Monstera Monday

I have a lot of balls in the air right now, it feels like, along with the normal stuff, shipments coming in and out, newsletter going out on Tuesday, music practice, laundry, ordering groceries online. This makes it seem like I don’t do much, and sometimes that’s not far from the truth. I’ve been extremely prolific in letter writing, that most important and productive of tasks. We are vaguely unlockdowning, and it’s a bit chaotic. The shops have reopened, which feels like one massive task done. Reopened! Check.

It’s sort of cyclical, but I’m in the beginning stages of all sorts of mostly minor projects: a sticker to be printed, new postcards, camping plans, collaboration projects, a bunch of inks to swab and turn into samples, new companies and catalogues I’m supposed to be looking through and ordering from. All of these new little seedlings, all requiring death by a thousand decisions, all fragile and requiring a lot of staring at. Could we get that font 1 pt smaller? Let’s spend some time punching numbers randomly into this calculator in order to average things out. I hate plastic packaging, but this paper one is 14x the cost, what else exists on the internet? I have a record number of blog drafts waiting for inspiration to strike to take them to the finish line—what am I doing here? Rambling on? Instead of actually finishing any of those ones?

Supposedly this is the way to run a business successfully, is to have all the balls you can manage and theoretically some of them end up growing even if some of the others end up on the floor. It’s always nice when more of those balls seem to be landing somewhere meaningful. Me, mother hen, sitting on my nest of incubating eggs, waiting for them to get ready. Then again, having lots of empty space and time is supposed to be good for new ideas and balance. Who knows what the right way to be doing anything is.

I’ve recently repotted two of my big Monsteras, something long overdue, and one of them had a smaller vine coming out, so I chopped it off to propagate, having long vaguely promised a few people some cuttings. Trimming smaller plants seems like pruning, a necessary stage of plant life, but hacking away at the big, beautiful, thick vines of Monsteras, once they get bigger, always seems traumatic to everyone involved, like amputating a limb without anesthesia, doctor and patient both feeling faint. What a name, Monstera, with its long viney roots wafting out into the air, its gargantuan leaves spiky and full of holes.

In any case, propagating plants, propagating projects. Keeping busy.