I still don’t know how to ask for what I actually need, so I’m just doing it here
I’m sitting on my porch right now, watching a stray cat knock over a tray of baby succulents that I repotted last night. I should probably get up and stop him, but I’m too tired, and honestly, if he knocks one over, it’s not the worst thing that’s happened this week. Last Tuesday I dropped a whole flat of pothos cuttings on my driveway right before the rain, got caked in potting mud all over my favorite white sneakers, and three of the plastic pots cracked right down the middle. That was worse. Today, I’m just… here, admitting I need help, which is something I haven’t done openly in, I don’t know, 15 years?
I’m the person everyone comes to for advice, you know? My roommate texts me at 10pm when she’s fighting with her girlfriend, asking me to proofread the apology text. My cousin calls me when she’s negotiating a raise, wants me to walk her through what to say. I even helped Mrs. Henderson down the street set up her new iPad last month, and walked her through how to video call her granddaughter in college. I’m good at this. I’m good at showing up, I’m good at having answers for other people. But when it comes to my own stuff? I clam up. I post the cute reels of my baby plants, I caption it “little side hustle slowly growing :)”, I get all the proud comments, and I don’t tell anyone that I panic every single time someone DMs me asking for a price.
Last week my aunt texted me asking for a medium snake plant, she’s redecorating her living room. I had one that was perfect, fully rooted, already in a nice matte gray pot. She asked how much she owed me, and my brain went completely blank. I didn’t want to charge her too much, she’s family, but I also paid $8 for the pot, $3 for the organic soil, and the cutting took me two years to grow out from my own mother plant. I panicked and blurted $10. She showed up, gave me $20, said “keep the change, honey, you work so hard” and I wanted to crawl under my porch. I felt like I was either ripping her off or undercharging so much I was an idiot, and there was no middle ground. I didn’t say anything, I just waved goodbye and shut the door and ate half a bag of Oreos to make the awkward go away.
I went to a local plant swap two weekends ago. I brought 18 extra cuttings to give away, met this really nice woman who sells plants out of her garage over on the west side, same size tiny operation as me. I stood there for 10 minutes talking about how bad fungus gnats are this summer, how I tried cinnamon and it didn’t work, how the yellow sticky traps just look ugly hanging off my porch rail. And the whole time I wanted to ask her: how do you price your stuff? How do you balance not charging too much for people who just want a cheap plant for their dorm desk, but also not working for $2 an hour repotting on your only days off? Do you buy pots in bulk online? Where do you store 100 extra pots when you live in a 1-bedroom apartment with zero storage? Do you actually make enough to cover the cost of soil and cuttings, or is it just a hobby that costs you money every month? But I didn’t ask. I just smiled, swapped a golden pothos cutting for her extra sedum, said it was nice meeting her, and then she left. I kicked my own shin in the parking lot all the way to my car. I was so mad at myself for being too weird to ask a simple question.
The other day I was sitting at the coffee shop where I work part time, on my day off, and I heard the guy at the next table on the phone. He just said, straight up, “Yeah, I need a little advice on this tax thing for my side work, I know you do bookkeeping for small operations, would you have 15 minutes sometime this week to chat?” No “I hate to bother you”, no “sorry I’m such a mess that I don’t know this”, just… I need this, can you help me? I stared at my oat latte so long I got foam on my phone screen. I couldn’t remember the last time I asked for something that directly. I always apologize first, I always downplay how much I need it, I always make it sound like it’s no big deal even when it’s stressing me out enough that I can’t sleep some nights.
I don’t even want to quit, for the record. If someone tells me “just stop doing it if it’s that much trouble”, that’s not the advice I want. I like this. I like pulling a tiny baby leaf off my big monstera, sticking it in a cup of water on my windowsill, coming back two weeks later and seeing little white roots poking out. I gave a baby pothos to the 19 year old kid who moved into the apartment upstairs last month, she just moved out of her parents’ house, it’s her first place. She texted me a photo last week of it sitting on her kitchen windowsill, said it’s the first thing that made her place feel like hers. That’s the stuff that makes it worth it. I don’t want to stop. I just want to not lose money every time I give someone a plant. I just want to not panic when someone asks how much it is.
I don’t know. That’s why I’m writing this. I don’t have a big lesson, I don’t have a pretty bow to put on this. I’m just a girl with a porch full of baby plants, who’s bad at asking for help, finally asking. If you do this small-time plant thing, or any little side thing out of your house, and you’ve figured out the pricing and the pot thing and all the messy in-between parts that no one posts about on Instagram? I’d take your advice. I’d even buy you a coffee, the way I always do when people help me out. I just… finally worked up the courage to ask.
Oh, and the stray cat just knocked over another succulent. Okay, I should go get him. (Word count: ~1120)
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