Beginning Again

Part 5 of 5 • When Your Life No Longer Fits 

For all the time I had spent wondering what came next, I had assumed that eventually I would know.

That the uncertainty would resolve itself into an answer. I would figure out what I wanted, make a decision, and then begin building whatever came after.

But something much less deliberate happened.

I got tired of waiting.

After months of job applications, interviews, assignments, rejections, and long stretches of hearing nothing at all, I was exhausted by the process.

But I also missed working.

Not necessarily having a job. There were plenty of things about my previous working life I wasn't particularly eager to return to.

I missed the structure of it.

Starting a week with something to work toward. Having ideas to explore, problems to think through, people to brainstorm with. The satisfaction of making progress on something, working around the inevitable complications, and eventually having something to show for the time and energy I'd invested.

I missed the feeling of being engaged in something.

Instead, so much of my energy was disappearing into applications, online portals, and processes that rarely offered any indication of whether that effort had gone anywhere.

I was spending my days working toward something, but increasingly, it felt as though I had very little to show for them.

And eventually, mostly out of frustration, I thought:

Fuck it. If no one is going to give me work to do, I'll give myself some.

And I did.

I started working on things.

Ideas I was curious about. Projects I'd thought about but never quite made time for. Little problems I wanted to see whether I could solve.

There wasn't some grand plan behind them.

I wasn't building my new life.

I was giving myself something to do. Somewhere to place the energy that had been going into an increasingly endless search for someone else to give me a place to use it.

Some of those ideas went nowhere. Some changed completely. Some became things I never expected them to become.

And some, eventually, became part of what you're reading right now on Under the Bavarian Sun.

I couldn't have told you that when I started.

That came later.

What I didn't anticipate was how much I would learn about myself in the process.

At first, there was something reassuring about returning to familiar territory.

I remembered how much I enjoyed working through a complicated problem. Finding connections between things. Thinking strategically, organizing ideas, and figuring out how to move something forward.

These were parts of myself I knew well. I'd spent years developing them, relying on them, and building a career around them.

But somewhere along the way, the pleasure of using those skills had become difficult to separate from the pressure surrounding them.

I knew I was capable.

I just hadn't felt the enjoyment of that capability in a very long time.

And then, gradually, it started coming back.

Sometimes through something creative. Sometimes through a problem that was anything but glamorous. Sometimes after an afternoon spent untangling something complicated, when I would sit back and realize I'd actually enjoyed myself.

There was something surprisingly wonderful about that.

Not becoming capable again, but rediscovering the enjoyment of my own professional competence.

And it made me realize that leaving a chapter of my life behind didn't necessarily mean leaving every part of myself associated with it.

There were things worth keeping.

But there were also things I hadn't known were there.

Without the familiar expectations of a job or a predefined role, I found myself exploring interests I hadn't previously considered particularly important. I became more creative.

More curious about things that didn't have an obvious professional purpose. More willing to try something simply because I wanted to see what happened.

Some of those interests had probably always been there, waiting for a little room. Others emerged because I was finally doing things I'd never done before.

And what interested me most was how these different parts of myself began to come together.

The analytical and the creative.

The person who loved structure and the person who was learning to appreciate a little more freedom.

The skills I'd spent years developing and the interests I was only beginning to discover.

I didn't have to choose between the person I'd been and the person I might become.

I could begin figuring out how those parts might belong together.

And I think that's what beginning again has taught me.

I'd imagined that first I would figure out what I wanted, and then I would begin building it.

Instead, beginning was ultimately how the answers began to arrive.

There were things I could only learn by doing them. Things I thought I wanted until I got close enough to realize I didn't. And parts of myself I might never have discovered if I'd simply stepped back into the life I already knew.

The answer wasn't waiting somewhere inside me, fully formed, for me to think hard enough to uncover it.

I had to participate.

And once I started, I could see the same thing happening in much smaller parts of my life.

I spent more time outside. I walked more. I made things simply because I liked making them.

I paid attention to the pace of my days. I noticed which kinds of work made me want to keep going and which ones left me depleted.

I became more protective of certain parts of my time and more generous with others.

None of those choices answered the enormous question of what I wanted my life to become.

But each one answered something smaller.

More of this.

Less of that.

I miss this.

I don't think I want that anymore.

This feels like me.

And then I could choose again.

That sounds almost too simple.

But I think I'd spent so much of my life thinking about the big decisions that I'd underestimated how much a life is shaped by the small ones.

Most days do not ask us to decide what kind of life we want.

They ask what we're going to do with Tuesday.

What we make time for. What we continue. What we question.

What we say yes to. What we decide we've had enough of.

What we try simply because we're curious about what might happen.

Individually, those choices can feel almost inconsequential.

Together, they create a direction.

Of course, not every beginning is something we choose.

Sometimes we recognize that something needs to change and make the difficult decision to change it. Other times, life makes that decision for us.

A relationship ends. Someone we love dies. Our health changes. A future we'd imagined is no longer available to us.

Sometimes we find ourselves somewhere we never intended to be, trying to understand how to live inside circumstances we wouldn't have chosen.

And I don't think beginning again requires us to find something positive in everything that happens.

Some things are simply hard. Some losses don't become easier because we discover something about ourselves afterward.

Nor do we always have the freedom, energy, or circumstances to immediately begin making new choices.

Sometimes there is a long period in which all we can do is find our footing.

But there may come a point when we begin to notice small possibilities again.

A little curiosity. Something we miss. Something we'd like to try. A part of ourselves we haven't felt connected to in a while.

And perhaps that's where beginning again starts.

Not necessarily with a plan for a different life, but with a willingness to engage with the one in front of us.

The life I built before wasn't a mistake.

It was mine.

I chose my career. I chose to move across an ocean. I chose things that challenged me, changed me, and for a long time genuinely fit the person I was.

But people change.

What fits can change with them.

And sometimes what changes isn't who we are, but the circumstances that shape how we experience ourselves.

Beginning again, for me, hasn't been about becoming someone entirely new.

It's been about finding a different relationship with the person I already was, while making room for the parts of myself I hadn't yet discovered.

And perhaps that's what it means to live by design.

Not controlling every outcome. Not constructing a perfect life. Not turning every choice into another exercise in getting life right.

But remaining curious about the life you're living.

Paying attention to what it gives you, what it asks of you, and what you might want to do differently.

Allowing yourself to change, without assuming that everything that came before needs to be discarded or wrong.

Because the small choices we make every day shape the lives we eventually live.

And slowly, those choices become something.

Piece by piece.

Choice by choice.

Day by day.

Until one day, you look around and realize you're no longer trying to begin again.

Your new life has already begun.

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