I’ve been talking a lot lately about my grandparents – they spent the winter in Florida this year and I am so thankful for all the time we got to spend together. My grandma, being grandma, found an orchid show in town in no time flat. I’ve definitely inherited her love for orchids, along with my own love of photographing them, so I traveled to Marie Selby Botanical Gardens with my mom to see the show for myself shortly after.
The show was wonderful as evidenced by this week’s photo, and the gardens themselves are immaculately kept. The entire waterfront property on the Sarasota Bay was donated by Marie Selby herself, who wanted to share her gardens with the general public.
When my grandma left to head back home, she left a piece of her here with me: not one, not two, but three of the orchid plants she’d purchased to make her and my grandpa’s vacation rentals feel more like home, along with a beautiful orchid my grandpa gave me for Valentine’s Day. I didn’t expect them to bloom again, but in the past few weeks new growths have been popping up on all four.
Unfortunately for me, the new growths don’t just turn into flowers overnight. In fact, the growths (forgive me, I’m still learning orchid terms!) are probably only increasing by about a centimeter per day, silently teaching me what it is to be patient and wait for things to come into bloom. (Also in the art of patience this week: chilling cookie dough. Seriously how painful is it to wait a day between making dough and baking the cookies??) I’m gonna get a little deep here, but I can’t help but apply this lesson to my own life in this moment.
Back in December, I lost my job. While I wasn’t fired, I was kind of forced into quitting. It’s something I never fully announced online or made known outside of close friends and family, but the situation has been a blessing in disguise. The past few months have forced me to take a hard look at what makes me happy, what I want out of a job and my career, and what’s really important to me (not just what I feel should be important to me). But I haven’t exactly been patient or kind with myself when it comes to figuring out the answers to all of those questions.
While I hate to admit it, I have to own the fact that I’m a dreamer so much more than a doer. The doing part is scary! But I know it’s necessary. So for me, the process of figuring out where to go from here is also an exercise in patience. My career doesn’t need to be treated like a race, and I’m certainly going to take a bit of time to grow into myself and find my own way, but that’s totally fine with me. A little patience, care, and growth can go a long way.
Thank you for the lessons, orchids that I’m going to try very very hard not to kill. 🙂
