There’s no reason you should particularly care about this, but my writing routine this week has been significantly shifted.
During the window when I’d normally be writing this — which is always much closer to the deadline than I wish it were — I will be playing chauffeur.
I’m driving my mother and her sister (both in their early 90s) to the funeral of a 96-year-old relative, someone I’ve never met but I’m told was lovely and led a rich and full life.
The foliage promises to be spectacular, although, to be honest, I’m not sure I’ll be able to enjoy it.
The reason…
I’d hesitate to use the word “threatened,” but let’s just say my aunt has offered me an ultimatum:
Either my mother’s Etsy shop goes public or she’s retrieving her handmade bags for the next church sale.
The situation is admittedly absurd.
For months, the Etsy store has been live and fully operational.
In fact, complete strangers have stumbled upon it and even been buying things occasionally.
We’ve had 11 sales and 6 five-star reviews without even trying.
Yet I haven’t officially announced it in this newsletter or anywhere else publicly because I’m still preparing.
I’ve listed only about 10% of the inventory that I’ve organized, a task made difficult because each item is unique.
The theme this month is Possibility — meditation HERE — and I found myself contemplating a darker side of that:
How easily, when faced with endless possibilities, we turn them into an invitation to endlessly delay.
I’m not the first to notice this paradox of possibility.
I’ve written before about the classic Iyengar & Lepper (2000) study on attraction vs. simplicity.
In an upscale market, researchers found that shoppers were more likely to stop at a table offering samples of 24 varieties of jam rather than six.
What was significant, however, was that they were more likely to actually buy when only 6 were offered.
Too many possibilities can become an excuse to delay acting on any one of them.
Perhaps paradoxically, limiting our options makes it easier to choose.
Several times a week, I’m stabbed by the painful reminder of my failure to launch.
Specifically, at Trader Joe’s, which is now almost a daily pilgrimage for me and Vlad.
At checkout, nearly half the time, some bright and shiny new clerk will compliment my hipster bag, and I’ll reply that my aunt, who’s 92, made it.
Most of the time, however, I’m checked out by a familiar clerk, one who’s previously complimented the same bag and now asks about my progress with the Etsy launch.
My response is usually a variation of “Any day now…fingers crossed,” which is truthful enough, I suppose.
But still… I can’t help but feel like I’m disappointing everyone in my orbit.
It’s not like I’m wading in oceans of free time.
For example, that I just finished the Harvard Business School Foundry Bootcamp for start-ups, which had tons of very specific hoops to jump through and deadlines to meet.
Submitting the pitch deck for investors always trumped listing the oversized gingham tote bag.
Frequently, it’s led me to indulge in my lifelong creative fantasy: living in a lighthouse, working only on creative projects, bracketed by walks with my dog along a craggy shore.
Yet from the start I knew that fantasy would never come true.
In the first place, to even afford that lighthouse island, obligations and commitments wouldn’t lessen; they’d multiply.
The runway, in other words, will never be completely clear for takeoff.
I realize that a lot of my thinking when it comes to launching things is old-fashioned.
I’m more inclined to chisel away at a long manuscript than post random thoughts on Twitter all day.
This thinking has its merits but also several drawbacks.
It means that launching anything gets delayed until all the elements fall into place, until all the proverbial ducks get lined up.
The decisive moment — the one where we actually jump into the pool, rather than circling it or dipping our toes in — arrives only by choice.
Fortunately, as the wonderful poet David Whyte implies, that choice may be within our own hands.
Enough. These few words are enough.
If not these words, this breath.
If not this breath, this sitting here.This opening to life
we have refused
again and again
until now.Until now.
The paradox is that my kindly aunt actually wants to make my life easier by taking the bags back, trying to remove something from my over-filled plate.
Alas, that would mean that all the work I’ve done would be for nothing.
I’ll be deleting what took several hours to enter without making a single bag sale.
On a personal level, all those Trader Joe’s clerks who’ve sworn they would purchase something will be forever disappointed.
I’ve even considered going to the next closest branch — a place where no one knows my bag or my history — but the parking lot there is a disaster.
(Seriously)
But I think I’ve finally reached a narrowing of possibility that makes sense.
I’ve decided that no matter what percentage of the bags I’ve had time to list, I’ll start sharing the Etsy link.
As I say, I’ve listed maybe only 10% of my mother’s stuff, so if you are an Etsy type, please favorite the shop and revisit.
I hate the idea of starting so incompletely, but I recognize that unless I want the merchandise confiscated, I have to Go Public.
For better or worse, you can check things out on
I find the French shop Maison Bonnet comforting.
The legendary Parisian maker of eyeglasses worn by Yves Saint Laurent, Jackie Onassis, Le Corbusier, and François Mitterrand creates everything to order.
Like my aunt’s tote bags, everything they sell is one of a kind and made by hand.
And — unlike the Etsy store, which is already quietly making sales — nothing they sell can be purchased online.
Everything requires multiple in-person visits and fittings.
Even if you are a regular and they have your measurements on file, they will not ship anything to you; you have to go in person to pick them up.
There are no other possibilities.
Three favorite bags • each one-of-a-kind
Maison Bonnet has chosen extreme limitations to preserve their artistic integrity.
So often our motivations are less noble.
Overwhelmed with possibility — of how good something might be — we postpone the moment of launch until we’re forced to.
I’m reminded of the lines often attributed to Anaïs Nin but actually written by Elizabeth Appell:
“And the day came when the risk
to remain tight in a bud
was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.”
Alas, I will never get enough things listed for the Etsy store to launch it the way I think is “proper.”
Perhaps, like with the jams, accepting this limitation will work for me.
Now the risk of NOT blossoming — having the bags seized for a church rummage sale and their listings forever deleted online — is simply too great.
Sometimes, the only possibility that remains is to go public, ready or not.
Tell a New Story. Transform Your Life.
Are you on the edge of some great possibility but need that “nudge to launch”? Set up a free call to:
And in celebration of the spirit of launching, for the first time ever, I’ve made three of my favorite courses available with a 15% discount code (Possibility15).