What if I fail?

What if I fail?

This thought has been echoing around the halls of my mind a lot lately - so often that it’s started to feel familiar. Not comforting, exactly. But known. Like a phrase I’ve heard enough times that my body already knows the shape of it.

Over the last few years, I’ve finally been able to see the cycles that shape everything in my life. And I do mean everything.

My energy. My interests. My motivation. My hormones. My tolerance. My passions. My hobbies.

All of it moves in cycles.

I genuinely can’t imagine living in a linear way. Sometimes I grieve how long it took me to understand this about myself. How many years I spent trying to force my brain and body into systems that were never built for me. There’s a quiet sadness there for what might have been if I’d known sooner.

The truth that exists alongside mine is this: the world we live in is deeply invested in linearity. Straight lines. Constant output. Predictable consistency.

So, when cyclical creatures like me try to take up space here, friction happens. Setbacks happen. Super duper not smooth adjustments happen.

FernLight is the manifestation of my own heart. It’s the meeting place of many passions that set the fire in my soul. Because of that, the idea of failure can feel especially loud.

Failure hits differently when the thing you’re building is personal.

What I’ve been noticing, though, is how quickly I jump to the word failure as if it’s the only possible conclusion. Lately, I’ve been trying to pause there and see what else might fit.

Practice. Learning. Integration. A necessary chapter.

I’m navigating the FernLight journey largely on my own right now. Not out of some romantic desire to do everything solo, but because help costs money and money is limited. So, I’ve poured hundreds of hours into work that most people never see building and rebuilding the website, brainstorming ideas and letting them go, writing documents and rewriting them more times than I can count, creating graphics, questioning nearly all of it, etc.

One of the biggest challenges has been content. It’s treated as a requirement for success, yet it’s something I have very little energy for. My capacity for it is also cyclical, just like everything else. I’m still learning how to work with that reality instead of treating it like a personal failure.

Financially, I’m ending 2025 with more debt and less money than I’ve ever had. That’s hard to admit. It’s also the honest terrain of choosing to build something slowly, carefully, and with integrity rather than urgency.

Underneath all of this lives a familiar fear: that my version of consistency doesn’t count. That because it doesn’t look regimented or relentless, it must be wrong.

But my consistency has never been linear.

It’s cyclical. Abstract. Seasonal. It flows. It rests. It returns.

I’ve spent years comparing myself to people who can grind endlessly. I can’t do that. My nervous system has made that boundary very clear.

That’s one of the reasons I’ve stepped away from commissions. They’re hard on my nervous system. They activate an old belief that I have to be absolutely perfect to be worthy and if the work isn’t perfect, then I’ve failed somehow.

Taking money for art or healing services has been another edge I’m learning to stand at. It’s asking me to rebuild trust in myself. To rewrite old narratives about worth, productivity, and survival. To heal mentally, not just creatively.

This is hard work. And sometimes hard work doesn’t look like pushing forward, it looks like pulling back. Pausing. Letting the dust settle. Catching my breath. And then, when it’s time, returning with new air in my lungs and a little more honesty and understanding than before.

So…what if I fail?

What if no one books a session? What if no one buys from the shop I’m building? What if no one believes in me the way I’m trying to believe in myself?

If you’re someone whose life moves in cycles too - whose energy comes and goes, whose consistency doesn’t fit neatly into boxes - you’re not alone in these questions.

Lately, I’ve been sitting with a different one:

What if I don’t abandon myself in the process?

What if success isn’t measured by speed, volume, or perfection but by listening closely, tending what’s alive, and staying honest about where I am?

FernLight may grow slowly. It may grow sideways. It may pause. It may change. It honestly may end it’s chapter altogether some day.

If it does, that won’t mean I failed.

It will mean I listened. And right now, that feels like enough.

All my everything,

Bee