I’m Taking It as My Sign

My printer is still being difficult.

Of all the things I could be thinking about right now, somehow I keep coming back to that damn printer.

My peak season is here. The season I have been waiting for, planning around, mentally preparing for. The part of the year when the card business usually wakes up properly and people start buying cards and gifts and all the little things they put off for the rest of the year. This is the season where I need things to move quickly.

And my printer is still acting up right when I need it most, despite all my attempts to fix it.

Of course it has.

I have spent enough time troubleshooting it, trying different things, getting frustrated, convincing myself that maybe I can somehow make it work, then accepting that I might have to outsource some of the work in the meantime.

I don’t even mind outsourcing in principle.

What I mind is what happens when I do.

I send the artwork. I make the payment. I plan around the turnaround time. I arrange everything in my head so the order can move from one stage to another without unnecessary delays.

Then I show up.

Nothing.

Or I am told to wait.

Or the work hasn’t been printed.

Or, when it finally is, somebody has put my carefully designed artwork on paper that is dirty or faulty or simply not good enough for what I am trying to deliver.

And I stand there looking at it thinking, Are you serious?

Because for me, this isn’t just paper.

It’s my customer’s order.

It’s my reputation.

It’s money.

It’s time.

And time is money when you run a small business.

Every hour I spend travelling somewhere to outsource something I should be able to do myself is an hour I could have spent creating content, fulfilling another order, working on SEO, designing something new, following up with a delivery, or simply sitting down and breathing.

Sometimes I think people don’t understand how much invisible work goes into running a business when you don’t have a big team behind you.

There is no department handling procurement.

No production manager.

No assistant calling the printer.

No finance department making sure the cash flow works.

No logistics person figuring out how everything gets from point A to point B.

It’s me.

Which is why I think this particular desire has become so emotionally charged.

I don’t want a fancy solution.

I don’t want a miracle business transformation overnight.

I don’t even want something extravagant.

I just want my printer to work.

That’s it.

I want to turn it on.

I want it to cooperate.

I want to send an order to print and actually hear the machine doing what it is supposed to do.

I want to finish the job, package it, send it to the customer and move on with my life.

I want to stop wasting time.

I want to stop depending on people who don’t handle my work with the same urgency I do.

I want the thing I already own to simply work.

And maybe that sounds like such a small thing to want.

But sometimes the small things carry the biggest weight.

Because when you have been carrying a lot for a long time, you don’t necessarily dream of something enormous.

Sometimes you dream of the absence of friction.

You dream of opening your front door and everything just working.

The internet works.

The electricity stays on.

The machine works.

The customer pays.

The order goes out.

The bills get paid.

There is food in the house.

There is money in the account.

Nobody is chasing you.

You aren’t chasing anybody.

Nothing is on fire.

You can breathe.

That kind of ordinary peace has started sounding luxurious to me.

And perhaps that’s why, on one particularly frustrated day, I decided to do something slightly ridiculous.

I had been seeing these TikTok videos where people talk about asking for signs.

They ask the universe for something oddly specific, and then they see it.

A particular flower.

A particular number.

A particular animal.

A particular phrase.

Something that is uncommon enough that when it appears, they stop and think, Okay. I asked for that.

I’ve always found these things interesting.

Not necessarily because I believe every coincidence is a message from somewhere beyond us.

I’m not even sure what I believe.

But I do believe there is something interesting about deliberately asking life to surprise you.

So I thought, Fine.

Let’s play.

I don’t even remember exactly what was running through my head when I did it. I think I was frustrated about the printer. I think I was thinking about how badly I wanted it fixed without taking on another debt.

I didn’t want to borrow more money.

I didn’t want another financial obligation hanging over my head.

I didn’t want another solution that created another problem.

I wanted the simplest possible outcome.

The printer works.

The debt gets handled.

The season goes well.

I make enough money.

Everything moves.

And somewhere in that state of wanting an answer, I decided I wanted a sign.

But I didn’t want an easy sign.

I didn’t want something I could see every day and then convince myself it counted.

So I asked to see a fully yellow personal car.

Not a school bus.

Not a matatu.

Not a van.

A proper personal car.

Fully yellow.

The kind of thing that would actually make me turn my head.

Because yellow cars are not exactly common where I live.

In fact, people don’t seem particularly fond of them.

So I thought, If I see one, I’ll take it.

That’s what I said.

And then I forgot about it.

Or at least I thought I did.

Then I saw one.

A fully yellow car.

Just there.

Driving around like it had absolutely no idea that I had made a private little agreement with the universe.

And I remember looking at it and thinking:

No fucking way.

It was such a stupidly specific thing.

And maybe that’s precisely why it made me smile.

It wasn’t the car itself.

I didn’t suddenly believe that my printer was going to repair itself in the next five minutes.

I didn’t receive some divine notification saying:

CONGRATULATIONS. YOUR PRINTER HAS BEEN FIXED.

Nothing dramatic happened.

But something inside me shifted.

For a moment, I thought:

Oh.

So that thing I asked for can exist.

That’s all.

It was tiny.

But it mattered.

Because lately I have been surrounded by evidence of what isn’t working.

The printer isn’t working properly.

Sales have been slower than I want.

Traffic has dropped.

Ad revenue has dropped.

RPM has dropped.

Some people don’t trust online shops.

Some clients disappear.

Some opportunities don’t work out.

Some things take longer than they should.

Money has felt like something I have to actively chase rather than something that moves toward me with ease.

And when you’re constantly looking at what isn’t working, your brain can quietly begin building a world around that evidence.

This is difficult.

This is expensive.

This won’t work.

I’ll probably need another loan.

I’ll have to outsource.

Something else will go wrong.

What if peak season doesn’t go the way I need it to?

What if the printer completely dies?

What if I don’t make enough?

What if…

That last one can eat an entire day.

What if.

What if.

What if.

So seeing that yellow car felt like someone had interrupted the conversation.

Not with an answer.

Just with a possibility.

What if it can actually work out?

I needed that question.

Because I think I have spent so much time trying to prepare for things going wrong that I sometimes forget to imagine things going right.

Not in the vague, Pinterest-board kind of way.

I mean really going right.

The printer works.

The orders come.

The money comes.

The debts disappear.

The business grows.

The websites recover.

The traffic returns.

The right clients find me.

People trust the business.

Corporate clients start ordering in bulk.

I stop spending hours moving things from one place to another.

I buy better machines.

I make more.

I save more.

I breathe more.

Maybe the printer is repaired.

Maybe I eventually replace it with something better.

Maybe someone competent finally figures out the problem.

Maybe an opportunity comes from somewhere I wasn’t looking.

I don’t know.

And that is the strange thing about hope.

Hope doesn’t always require knowing the route.

Sometimes it is just being willing to believe there might be a route.

I think that’s what the yellow car gave me.

A little permission to believe that something unexpected could happen.

And perhaps I needed that more than I realized.

Because I have been asking for ease lately.

Real ease.

Not laziness.

Not a life where I never have to work.

I actually like building things.

I like designing.

I like creating.

I like the feeling of seeing an idea that existed only in my head become something physical that someone else can hold.

I don’t want to stop working.

I just want my work to stop feeling like I am constantly fighting the machinery around it.

I want to work and have the work compound.

I want systems.

I want reliable equipment.

I want reliable clients.

I want reliable income.

I want money sitting in my account before I need it.

I want to be able to replace something when it breaks without feeling like the replacement is going to destroy the month’s finances.

I want to be able to say yes to an opportunity because I have the resources to take it.

I want to be able to say no because I don’t need the money badly enough to tolerate nonsense.

I want to stop feeling like every inconvenience has the potential to become a crisis.

That’s the kind of abundance I actually want.

Not necessarily yachts and private jets.

Although, honestly, I wouldn’t complain.

But first, I want the boring stuff.

A working printer.

Paid bills.

No debt hanging over my head.

A healthy cash reserve.

A business that can breathe.

A home that feels safe.

A fridge full of food.

A little money for travel.

Money to take my son somewhere beautiful.

Money to buy something simply because I like it.

Money to solve a problem without panicking.

That’s wealth to me.

The ability to handle ordinary life without every inconvenience becoming an emergency.

And maybe that’s why I keep thinking about that yellow car.

Because there was something almost funny about the whole thing.

I was sitting there thinking about my printer.

Thinking about money.

Thinking about peak season.

Thinking about all the things that could go wrong.

And then life put this ridiculously bright yellow car in front of me.

It didn’t fix anything.

But it interrupted my pessimism.

And sometimes that is enough to get you moving again.

I have started thinking differently about signs since then.

Maybe the point isn’t to sit around waiting for the universe to perform tricks.

Maybe the point is to become attentive enough to notice possibility again.

To ask.

To watch.

To remain open.

To stop assuming that because something hasn’t happened yet, it cannot happen.

I don’t want to become someone who waits for signs instead of taking action.

That’s not what I mean.

I will still troubleshoot the printer.

I will still make the calls.

I will still outsource when necessary.

I will still create products.

I will still post.

I will still sell.

I will still follow up.

I will still work on my websites.

I will still do the boring things that make a business work.

But I also want to leave room for the unexpected.

Because I have realized that I don’t actually know how everything is going to unfold.

And maybe that’s okay.

Maybe I don’t need to.

Maybe I can work my ass off and still leave a little room for surprise.

Maybe I can have a plan and still believe something better could happen.

Maybe I can be practical without becoming pessimistic.

Maybe I can look at a broken printer and say:

This is inconvenient.

Without immediately turning it into:

Everything is falling apart.

There is a difference.

And I think I’m learning that difference.

The printer is having problems.

That’s true.

But it isn’t the end of my business.

Outsourcing is frustrating.

That’s true.

But it doesn’t mean I’m doomed to operate like this forever.

Sales can be slow.

That’s true.

But slow is not the same thing as dead.

Traffic can fall.

Revenue can dip.

A machine can malfunction.

A client can disappear.

A month can be disappointing.

And still, somehow, life can turn around.

I have seen enough strange things happen to know that.

So yes, I am still asking for my printer to work.

I’m asking shamelessly.

I’m asking without trying to make the desire sound smaller than it is.

I want the damn thing fixed.

I want it working properly.

I want to walk into my workspace and not feel that little knot of irritation in my stomach.

I want to press the button and hear the machine come alive.

I want to look at a freshly printed sheet and think, There we go.

I want to get through this season without another debt.

I want to make enough money to clear what I owe.

I want to save.

I want to grow.

I want the business to become bigger than the problems currently surrounding it.

And maybe I am allowed to want that.

Maybe I don’t have to apologize for wanting life to become easier.

Maybe ease doesn’t mean I am avoiding growth.

Maybe ease is what growth eventually buys you.

The ability to stop fighting fires and start building.

The ability to look six months ahead instead of six hours ahead.

The ability to make decisions from strategy instead of desperation.

The ability to choose what I want rather than what I can barely survive.

I don’t know whether the yellow car was a sign.

I don’t know whether it was coincidence.

I don’t know whether the universe was listening or whether I simply happened to see a rare yellow car on an ordinary day.

Maybe it doesn’t matter.

Because something happened anyway.

I asked for something unusual.

And then I saw it.

For a few seconds, the impossible became ordinary.

A fully yellow car was simply driving down the road.

And I stood there thinking:

Maybe.

Maybe things don’t have to happen exactly the way I expect.

Maybe the answer won’t look like the answer I imagined.

Maybe the printer won’t magically repair itself.

Maybe it will.

Maybe someone will fix it.

Maybe I’ll discover something I missed.

Maybe the money will come from a sale I haven’t made yet.

Maybe a client I haven’t met yet will become important.

Maybe an opportunity I haven’t even imagined will appear.

Maybe this season will surprise me.

Maybe I will look back at this period months from now and laugh at how worried I was.

I want that.

I want to be surprised by how good things became.

I want to look back and realize that the thing I was desperately trying to force was already making its way toward me through a route I couldn’t see.

So I am making the request again.

Not desperately this time.

Boldly.

Let the printer work.

Let the orders come.

Let the money circulate.

Let the right people find me.

Let the business grow.

Let the debt disappear.

Let the machines become better.

Let my work become easier.

Let me have more than enough.

Let me stop treating every good thing as something I have to fight for.

And if you need to send me another ridiculous yellow car along the way, fine.

I’ll take that too.

Because apparently I am at the point in my life where a yellow car can make me stop in the middle of an ordinary day and remember something I had almost forgotten:

Things can change.

Not everything has to remain as it is simply because it has been that way for a while.

A broken thing can be repaired.

A slow season can end.

A business can grow.

Money can return.

A door can open.

A problem can resolve itself in a way I didn’t anticipate.

Life can become easier.

And perhaps the most important thing isn’t whether the universe is sending me signs.

Perhaps it is that I am finally willing to ask for something good without immediately preparing myself for disappointment.

That’s new.

I can ask.

I can work.

I can hope.

I can leave room for miracles.

And I can still be practical.

Tonight, the printer is still not perfect.

The bills still exist.

The peak season is still unfolding.

I still have work to do tomorrow.

But somewhere in the middle of all of that, there is a tiny yellow car sitting in my memory.

Bright.

Unnecessary.

Specific.

Impossible to miss.

And for some reason, it makes me smile.

Maybe it was nothing.

Maybe it was everything.

Either way, I saw it.

And for now, that’s enough.

I’m taking it as my sign.

Not that everything will magically work out without me doing anything.

But that there is still room for things to work out better than I currently know how to imagine.

So, universe, I’ve asked.

Now show me.

And please…

start with the printer.