Welcome to Issue 65 of A Good Reputation, a newsletter about how to tell a better story to build better brands. (Did someone send you? Subscribe here.) (Miss past issues? Read those here.)

Hello Reader,

Every spring, I trick myself into believing that I can be the type of person who gardens.

The sun’s out, the flowers are blooming, and I'm convinced I need a hobby that forces me to be outside working with my hands.

So I drive out to the nursery, drop a couple hundred bucks on soil, equipment, and a variety of seedlings that are all bursting with hope and potential. I then spend a couple of glorious days over a beautiful weekend digging, potting and cleaning.

This is when I feel a sense of real accomplishment.

Proud of the dirt underneath my fingernails and sore back, I daydream of making a simple herby salad with kale and little gems picked from my backyard.

Then inevitably, usually by mid summer, all my plants are dead.

Even though I promised myself that “this year will be different,” I get too busy and forget to regularly water them. Or they start getting munched on by creatures, and I don’t find the time to research how to stop it. Or I get wrapped up in another project and lose interest altogether.

“It’ll be fine,” I tell myself when I finally notice they’re looking sad, “I’ll get to it tomorrow.” And by tomorrow (which ends up being next week) it’s always too late.

Cue the deep shame and disappointment.

Every year I seem to go through all five stages of grief in one weekend, lingering the longest on anger (at myself). And it’s not because I once again killed all these plants I spent my entire grocery budget on, but because I can’t seem to pull it together enough to be the type of person who gardens.

So, I sulk for a bit and eventually move on.

And then, like clockwork, March rolls around and I get the urge to do it all over again.

But this year, before invested a small fortune on all the things I’ll try my best not to kill, I stopped to ask myself if anything about my life, work, or behavior has actually changed since last March that will allow me to follow through on growing this garden. For real this time.

And, if anything has truly changed, is the garden the thing that’ll give me what I want? On that note, what do I want?

That is the question that’s got me stumped.

Because my problem with the garden (and the garden as a metaphor for life and work) is not just about the story I’m telling myself, but the story I want to be able to tell.

A Good Lesson

Turns out I’m not alone in both being the kind of person who wants to have a garden and consistently fails at doing so.

All week I’ve been telling people this story because I’m convinced it’s trying to teach me something, but I’m not sure what. And all week I’ve received both commiseration and life lessons from people who’ve successfully managed to keep a garden alive.

If I wanted an easy way to tie this metaphor to business, there’s an obvious lesson in setting up the right systems and doing research before you start to be successful. Or maybe it’s something about starting small, experimenting with one thing, learning it, mastering it, and then growing from there.

All of these lessons are well and good and obvious.

And sure, I could probably set myself up for success in the garden (and elsewhere) by installing some sort of watering system and experimenting with one type of plant before investing in all the herbs, the flowers and the orange tree. (I’m especially sad about killing the orange tree.)

But I’m not sure if success is the thing the garden represents for me. I think it’s more about being the type of person who has time for gardening.

(Correction: The type of person who makes time for gardening.)

You know, the kind of person who doesn’t check her phone first thing in the morning, but instead goes outside to water the plants. The kind who is totally on top of her workload and is able to take long, luxurious breaks to tend to her seedlings. The kind who invests in a hobby and sees it all the way through. The kind who harvests her dinner and cooks big, inventive meals for her family instead of throwing together whatever’s in the fridge in order to get back to her computer for an hour before bed.

Some days I’m that person, and some days I’m not.

But is the garden the thing that’ll help me become that person? Or does something else need to shift in the way I’m operating?

A Good Question

After telling my best friend Jess about my gardening woes, she admitted that after several seasons of successfully growing all sorts of things, she realized she wasn’t excited about growing food.

“It just doesn’t do it for me,” she said. “And I don’t like dealing with the bugs."

What truly brings her joy year after year? Having fresh cut flowers. That is why she gardens. And because of that, she actually follows through.

So now, instead of focusing on growing food, she gardens to have a beautiful, hand-picked bouquet on her dining table throughout spring.

“You just have to figure out what you really want to pay attention to,” she said.

That’s not always a hard question for me, but in this moment it is the only question that’s keeping me from clarity.

Do I want a garden because I want to grow food? Do I want a garden because I believe it’ll force me to slow down? Or do I want a garden because I’m searching for something more tangible to feel proud of—something that really shows the literal fruits of my effort?

A Good Start

While I don’t have a straightforward answer right now, I've learned that asking the questions is what keeps us honest.

It’s what helps us continue to reevaluate our habits, our patterns and the stories we tell ourselves in order to become the people we so desperately want to be.

The thing is, I’ve done a lot of work to simplify my business so that I can work reasonable hours, take lunch breaks, and not feel so chaotic. If there’s any year I think I can commit to keeping this garden alive, this is it.

But I’ve lost the thread on something else. And I think it has something to do with what one internet friend said about why she has a garden.

“I go to bed excited to see my plants in the morning,” she said.

That’s what I’m missing. I want to go to bed excited to see and feel the progress of my little project in the morning.

So maybe the question isn’t whether I can or should follow through on the stinkin' garden. Maybe it’s whether I'm chasing the right thing to begin with. Maybe that's the question for all of us.

What are you trying to grow right now? And is it actually something you care to tend?

A Few Good Resources

1. There's a new storytelling tool on the block that's helping me create presentations and storyboards for video storytelling. It's like if Miro and Google docs had a baby.
2. Adam Mastroianni is one of my favorite writers on the internet. I've found myself worrying less about AI, and here he articulates why.​
3. Stacy Eleckzo is teaching a class on how to translate your story into a high-converting website in my community this month. Come for a lesson and an audit!​

Hope you have a good one,
Renee