The Invisible Successes

Most of life's successes don't happen in one fell swoop. Overnight success, if it exists at all, is rare. Overnight luck like winning the lottery? Sure (and sign me up). But true success that's a combination of hard work and some lucky breaks along the way? Not overnight. It's incremental, sometimes invisible to the naked eye (or at least invisible to people other than the person putting in the work). But it's there. 

I have lots of goals - big ones, small ones, running ones, design ones, life ones. All of them require time, lots and lots of patience, and a series of small successes to get to the one big one.

Last week, I moved one little step forward in the jewelry line that has been rattling around in my head for years. I used to design and make jewelry on the regular. I had an online shop, had my designs in boutiques, and set up stands at local markets. Those days haven't happened in a while (and by a while, I mean almost a decade). Because life. And other priorities. 

My small success last week: I wrote out a list of the prototypes I want to make along with all of the supplies I need to do that. I did not make a list of supplies for the entire collection of sketches I have in my mountains of sketchbooks. Only a few. Bite-sized. (How do you eat all of the sushi at a sushi buffet? One piece at a time, right?). And then I scanned my original sketches of those designs and hung them on the wall behind my computer. They stare at me all day now. 

So, in my mind, I'm one step closer to getting those designs off the paper and into a real-life piece of jewelry. I'm going to go ahead and call that a success.