I love plants and one side of my office is filled with them (I'm including a picture so you can see!) but what you might spot in that picture is the one dead plant that I accidentally killed (a Christmas cactus in the lower left behind the snake plant). Or maybe more specifically, I accidentally let it die.

It wasn't a dramatic thing. It wasn't sudden, didn't happen overnight. It just sat on that shelf, slowly giving up while it waited for me to remember to water it, while I kept telling myself day after day that I was going to water the plants. But I didn't, and by the time I got around to it, this one was gone. I'm still going to try to save it though, with a bit of fertilizer and some routine watering.

See, I love plants, but I hate watering them (I think it's an ADHD thing). Despite that, I do keep most of my plants alive (okay, I do kill a few each year, if I'm honest, lol, but it's usually small, new-to-me plants or ones that are hard to keep alive!), and many of the ones you see in that picture have been in my office, mostly thriving, for years. Some over a decade.

Because here's the thing about plants that I keep relearning: they don't need a huge production, no matter what TikTok videos from plant people have convinced you of. I've never researched perfect soil blends or built a watering schedule (obviously, lol). So as long as I do remember to water them, they not only stay alive, they thrive.

And, perhaps most importantly, even when they look like they're done for, they can often be resuscitated. Because plants, whether it's this one that looks a little rough or the ones that are thriving, don't need me doing all the things to them all at once.

Overall, plants, even the ones I think are dead, just need someone to show up with a little water and maybe some fertilizer on a regular basis. And maybe to be repotted very occasionally (and that might mean years).

That's it. Small things, kind of boring, but consistent attention. And sometimes a bigger shift to a new place.

Author careers work the same way, and I see this play out frequently. An author gets burnt out, or frustrated, or hits a roadblock, or maybe even needs a pivot. Life happened, things got overwhelming, and the marketing, the website, the book backmatter, even the writing itself got neglected. And now the author is like...

...what now? So they try to do ALL THE THINGS ALL AT ONCE. New website, new social media content calendar, new marketing plan, a complete overhaul of what they're writing, all in an attempt to make up for lost time.

I get the impulse. But that's rarely what actually moves things forward. What moves things forward is more like watering the plant. Showing up for the next small thing in front of you, regularly, without needing it to be a whole event. And every so often, yes, a bigger shift (the repotting) when it's actually called for. Not all at once, not out of panic.

The problem is that "the next small thing" isn't always obvious. Sometimes you genuinely don't know what the one useful step is, and that's a different problem than not having enough time or motivation. You can be ready to water the plant and still not know where the watering can is. Sometimes it's not even about the watering. Sometimes it's figuring out whether this particular plant can be resuscitated at all, or making the actual decision about what happens next, or just getting unstuck enough to keep growing instead of sitting in the same pot.

That's actually what Jumpstart is for. It's twenty minutes with me on Voxer, twenty dollars, one topic. Not a full career audit, not an attempt to map out your next five years. Just: here's where I'm stuck, help me see the next step. If you've got one specific thing you keep circling back to and can't quite resolve on your own, that's a good fit for it.

What's the one thing you're stuck on right now? If you're not sure whether it's Jumpstart-sized, hit reply and ask.

~Angela

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