Do you ever stop and look at your life and just wonder: How the F*@% did I end up here?
I do.
Sometimes when I think about the choices I’ve made in my life I just get stuck wondering why I didn’t take an “easier” path. Why I didn’t do “normal life”.
I think about how much further along I would be by now. If I had played sports instead of getting emancipated in high school. If I had gone to college full time instead of working and taking 9 years to graduate.
Maybe if I would have married the right guy the first time, gotten better education, stayed with one company and got promoted, bought a house, didn’t gain 100+ pounds, just settled down, made some babies…
You know, the way it’s “supposed to be”.
I look back on last year. Selling everything we owned, adventuring across the country, living out of our car, and having no one home.
Sometimes all I see is savings account we could have had, the business I could have built, the home we could have lived in, and the friends we could have seen.
I see the roots we didn’t plant and the thing we left behind.
It’s like that in life ya know. Everything has an opportunity cost. For everything you get, you give up something else.
It’s hard to know if you are making the right choice, and you only get one life to make all the choices you are ever going to make. That is enough to paralyze you into doing NOTHING.
The wrong choice is always looming. The fork in the road will continue to present it’s self. You can stand there, and stare at the fork, but you won’t go anywhere that way.
YOU MUST MOVE. You absolutely must choose.
If I stop and look at that year, I can also see so many amazing things. What I gained over that year cannot be measured.
I can say, with 100% certainty, Snow and I would not be close enough to each other, to become parents, without the challenges of that time. The confidence it gave me in US is irreplaceable.
Out here in Austin, he has become my best friend, and there was no room for that when my life was filled with so many others.
My sister and I missed our whole childhoods together. I only met her 6 years ago. Spending the summer months with her and her family not only built our relationship to something I cherish, but taught me so much about parenting, relationships, and life. You can’t measure family.
I helped my Grandmother write a book she wanted to give to the family. I spent full days with her, no phones, no distractions, just us, and the book and baked goods LOL.
The joy that brought to her, the depth it brought to me, and the result of that book being in the family’s hands for Christmas, is absolutely priceless.
I found a peace in my soul in Oregon.
I built a relationship with a mentor I admire greatly.
I connected with family I had never met before.
I let go of my need for approval via rank and on paper success.
I saw the most beautiful places and met the most beautiful souls.
In the face of starting over in a new city, starting new business ventures, embarking on the adventure of starting a family, and putting our finances back together, I can easily forget that this is the path I was meant to walk.
Every choice I made, at a fork in the road, has led me to the next one, so no single one of them could have been wrong.
It’s hard to feel “behind” in life, but that only comes if you are looking at what everyone else is doing. Don’t measure your success by using someone else’s path as the yard stick.
The only think that will do is hold you back from the next turn you’re meant to take. You’ll be miserable and standing still.
START WALKING.