All we are are plants in people’s lives

My supervisor said something to me, as part of an hour-long discussion we had, that had me reeling. I’d planned to defect elsewhere because I thought she hated me, and I’d assumed she was the type of management I’d had issues with 10 years ago at another store — so for her to say this was a big deal. For to explain it was a big deal.

It’s the way I feel about everything I do. The endgame with Crunchy Family is to get my cousin, Charlise, to a point wherein she has enough confidence to run the blog herself. This means I have to train her in WordPress, SEO, affiliate marketing, the actual blogging process and everything else that accompanies blogging. I’m helping her create sustainable systems to automate certain processes along; everything else that can’t be automated is what I have to teach her the entirety of.

To paraphrase the words of my supervisor:

My job is to train her to the point that she could one day take my place.

Isn’t that what a lot of us do? We share about our blogging adventures and teach people how to do what we do, so they can take that info and evolve it into something even more amazing.

My good friend, Georgie, often mentions how jobs in the future don’t exist today, as we know them. Her job today didn’t exist in her parents’ generation.

No one thought blogging was going to become anything. Really, the journalists and fashion magazines and everyone who didn’t blog told us it was going to “die” after 2015 and would definitely not continue on through 2020… and then they all had to eat their words.

Fashion bloggers redefined fashion standards and body image.

More tragedies happened, and more people took to narrating their own stories by becoming bloggers.

Brands that once laughed at the idea of paying “fake journalists” to advertise their products when they should just be grateful for receiving it at all or, worse, pay the company to advertise their products either had to change their whole marketing plan or were killed by Millennials.

This is the kind of change I live for.

I view people in my life, and myself, as planted seeds, watered (or not) depending on the relationship. The longer, healthier the relationship, the bigger and more beautiful the bloom. Or maybe it’s a tree – a pillar in your life that, even after the relationship is long gone, life experience continues to nourish its roots.

When I form relationships with people, or decide with whom to have a relationship, I consider whether we can create roots together. Because roots is where it’s all at for me.

Not every relationship is a tree, but all plants face hardships. Not all can regrow after being cut.

And the legacy left is that simple seed’s effect on your life. Or my life.

And the effect I aim for is one that pushes you to be a better person, to break the negative cycle you may originate from, and to gently push others to do the same.

Maybe it doesn’t happen straightaway, or maybe I have to die to invoke such feelings in you, but that’s the type of mark I want to leave on people:

To be the change I want to happen in this world, to the point that it will continue happening — for the better — even when I’m gone. Like a monstera deliciosa.