers if your loom is buried under the shrapnel of Fall Furniture Relocation.  You can’t be a badass designer if you don’t have a formal portfolio of badass designs.  It’s kind of how it works.

I know that I’m meant to turn over a really big rock.  I know where the rock is.  It’s a really big rock.  But even with pulleys and levers, there’s no way I can turn it over myself.

I have to stare at it for awhile.  Start proving my strength.  Show that I’m capable of inventing new ways to lift up big rocks–ways that don’t involve heaps of money or politics.

Ask for help from those whom I know are strong and limber.

Follow through with promises.

Always tell the truth.

Don’t take myself too seriously.

And stand out of the way of rocks that are already rolling.

Related posts:

1. fall comes rolling in