The Person You're Waiting to Become
She is being built by the doing of the thing. Not before it. During it. You cannot wait for her. She is waiting for you to start without her.
When someone says…
I'm waiting for the right time, we usually assume we know what that means.
We assume it is fear. We assume it is doubt or circumstance or logistics, not enough money, not enough hours, not enough confidence yet. And sometimes it is those things. But I think there is something else underneath it that is harder to name and more important to look at.
I think what most people mean when they say they are waiting for the right time is this: they are waiting to become a better version of themselves first.
A more prepared version. A more qualified version. A version that has figured out the things they haven't figured out yet. A version that will know what to do when the moment arrives because she will have become, by then, someone who knows.
That version feels real. She feels close, actually, just a little further along, just a few more lessons away. So we wait for her. We keep the dream in a drawer and we tell ourselves: when I am ready. When the time is right. When I have become who I need to be to do this thing.
Here is what nobody tells you about that version of yourself.
She is being built by the doing of the thing. Not before it. During it.
The more prepared version of you, the one who knows how to handle the hard moments, who has the confidence to show up fully, who has made enough mistakes to have genuine wisdom about them, that person does not arrive first and then begin. She arrives as a result of beginning. She is assembled, slowly and imperfectly, out of every attempt and every failure and every moment of figuring it out as you go.
You cannot wait for her. She is waiting for you to start without her.
I waited over a decade to start Anam Cara Clay Goods.
Ten years of knowing I wanted it. Ten years of believing that someday, when I was more ready, when I had learned more, when circumstances aligned in the right way, I would begin. I was not wrong that a better version of me was possible. I was wrong about how she was going to get here.
She was not going to arrive through waiting. She was going to arrive through making earrings badly, and then less badly, and then with real skill. Through showing up at markets terrified and doing it anyway. Through every hard conversation and cancelled class and broken earring and contact form that stopped working for a month without my knowing.
The version of me who knows how to run this business is not the version who finally felt ready. She is the version who started before she was ready and kept going.
So when you say you are waiting for the right time…
I want to ask you something gently.
Are you waiting for circumstances to change? That is a real thing and sometimes genuinely worth waiting for. Some timing is practical and the practical matters.
Or are you waiting to become someone different? Someone more capable, more qualified, more deserving of the thing you want to try?
Because if it is the second one, if you are waiting for a future version of yourself to show up and give you permission to begin, I want you to know that she is not coming on her own. She only comes when you call her. And you call her by starting.
Not when you are ready. Not when the time is right. Not when you have become who you think you need to be.
Now. As the person you actually are. Uncertain and unfinished and completely sufficient for the beginning.
The right time was always going to feel like this.
A little too soon. A little uncertain. A little like you are not quite ready.
That is not a sign to wait. That is just what beginning feels like.