There’s something slightly ironic about starting a brand called onward. and then spending the following few weeks procrastinating.
But that's pretty much what I've done.
I had the idea.
I got excited about it.
I started designing things.
I thought about the name.
I thought about the website.
I thought about Instagram.
I thought about products.
I thought about what the brand could become.
And then, somewhere along the way, I stopped actually doing it.
Not completely.
I'd still work on it.
I'd still have ideas.
I'd still open the website and change something.
I'd still make a new design or think about a new post.
But I wasn't really moving forward.
I was preparing to move forward.
And there's a difference.
The very easy trap of “working on it”
Procrastination doesn't always look like sitting on the sofa doing absolutely nothing.
Sometimes it looks incredibly productive.
You can spend three hours choosing a font.
Another two hours changing the colour of something.
You can research Instagram strategies.
Watch videos about how other people built brands.
Rewrite the same sentence seventeen times.
Move things around on your website.
Make another version of the logo.
And at the end of the day, you feel like you've worked really hard.
But you haven't actually done the thing you were avoiding.
I've realised I've been doing quite a lot of that.
Because actually putting onward. out into the world is different.
Once it's out there, people can judge it.
They can ignore it.
They can think it's shit.
They can love it.
They can ask questions I don't have answers to.
And suddenly it's no longer an idea in my head that can be perfect.
It's real.
I think that's probably what I've been avoiding.
Perfection is a pretty good hiding place.
As long as I'm tweaking something, it's not finished.
And if it's not finished, I don't have to put it out there.
Which means I don't have to find out what people actually think.
It's quite a clever little system when you think about it.
Keep improving it until you never have to release it.
The problem is that eventually you have to admit that you're not improving it anymore.
You're hiding behind the work.
And I've caught myself doing exactly that.
So what does that have to do with onward.?
Probably quite a lot.
Because the whole point of onward. was never supposed to be:
“I've figured life out. Here's how you do it.”
Quite the opposite.
It's about figuring things out as you go.
And apparently, that includes building the brand itself.
I've spent weeks thinking about what onward. should represent.
But maybe this is actually part of it.
Because moving forward doesn't always look like progress.
Sometimes it's two steps forward and one step back.
Sometimes you get stuck.
Sometimes you overthink everything.
Sometimes you need to stop.
And sometimes you have to recognise that you've been standing still and simply decide:
Right. Enough. Let's go.
So that's what I'm doing now.
Not waiting until the website is perfect.
Not waiting until I have 10,000 followers.
Not waiting until every product is exactly how I imagined it.
Not waiting until I feel completely confident.
I'm just going to start putting the thing into the world.
Some of it will probably be brilliant.
Some of it probably won't.
I'll change things.
I'll make mistakes.
I'll probably procrastinate again.
But that's okay.
Because onward. was never about having everything figured out.
It's about continuing anyway.
And maybe that's the most honest place to start.
onward.