Moving Toward My One Big Life

For a few years, I was living a life of starting over. Those were years I was learning who I was again after losing my identity to a life that wasn’t right for me.

I don’t think that’s true anymore.

I’m not standing in the aftermath of something, trying to figure out who I am or how to put a life back together. Somewhere along the way, I moved beyond that. I’m moving forward now, and not from a place of survival, but from a place that is beginning to feel a lot more like thriving. I’ve learned that thriving can be terrifying and messy.

I have a lot going on. I have a somewhat-demanding full-time job, three very demanding dogs, two of whom have developed an unfortunate taste for expensive veterinary medicine, and a horse I ride and train at least five days a week. I’m getting two side businesses off the ground. I’m writing and making music again. And somewhere in the cracks between all of that, I’m still participating in the never-ending quest to remain open to meeting someone I’d actually like to share this whole ridiculous life with.

My life is not quiet, but it’s a life that is all mine, and that’s important.

There was a time when most of my energy went toward managing things. Managing other people’s needs, managing problems, managing money, managing work, managing whatever crisis had wandered through the door that particular night. Even when I was doing things I loved, there was always this underlying sense that I was trying to keep everything from falling over and that every move I made was a mistake that could potentially be used against me.

I’m not doing that anymore.

Now I’m building.

My flute studio is growing enough that I’ve started wondering what would happen if I stopped treating it like a side project and allowed it to become something bigger. I’m building another business around skills I’ve accumulated over an entire career. I’m writing again. I’m learning how to record the music I’ve had sitting inside me for years. I’m thinking differently about my career, my money, where I live, how I spend my time and what I want an ordinary Tuesday to feel like.

And I’m making actual moves toward those things.

That’s the scary part.

Because I’m doing it without a safety net.

There isn’t another person standing behind these decisions who can catch the financial fallout if I make the wrong choice. There isn’t someone else whose income quietly makes a risky decision less risky. If one of these ideas fails, I work through the consequences. If I spend money badly, I figure out how to recover it. If I take a leap and land badly, the bruises are mine too.

Financially and emotionally, my failures belong to me.

There is something incredibly freeing about that, but there is absolutely nothing relaxing about it.

It was easier, in a strange way, when the life I wanted existed mostly in my imagination. I could picture the work, the music, the horse, the dogs, the home, the freedom, maybe even someone beside me who fits into it rather than requiring me to become smaller to make room for him.

Dreams are relatively safe.

Possibility is not.

Because once you realize something might actually be possible, you have to decide whether you’re willing to risk something to reach for it. And when you’re building a life on your own, every leap comes with the knowledge that you are also the person responsible for getting yourself back up if it doesn’t work.

Maybe that’s why some of these decisions feel so enormous even when, from the outside, they probably don’t look that way.

Charging more. Building something before I know whether anyone wants it. Spending money on an idea. Applying for a job that could change the shape of my life. Turning down something that is technically good because it isn’t good enough for the life I’m trying to make. Letting myself wonder whether the work I love could someday support me.

These are not survival decisions anymore.

They’re expansion decisions.

And I think that’s why they scare me so much.

I’m no longer afraid that I’m going to lose myself inside a life that doesn’t fit me. I’m afraid because I’m finally taking myself seriously again enough to build one that does.

There is no guarantee that everything I’m trying will work.

Some of it almost certainly won’t.

I will make bad decisions. I’ll misjudge things. I’ll spend money I wish I hadn’t spent. I’ll get excited about ideas that go nowhere. I’ll probably get my heart broken again and again.

And then I’ll have to deal with it.

But I also get the other side of that bargain.

The successes are mine too.

The student who signs up. The business that starts making money. The song I finally finish. The ride where Thomas and I suddenly understand something we’ve been working on for weeks. The morning when I wake up and realize that a piece of the life I used to only imagine has quietly become normal.

I built that.

Maybe that’s what thriving actually looks like.

Not a perfectly peaceful life. Not suddenly having all the answers or enough money or enough time or someone beside you to reassure you that you’re making the right choices.

Maybe thriving is having a life full of things you care enough about to risk failing at.

Maybe it’s realizing that your energy isn’t being spent trying to escape your life anymore.

It’s being spent creating it.

I’m not starting over.

I’m well past that.

I’m moving toward my one big life now.

There may not be a safety net underneath me.

But for the first time in my adult life, I’m not jumping because I have to get away from something.

I’m jumping because I want to see how far I can go.