Figuring It Out in Real Time

A few days ago, I got on a call with a marketing agency that specializes in online ads for parents and grandparents, my exact audience. I was guarded going into the call. I wanted to explore them as an option, but I didn't want to be "sold"

The woman I met with was sharp. She asked practical questions that got straight to the point.
“How many sales do you need to place your first order?”
“What’s your minimum order quantity?”
“How long will it take for customers to get their bags after they buy?”

They were fair questions, the kind I should have answers to, and still my anxiety started creeping up, a wave rolling up from my stomach and catching in my throat, a mix of embarrassment and adrenaline when you realize someone has just uncovered the questions you’ve been avoiding. I was on my heels and felt like now I needed to sell her on me. 

Because the truth was, I had ideas, just not answers.

If I want to start selling in January, I need to know how many bags I’ll order, where they’ll be delivered, who will fulfill them, how returns will work, and somehow, how to access the money that’s already come in from preorders. Two people have already trusted me enough to buy, and I don't even know where to go get the money they have already given to me!

It was humbling, and it lit a fire. There’s something about realizing what you don’t know that makes you want to learn it all at once, to prove you can rise to meet what’s ahead.

This stage, where nothing is tidy and everything depends on decisions I don’t yet know how to make, is where I'm living at the moment

It’s not the dreamy beginning when ideas are big and beautiful and you are blissfully unbothered by the "how", and it’s not the tidy ending when the systems hum and the path is mapped. It’s that awkward, alive, learning-in-public stretch between them. The real-time figuring out.

I’m learning that entrepreneurship, motherhood, and life don’t reward certainty. They reward motion.

Because clarity doesn’t come first. It arrives quietly, after you've already taken several steps. And honestly, I don't know any other way to do it.

I’ve always idealized color-coded spreadsheets. I’ve fantasized about being the kind of woman who writes out daily lists, checks things off one by one, and gets that neat little rush of completion.

But that’s not me.

I’m the kind who makes a list and then scribbles over it mid-phone call because it’s the only paper within reach, the one who starts craft projects that would never be mistaken for store-bought because I glance at the general plan, dive in, and never look back.

Still, the illusion of perfection has a way of stalling me. I can convince myself I need just one more plan, one more spreadsheet, one more piece of clarity before I act. Because planning is comfortable. Action is vulnerable.

And maybe that’s why I’m writing all this down.

If I’m honest, this blog is as much for me as it is for anyone reading. Writing helps me pause and name what I’m learning instead of spiraling in everything I haven’t mastered.

It will never all be figured out, and maybe that’s the point. The to-do list will always be longer than the day. But if I can teach myself to keep moving, one decision at a time, then the next right thing will always reveal itself.

Here’s to figuring it out in real time, to messy notes and crossed-out lists, to trusting that forward is enough.

I’m still somewhere between the beginning and whatever comes next, but I’m learning that progress rarely feels graceful while it’s happening.

If you’re in that same space, building something, repairing something, or just trying to stay upright, you’re not behind. You’re in motion. And that means you’re growing.