My goal right now is to stay focused on my exit strategy, accomplish my financial goals, and turn my attention to the future. This means cutting out extra spending, like no trips or few entertainment treats. I tell myself I can enjoy that later, when I have a real job and I am in a better place. I don’t want to spend money on a vacation only to have to come back to work.

As I conduct informational interviews with people, I understand that my biggest mistake was staying in training for so long. I should have quit at least ten years ago. Without being in an environment with colleagues, peers, and opportunities for advancement, I have really cut my income potential and ability to make connections for further opportunities.

It is going to take years for me to make up lost income and career advancement, and I am fully prepared for that. Looking back —and even now, as I think about where I am financially and professionally —the training career wasn’t worth it, and it is the top regret of my adult life. Regrets are fuel for the future, and now that I know better, I must stay focused on the exit strategy and keep moving forward.

Even though I am focused on the future, this doesn’t mean I am tuning out the present. I am well aware that color is coming back into my life, which has felt so gray over these past five to ten years.

The wisdom of Ruth Reichl 

Be open to the small pleasures of life. When you taste a good strawberry, it is a moment of grace. – Ruth Reichl

Ruth Reichl is an American chef and food writer. I had never heard of her until I listened to an interview with her on the Julia Louis-Dreyfuss podcast, Wiser than Me. I enjoy listening to older women who have LIVED because their wisdom is invaluable to younger women like myself who often can’t see beyond their dark seasons of life.

After the George Michael show, I was so inspired and felt so uplifted. I haven’t felt like that for a long time. It was just a moment of pure joy. I really enjoyed it, and I enjoyed remembering how the music made me feel. Certain feelings are starting to return, and more color is coming into the gray.

I have felt grief and loss very deeply, and before that, there was a type of numbness that has taken over in the last few years. I had just stopped feeling, and of course, I spiritualized it as I told dying to my flesh. That wasn’t it at all. I was uninspired and resigned to the life I thought I was meant to live. Most of it was due to my environment, which needed to change because it was stifling and not aligned with my values or my life. I already left the church I was attending, and now I need to leave my work.

I want to feel joy and inspiration once again, and as Ruth Reichl said, I need to be more open to the small pleasures of life. A great yoga class, a fun book club meeting, meeting new people at a job workshop, listening to my clients’ fun adventures and outings, great movies and TV shows, and yes…YouTube videos that remind me I am not dead yet.

In her Wiser than Me interview, Ruth Reichl says that one way to become old is to keep doing things you already know how to do. From 2000 to 2014, I had so many new and exciting experiences. Now every day is the same. One day this week, I was at work and thought to myself,

“If I don’t make changes, then I will be doing the same things with little to no variation, even with my schedule. It will be the same thing over and over. I will be on the same march to nowhere.”

A-ha moment: I haven’t done anything that scares me

If something frightens you, then you must do it – Ruth Reichl

It clicked for me then that I haven’t done anything scary in the last five to ten years. I have faced the worst moment of my life, and I am still standing. However, I haven’t done anything or taken any chances that scare me.

I have been choosing the “safe choice,” which ends up being the short stick. It is the foundation of my unwise choices over the past few years. I have gone the safe route, and it feels like settling, not just because it is, but also because I know I am capable of more.

I came up with three things that scare me

  • Quit training by April 15, 2026 (not necessarily with a backup plan)
  • Going out with a guy I’m attracted to and risking vulnerability with him because I care about what happens. It’s easy to move on from the safe choice because you know in your heart of hearts that the relationship would not be fulfilling anyway.
  • Do something that would require me to give up total control

As Reichl says, we can waste our whole life looking for perfection. I am not looking for perfection, but for progression and growth. What would be really scary would be for life to go the opposite of what I always thought would happen.

Even the thought of having a partner who isn’t Christian would have been off-limits for me. Now that I am on the other side of deep involvement in the ministry world, a non-Christian man is not a dealbreaker, especially if he is authentic, has strong values, is generous, and is a man of strong character. It sure beats a guy who shows up for church every Sunday but is playing a character and is inauthentic.

The scariest thing on the list, by far, is the second item, so that is the one I need to challenge myself to do.

Centering myself in my own story

This past week, a woman shared that she was centering herself in her own story. I took hold of that phrase, and I am becoming more intentional about “centering myself in my own story.”

For my entire life, I have done what I thought was “the right thing” and thought I was being noble by helping others at the expense of my own fulfillment. I am unfulfilled and disappointed in myself because I know I am capable of much more. I have limited myself and settled.

I am learning to center myself in my story and stop worrying about other people’s expectations and what I have been conditioned to believe my whole life by the church and even the culture around me.

To quote my man George Michael’s song, “Freedom”

I think there’s something you should know
(I think it’s time I told you so)
There’s something deep inside of me.
(There’s someone else I’ve got to be)
Take back your picture in a frame
(Take back your singing in the rain)
I just hope you understand
Sometimes the clothes do not make the man

All we have to do now
Is to take these lies and make them true somehow
All we have to see
Is that I don’t belong to you, and you don’t belong to me, yeah-yeah

Freedom (I won’t let you down)
Freedom (I will not give you up)
Freedom (gotta have some faith in the sound)

This song may have been about his sexuality, and doing a soft launch of coming out as gay.  Those of us who have been repressing ourselves and choosing the short sticks in life due to other people’s expectations, religious or social conditioning, and who want to break free can relate.

Taking back the mornings

This week, I moved my alarm up to 5 AM, and it is a difference-maker. In the mornings when I don’t work out, I have time to myself to work on my class assignments, prepare for the day, and even have some quiet time. I am reclaiming the mornings, and it is what I need to feel energized.

I learned that when I get up, I like to turn on the lights and light a candle, and then I can get started. I stretch and then get dressed.

The game-changer is not to have that phone in the bedroom. I experimented with it on the weekend, and that phone is just a distraction for getting the morning started.

Compound Effect and Short-Term goals

I need short-term goals, and this 5 Week Nicole Wilkins Level Up challenge is perfect for a mindset and habit shift. Every time I have done a challenge, I come away with something new to add to my arsenal to get better. The increase in protein is helping me avoid snacking, so that is a win.

This has been one of the most intentional Fall Pushes I have had in a long time. There is a lot of honesty and authenticity happening for me right now.

If I am being honest, then I can sense that I am about to go on another run like I did in 2000-14. The same signs are starting to appear. Back then, I was shedding the identity and physical form of my adolescence, and now I am shedding the identity and form of this repressed and inauthentic form.

I am much more confident than I was back then, and I also have no qualms about being extra and over-the-top when it’s time. Something tells me this upcoming run is going to be unbelievable and full of surprises.