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waiting for the blossoms

Kadir

04 Sep 2025 — 16 min read

Southern crab apple blooms at Toronto Botanical Gardens, photo by Kadir

Hi friends,

Hope you are well! This week I talk about the role of patience in building my creative practice and this business, how my Aries ♈ moon despises the wait while my Taurus ♉ sun wants to go slow and build lasting nourishing offerings, and the lessons I've learned over the years on how urgency paradoxically pushed people and opportunities away from me. I talk about how I've learned to embrace both the impatient voracious and the sustaining nourisher parts of myself – by leading with desire and curiosity ❤️‍🔥🔍

Waiting for the blossoms

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Transcript (transcribed via transcribeme):

00:00:01.000 Hi, friends. How are you doing today? I hope you're well. I am excited to come to you today live on audio. Well, it's not live for you, but it is for me. Okay, so I wanted to talk to you about patience today, and it is not one of my core strengths, I don't think.

00:00:31.000 I would much rather be impatient and do things fast. I don't want to do a bunch of research before I buy something. I don't want to measure something like a bunch of times before I hang something up on the wall. I you know don't want to read a recipe before I cook. I would rather just go with the flow, just do the thing, see what happens.

00:01:00.000 Part of me is this way, at least. And then another part of me is very interested in sustainability and doing things that last, doing things that are regenerative, that are created in slow time that aren't urgent. Like I want my work to represent the opposite of hustling, of urgency.

00:01:28.000 But it's also a place that I operate from all the time. And I was thinking about how unaware I was of the ways in which I was actually able to take risks without even thinking about it that, in retrospect, maybe I could have put some thought into it.

00:01:53.000 You know So early on when I left tech to start this business in 2021, I had this kind of projected confidence onto myself.

00:02:08.000 I felt that I needed to show up with a show of strength and determination and assertiveness that my skills in supporting people and working with people needed to be seen and respected by the people who were in positions of power or authority in the jobs that I was working another time who could grant me such a pathway.

00:02:44.000 And I was really looking to them to see and recognize that gift, that skill set in me and just kind of adorn me and adore me and set me up for this pathway. And some of the ways that I showed up at the time, when I think about it, it had actually a lot to do with urgency.

00:03:11.000 I was really feeling this sense of pressure for something to change, for something to shift, for things to break open, to not do that same job over and over again because I was bored or it wasn't entirely fulfilling for me. I wanted to do something else.

00:03:38.000 And it was just such a it was so focused on needing something to change that I don't necessarily feel like I even paused to think what is going to what is actually going to be the Earth part of it. You know How is it going to actually appear in Earth? How is it going to grow? How is it going to nourish and regenerate and be sustainable for me?

00:04:08.000 I wasn't thinking about any of that. I was just like, "I'm ready. Let me do this. Why won't you let me do this?" And then more impatience, I showed up with the people on the other side who were supposedly creating these opportunities for me to display these gifts and talents, like they were less and less inclined to actually do that because I assumed that they just were feeling the desperation and urgency that I was showing up with whether or not even though I wanted the exact opposite, I wanted them to see.

00:04:53.000 And another way that impatience was showing up for me was that I didn't think that I needed to invest years of my life learning and growing into this new shape. I wanted to be already arrived in the new shape.

00:05:15.000 I wanted to prove that I had already done that, and if I could do the job that I was doing then and I was doing it supposedly better than other people, etc., like things that people would tell me, I would take that in and I would say, "Oh, okay. Well, I'm ready.

00:05:38.000 I'm ready already." And you know everyone needs to see me for how ready I am. Funnily enough, they couldn't because the only reason why I am so attached to other people seeing me and doing all this for me.

00:06:09.000 And somehow that will prove to me that I'm doing good and I'm capable, that I will make it as a business person, etc., etc. It was creating the opposite impact.

00:06:44.000 And I might have lost my thread there, but what I'm trying to say is I tried so hard to show up in this way. I was so impatient to get to the end. And I believe that that is a part of why I actually needed to slow down.

00:07:32.000 When I move from urgency, it can be really hard to see the forest for the trees, to see that change and forming a new shape, starting a business, being good at it, getting to a place where I understand how I can bring my skills to work with my people.

00:08:02.000 All of that takes time and effort. And if I wanted to be straight up successful in the very moment that I started my business without doing any of the unlearning and relearning that I've had to do in these last four years or so, then whatever I created would have proliferated the pattern that I already was in.

00:08:34.000 And I don't see how I could have really sustained that. And I didn't. And I had bursts of success. And I love how many organizations and people that I have gotten to work with over the last four years, even though sometimes I might kind of discount it for myself because it happens over a period of time.

00:09:08.000 But when I now look back at the body of work that I've created over time, even if it has been more hidden or happening more in the behind-the-scenes realms, more happening in small group community workshops or in one-on-one work or work that has happened in educational containers.

00:09:36.000 All of it has been instrumental in getting me to a place where I feel a true sense of confidence about how I'm showing up to working with other people and to my own art.

00:10:03.000 And yet that urgency in that moment that I took this leap, I'm also really grateful for that. I'm really grateful that I was able to trust myself to take such a big risk without entirely having a plan for where it will land and how it will go.

00:10:30.000 And I just did it. I did the thing. I'm out. I was not doing the job anymore. And now I could make the changes. Did it go the way I thought it was going to? Absolutely not. It did not go the way I wanted it to go, at least the way I thought it was going to go from that place of urgent impatience.

00:10:55.000 But once I was able to see that I was rushing myself, that I was so attached to my own perception of the pace at which I would succeed and the measure of that success, that everything that I was actually doing, the ways in which it was actually supporting myself and succeeding at taking care of myself and creating space to recover from burnout and working with people.

00:11:39.000 All of these beautiful things would just fall flat on me. And I felt lost and alone and like everyone has forsaken me for things that they didn't actually forsake me for because I didn't even ask them anything. You know I just made all of this up in my head. People didn't even reject me, but if I don't hear something back, I would read that as a rejection.

00:12:08.000 No one is saying to me that I have sent them too many emails or I have posted too many times on LinkedIn. In fact, I didn't post that much at all, especially in the early days of trying to launch offers that you know I launched an offer that only one person signed up for, and it was a group offer. So you know that wasn't a group. So I ended up working with them one-on-one.

00:12:36.000 However, at the time, I remember feeling like even posting once or twice, reaching out to a couple people, it was already a lot for me. I was like, "Whoa, I did all this. I'm so present. People are so aware of what I'm doing. If they haven't signed up, it's because they know that I'm bad and my work is bad.

00:13:05.000 They don't want it." It's like, "How did we even get there?" And that is the growth that I needed to be patient for. You know The growth of it's not a knowledge gap. It's not a matter of having skills.

00:13:28.000 It's a fundamental orientation towards how you show up for yourself that spans everything such that it's so obvious to the people who you're trying to reach out to, whether or not you're showing up from a place of total confidence.

00:13:48.000 Or if you're trying to fake it or you know show up in a way that doesn't entirely read as authentic.

00:14:09.000 And it's something I've been thinking about is how in the before time, like before I transitioned in being seen and socialized as a woman, there was this kind of need to show up and be really assertive and project confidence onto situations because if I didn't do it, my bosses are definitely not going to do it.

00:14:43.000 You know And even if I showed up with assertiveness, I could be told, "Hmm, could you be as assertive as this other dude though?" And I felt really justified in how I was showing up at the time. I was like, "If I don't show up like this, then I'll never get what I want. So you know let's suit up and fight.

00:15:10.000 Otherwise, I won't win." And who was I fighting with, really? Is now a bit lost to me. But I can see why I showed up like that.

00:15:29.000 You know And in retrospect, that wasn't really productive for me because even though those people were telling me things like, you know maybe they'll ask me about you know what experience do you actually have or any of these things, but I would just be like, "Oh, of course, you're going to you know not assume that I can do a good job, that you're going to discount my experiences and my skills, that you're going to look at some kind of paper measure of how good my skills are versus what I have demonstrated through my work.

00:16:11.000 None of that's going to actually matter. You know Self-fulfilling prophecy, as they say, I was like, "You are not going to respect me." And they were like, "Yeah, I'm not going to respect you because that's what you're asking for," right?

00:16:29.000 And I hope you know that, I hope it's clear that I'm not saying that this is literally what they're saying, but that how I'm showing up is creating this kind of subtle dynamic or pattern where I'm actually getting what I'm saying that they are giving to me because that's my expectation of the situation.

00:16:59.000 I expect them to treat me this way, and they do. And there is the one part of, how women get treated this way, marginalized folks get treated this way, people who you know need support and be sponsored in an organization, receive mentorship, be brought into the spotlight and given opportunities for their work without having to self-promote so much because sometimes their self-promotion may not land well.

00:17:45.000 It can be such a double-edged sword for people to get what you want in corporate environments. And I certainly felt that I could only make it work by fighting in those environments. And I would go into everything thinking that I was going to get fought with, and I did get fought with, okay?

00:18:16.000 So anyway, fast forward-ish to fast forward to a couple of years or so later, I'm still kind of, you know at the time, like what do you say? I'm less arrogant. I'm showing up with less external arrogance and more like humble. In fact, I'm almost like the opposite.

00:18:45.000 I have seconded to feeling that I am not as talented or skilled or any of those things that I thought I was, that I could immediately succeed in business, that I would actually need to slow down and study some stuff, etc. And I would still find that there were other ways in which I could be impatient. And that's something I've talked about here before.

00:19:16.000 I was impatient about having people to work with because I felt that when I collaborated with other people, work flew sorry, flows much better for me. And I would get really caught up in that, but I wouldn't realize that another dynamic that would unfold is that I would think, "Oh my God, I'm in a team.

00:19:45.000 All I want to be is useful. And so however I can be useful is good. You want me to do production? I'll do production. You want me to do some transcription, write some stuff. Like I'll do that. I'll do anything so I can be with the group. And then there is somebody who's the hotshot who gets to do all the fancy creative work or something. Like They do what they want, and I'm the one that formats all the documents.

00:20:15.000 You know And once again, I felt like I was being productive in that time, you know but it was coming from this, once again, this need of urgently filling this gap that I had of working with other people.

00:20:39.000 And when I really look at how this has unfolded for me and how I've understood in myself through actually, astrology has been a big part in how I was able to unfold this particular dynamic.

00:21:03.000 My moon is in Aries, my sun is in Taurus, and Aries is a sign that wants to get shit done. And the moon isn't really comfortable there. My sun is in Taurus, which is a very earthly sun where the moon actually is really comfortable, but the sun is like I want to be in the realm of ideas, but instead of being asked to materialize something real in the world, something Venusian, something creative, something beautiful, and nurturing, and the sun's like "ugh". (laughs) So that really made sense for me, like how that dynamic was showing up.

00:21:48.000 And it also allowed me to let go of it. And what I had to realize is that if I want to actually experience the thing that I was going for, which is that something needed to change, etc.

00:22:14.000 I wanted to be in work that I was passionate about, all of that, that I would actually have to follow my desires, my passions. And if I do that, when I do that, I can actually go towards my desire with lots of impatience and urgency.

00:22:46.000 I can read and consume things. I can hop between lots of different spiritual technologies, creative technologies, pathways. I can take a psychology class, and then I can take a tarot class. And all of that can be going at a really fast pace.

00:23:14.000 And yet, the creation, the materialization of the idea in the world, that can still take some time. That can still take some time.

00:23:25.000 And because I can continue to be the person that I am and just kind of like go after my desires really openly and vigorously and interdisciplinarily, then I get to turn around after four years, look around, and say, Wow, I didn't know that I was making a career switch towards these intuitive technologies of astrology and tarot and human design.

00:24:10.000 And I didn't know that I was going to weave my creative practice into it and that I would go from this kind of very structured, formalized coaching approach and working in tech all the way to still wanting to work with lots of different kinds of people while bringing all of these other things that I've been learning out of joy, out of fun, and I've just been kind of in this process.

00:24:44.000 I didn't really mark what the end was. And then I turned around like, "Okay, I have made a career change." And if you had asked me in the beginning, what was going to be my new career, and if you had even tried to suggest to me that it would take me five years or four years or what it was going to take to feel like I knew even what the direction was going to be, not I wasn't already flourishing in it, but I had more certainty in the path.

00:25:15.000 I would have balked. I would have been not even ready to take the step, maybe. And if I had and I did, there would have been so much hesitation and doubt because at the time that I made the change, even thinking about timelines in the future longer than a few months in front of me, even a few months, that was a lot.

00:25:52.000 I was like, "I don't even know what I'm up to this week. This day, let alone in a few years. You mean the earth is going to be around in a few years?" I'm not actually sure.

00:26:04.000 And the amount of world fuckery that we're in and we have been since the pandemic certainly accelerated my thinking towards more nihilism, more expectation or doubt that there will be a future to work towards.

00:26:40.000 It felt so apocalyptic. And now I feel that it is still apocalyptic. The world is worlding. The world is wildly worlding, as you all very much know. And I don't feel that I have to make everything happen in my work, in my creative practice, in no time at all.

00:27:16.000 Because even though I don't know the future, I can see from where I am now that it took me four years to get here.

00:27:34.000 And if there is anything I regret, it is not having more enjoyment, worrying about getting to the end where I was not experiencing any kind of financial distress or instability from the loss of my tech income, etc., etc., so fast.

00:28:07.000 That I was spending so much effort and headspace and time just trying to speedrun through it to jump steps, to rush to the end.

00:28:29.000 When I came in contact with Ayana Zaire Cotton's world-building work and how it's rooted in desire, and we did this I did this free workshop with them initially before I started to work with them through Seeda School.

00:28:48.000 I went to the workshop, and they had this breakdown of what kind of activities are you know that you work with more dominance or force with and that kinds of activities that you work you know maybe from a place of competence and the activities that you work from a place of desire, there's more nuance to it, but I'm seeing the super high level.

00:29:23.000 And I was like, "Oh, these things that I'm saying that I'm working on, like coaching and facilitation, don't even sit in my desire realm as it is right now, in the ways that I'm approaching them right now. And coming into contact with that reflection for myself and then seeing what was in my desire, plans, astrology, stars, dancing.

00:29:52.000 And I was like, "What? Where am I going with all this? But I'm doing this thing that's going to make me money. Once I make the money, then I can be the desired person." No. It turned out that that was not going to work for me.

00:30:11.000 And even in the last year and some, I've gone through you know the last kind of cycle of endings and breakups of the present times to arrive here where I am almost ready to launch this new offer that I'm working on.

00:30:39.000 And it's going to integrate astrology and human design and tarot and poetry. And it's going to be for people who are leaders who are making transitions into your creative practice in big ways. It's been so cool to see how all the threads that I have been weaving have come together.

00:31:09.000 And that instead of feeling anxious about work that might be coming my way, I feel so excited because I know that the things that we're going to work together on are things that I desire to know even more about. I'm fueled by curiosity. And that has been the biggest gift.

00:31:36.000 And it allows me to feel so much more comfortable opening up and continuing to show up in this practice. So patience. It's really hard. It's really hard. And when you take the jump, it seems so antithetical. And maybe it's hard to tell yourself that it's going to take a very long time because maybe it's not.

00:32:10.000 You know Maybe you are ready. And of course, everybody will have different timelines of how these things go. But when it does go slow, it's helped me to see how there's usually a reason.

00:32:38.000 And that reason, as usually, to do with something that I'm not seeing about myself that I need to learn, unlearn, revisit, and get into a solid relationship with.

00:33:02.000 And cultivating the patience for accepting what comes our way through the unpredictability that life is, that change often brings our way, the transitions bring our way. That kind of patience, that's really worth waiting for.

00:33:33.000 All right. So that's all I wanted to say for today. I hope that was helpful. More info on my offer coming soon. I believe I have I'm trying to work with a designer for the last parts. And I met somebody who I believe it's going to be a very cool collaboration.

00:34:02.000 So y'all will hear more about that when we are you know in the next stages. All right. So thanks for being here, as always, folks. I hope you have a good day. And I know there's an eclipse coming up this week, a total lunar eclipse. So take it easy, rest up, chill out. I'm definitely going to try and take it easy.

00:34:32.000 We'll see how that goes for my Aries moon! Take care, y'all, and I'll see you next week. Bye.