Growth Is Exciting. Growth Is Also Distracting.

Last week, I wrote about Spring.

Spring is the season of planting seeds, beginning again, and starting over without starting from scratch. It is the season that asks us what still matters enough to plant.

This week, Apple A Day moves into Summer.

Summer is what happens when something starts to grow. That sounds lovely in theory. We imagine sunshine, green leaves, easy abundance, and maybe a gentle breeze moving through a well-behaved garden. But real growth is rarely that tidy. Real growth asks for attention. It changes the work. It exposes what is thriving, what is struggling, what needs more care, and what may be taking up space in a garden where it no longer belongs.

Click the picture to watch this week’s video on YouTube.

That is where I found myself this week.

The Heart Lessons campaign ended with more than 150 new people finding their way into The Courtyard. Technically, they are subscribers. But they feel more like new friends arriving at the gate, looking around, and deciding whether this might be a place they want to stay for a while.

That response was tremendous. I am deeply grateful for it. It was encouraging, exciting, and more than a little fascinating to watch.

And that was also the problem.

I started watching it a little too closely.

There is something oddly hypnotic about seeing numbers move when something you planted begins to sprout. Another download. Another subscriber. Another person entering the email sequence. Another tiny piece of evidence that the message is reaching people. After a while, though, I had to admit that watching the numbers was not getting me further down the road.

Growth was happening, but obsessing over the growth was not the same thing as tending it.

That is one of the honest lessons of Summer. When something starts to grow, the work does not disappear. It changes. Now there are new people to welcome, new paths to clarify, new campaigns to test, and new decisions to make about which part of the garden needs attention next.

So I am starting another campaign with a different audience. Not because the first one failed. Quite the opposite. It showed me something important. The radio, career disruption, reinvention, and crossroads message resonates. That matters. It also reminded me that my work has more than one doorway.

Licensed2BBadass is a brand. Kelly Orchard is the author.

Some people enter through radio and career disruption. Some enter through a health crisis, like I did. Some arrive through retirement, divorce, caregiving, an empty nest, grief, or the quiet realization that life has changed and they need to decide what comes next. Some will enter through Apple A Day. Some through Heart Lessons. Some through The Courtyard Letter. Some, eventually, through The Radio & Records Café novels.

My job is not to force everyone through the same gate. My job is to make the paths clear enough that people can find the part of the work that is meant for them.

That, too, is tending the garden.

Summer is not only about watering what grows. It is also about pulling what does not belong.

This week I noticed a few things I thought might grow that simply are not growing in the direction I hoped. I do not need to make a public inventory of every experiment, task, opportunity, plan, or conversation. That is not the point. The point is that I have to be honest with myself about what is taking energy from the garden I am actually trying to grow.

Not everything is a failure.

Some things are information.

That is a distinction I return to often, and it is part of why I keep circling back to the title Flipping the Format on the Fear of Failure. An experiment that does not grow the way I hoped is not something to be afraid of. It is not a disaster. It does not mean I was wrong to try. It may simply mean the idea has given me the information it came to give me.

The danger is not always in trying something that does not work.

Sometimes the danger is continuing to feed it because I do not want to admit it is not growing.

Not everything that takes root belongs in the garden. Some ideas have potential. Some plans may have made sense when they first appeared. Some tasks feel productive. Some conversations may even seem necessary. But Summer asks a very practical question:

Is this helping the garden grow?

If it is not, maybe it does not need more water. Maybe it needs to be pulled.

One of the Apples in Kelly Orchard’s Apple A Day Summer is called Ideas Are Like Rosebushes. I read from it in this week’s video because it says exactly what I needed to hear. Ideas, like rosebushes, need to be pruned and trimmed. New growth is natural, and it is normal for new tasks, ideas, and projects to creep into our lives. But full growth requires pruning.

That is not always easy for someone with a busy mind and a lot of creative energy. I can fall in love with ideas. I can see the potential in almost anything. The problem is that potential is not the same as purpose. Just because something could grow does not mean it belongs in this particular garden, in this particular season.

Sometimes pruning is not rejection.

Sometimes pruning is protection.

It protects the work that matters most.

Last week, I also wrote about being in more than one season at once. This week proved it again.

In my work, there has been plenty of Summer energy. The campaign grew. The video went up. The Shorts were created. The next campaign is beginning. Apple A Day is moving forward. The garden is alive and demanding attention.

But this week also carried Winter.

It was the third anniversary of my dad’s passing, and grief changed the pace.

That is the simplest and truest way to say it. My thoughts were elsewhere. Focus was harder. I did not hit the writing goal I had in mind. Some of the energy I thought would go into finished pages went instead into remembering, feeling, and moving more slowly than I had planned.

The garden was growing, but part of me was in the snow.

One of my favorite photos of my dad and me, taken at Red Box on Mt. Wilson — a place that lives on in Dead Air: The Day the Music Died.

I keep learning that grief does not always arrive as a dramatic collapse. Sometimes it is simply a shift in weather. The sky changes. The air feels different. The task that seemed manageable yesterday requires more effort today. The work is still there. The desire is still there. But something tender asks to be acknowledged before I push forward.

Grief changes the pace, but it does not mean growth has stopped.

Some days, tending the garden means watering what you can and not shaming yourself for what you cannot. Some days, the work is not to produce more. It is to stay connected to what matters without pretending the weather is different than it is.

That is part of Summer too.

Summer is not only confidence, productivity, and visible growth. Real Summer still has weather. Real Summer still includes tenderness. Real Summer still has days when the most honest form of tending is gentleness.

That was true in my writing this week as well.

I am still working on Perry Carpenter’s story, the second novel in The Radio & Records Café world. But not all of that work showed up as word count. Some of it looked like research. Some of it looked like brainstorming. Some of it looked like listening to music, thinking through period detail, and letting the emotional atmosphere of the story come closer.

Some of Perry’s scenes are drawing from my own memories of living in the San Fernando Valley in the 1980s. His story begins earlier, in 1975, but that Southern California landscape, the music, the radio, the heat, the neighborhoods, the sense of possibility and ache all have roots in places I remember. I am also connecting with a musician and psychologist friend who can give me a more grounded perspective on the life I am describing.

That counts.

Not all progress looks like finished pages.

Research is tending. Listening is tending. Letting the story reveal what it needs is tending.

The music has been especially revealing. The first two Radio & Records Café novels span several decades and both open in 1975, but Pepper and Perry do not arrive with the same sound.

Pepper’s story begins with Boogie Shoes by KC and the Sunshine Band.

Perry’s story begins with Houses of the Holy by Led Zeppelin.

I almost laughed when I realized that was how they had entered the room.

Pepper walked in with KC and the Sunshine Band. Perry walked in with Led Zeppelin. That contrast told me something before I had fully explained it to myself. They belong to the same larger world, but they do not enter through the same door. Their music tells me something about their energy, their emotional landscape, and the way each story wants to move.

Tending a story means listening for what belongs to it, not forcing it to match what came before.

That may be true of more than writing.

We do this in life too. We try to make a new season sound like an old one. We try to force a new direction to use the same rhythm, same tools, same expectations, same emotional soundtrack. But sometimes the next thing enters with a different sound. Sometimes the work is learning to hear it.

That is what Apple A Day Summer is helping me practice this week.

Spring helps us plant the seed. Summer helps us tend what begins to grow.

The Summer book is the deeper, journal-based version of this practice. It includes about ninety daily reflections and companion journal pages. Some of the Apples in this season are about growth itself: Change vs. Growth, Growth Is Gradual, Ideas Are Like Rosebushes, Stress and Work, We Learn From Failure, Pay Attention, and Learning Is Fun. Then Summer moves into a long series of Say Yes Apples: Say Yes to Balance, Say Yes to Learning, Say Yes to Relaxing, Say Yes to Play, Say Yes to Being Creative, Say Yes to Telling the Truth, and many more.

The journal pages matter because they slow the practice down. Each reflection page asks:

What is this Apple inviting me to notice?

Then it leaves room for:

One small step I’ll take.

That is the rhythm of Summer. Notice. Reflect. Take one honest step.

If Summer is the season you are in, if something has started growing and now needs attention, consistency, pruning, learning, confidence, or care, Apple A Day Summer is where I would invite you to continue.

And if buying the book is not the right step today, that is okay. I mean that. The point is to get the Apples into your hands in a way you will actually use them. Apple A Day is also available free through YouTube, and the Say Yes playlist is a good place to begin with the Summer season.

This week, I am not asking myself whether the whole garden is finished. That is not a Summer question. The garden is not finished. It is alive. That means it will not always follow my schedule.

Instead, I am asking:

What is growing?

What am I watching too closely?

What needs tending?

What needs pruning?

What am I feeding simply because I once hoped it would grow?

What counts as progress this week, even if no one else can see it?

Those are the questions I am carrying into this Summer season of Apple A Day.

Tend what matters.

Water what is growing.

Pull what is stealing life from the garden.

Give yourself room to learn.

Start where you are.

Seek growth.

Be fruitful.