“Do whatever brings you to life, then. Follow your own fascinations, obsessions, and compulsions. Trust them. Create whatever causes a revolution in your heart.”
― Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear
When I was a little girl, I lived in a very small country town in rural NSW. It was an old gold rush town, and opposite our house was an old school that the town had outgrown. All of the kids in the neighbourhood would play in it's concrete quadrangle, but often, I would be found in the 100 year old rose garden that with no effort produced the most stunning, fragrant roses in every colour. If I wasn't there, I would more than likely to have shimmied my way up a huge ghost gum tree at the back of our house that overlooked the drought stricken countryside beyond our house on the top of the hill.
I have forever loved flowers and plants and felt calm and at peace in their company. After 15 years working in a high pressure, fast paced retail environment as a Buyer in product design and development, I longed for something that sat better inside my soul. When Covid first hit, I was a Design Manager for a retail company, and it felt crunchy and uncomfortable, like wearing shoes too small for your feet. So, when I was stepped down to 2 days a week, I sat quietly for the first time I can ever remember and asked myself: if I could do anything and be anything, what would it be?
I didn't try and solve solve it directly. I made a list of the things I knew I wanted it to be, and then sat with it. I wanted it to be creative, but not pushing a mouse around creative. Actually physically making things, with my hands. I wanted to not be at a desk, sitting down, shuffling from meeting to meeting. I wanted something I could inject myself into, a little statement to the world that this is me, with my personality and offbeat style weaved through a thing that meant more to me than a paycheck. And I wanted it to be beautiful, and to mean something to people. To talk to people and create and be my own boss.
So I made my list and then I put it aside, and as I like to do - I let it marinate. Often when a friend asks me for advice, I tell them, let it marinate. If you don't know yet, don't force it, let it sit and become what it's mean to become.
Not so long after making my list, I was walking my dog in the once a day lockdown activity with my boyfriend and as I often did, I dragged him by the hand to look at a flower on a bush in the park. "Look at that flower, isn't it amazing?" I do it often, much to his annoyance as he is often having a serious discussion with me and I am far more interested in the flower. "You love flowers," he said.
And a little voice inside me said, "you should be a florist." When I got home, I pulled out my list and sure enough - it ticked every box.
The very next day I signed up to study at Pearson's School of Floristry in Sydney, and within 6 months I finished my course. I got straight to work setting up my business and here we are. My second Mother's Day this weekend and I could not be happier with my choice.
I have made it sound terribly easy, and I assure you it was not. It's been hard work, juggling jobs with studying, learning a whole new world and navigating everything that goes along with having your own business. But there isn't anything I would rather do, than be with my flowers.
