Dispatch No. 13 - The Middle

Truthfully, I hoped to be a little further along in my business by now. That delta between expectation and reality isn’t always obvious when you start something new. Even three months in, I feel like I’ve lived twenty versions of Mosaic. Some days there’s juice; other days I'm zooming out and looking for distraction.

No matter how many times you start over, it’s easy to forget how disorienting the middle is—the part where you’re not lost, but you’re not tethered either. You're in motion, but you don't have a vantage point yet.

Existing Promoting a small business in 2025 adds its own layer of weird. Everything’s content now. Every win wants to become a post, every thought a carousel. I want to share what I’m building, but it still feels unnatural, sometimes pointless, to share vulnerably online while algorithms and AI decide who sees it. There’s this ongoing tension between being visible enough to grow and "real enough to stay real," if that makes sense.

But I know I’m not the only one figuring it out. There are the people who reply after a Dispatch, friends sending their own in-progress ideas, other designers and business owners I'm meeting who speak from that shared "middle."

None of us pick the perfect setup. We just keep adjusting where to give energy and what to let drift, and trying to stay awake to all the amazing things along the way.

This is the last Dispatch of 2025. Thanks for reading, replying, and being part of this small virtual nook of the internet. I’ll be back in January.

-MG