About a year and a half ago I had an idea that I would create a journal. I had been using a few different systems to track and document my thoughts, feelings, to-do lists and goals, but not one that was super great or covered everything I was looking for.

At the time, I was a nonprofit director of a well-regarded organization and my team and I were doing some pretty cool things. I was excited by our work and the organizational shift I was leading. And in other ways, I was overwhelmed, exhausted and uninspired.

I’m very familiar with my tendency to overthink and over plan. It’s what has made me a really good event manager. It’s a role I often fall back into because the skills necessary to do the job well come really naturally to me. In fact, I’ve been told that my events are some of the most seamless experiences guests have had. No detail is unthought of.

I pride myself on my attention to detail.

When I’m working on plans for whatever the thing is — thinking up new projects, figuring out the future, planning an event — my high-intensity, internal detail energy fires. My mind jumps around, copious notes are taken, spreadsheets become epic along with what become project plans.

Since I left my stable, secure nonprofit job over 3 months ago, I have landed in the deep end of research and information consumption! In addition to trying to figure out how to start a business without a business background, I have been working my butt off in the space of side hustling. I’m doing everything from researching every possible way to earn passive income to contacting my old freelance clients.

What’s been interesting is learning about all the new ways there are to earn income. When I hustled back in 2012, 13 and 14, I was doing hands-on work for different people. Events management, airport greeting for VIP clients of my client, catering, floral design and stuff along those outward-facing lines of work.

For the past 9 1/2 months I’ve been digging deep to uncover the path I want to take next. I have a background in freelancing so since I left my stable, nonprofit professional career back in July, I naturally slipped right back into the hustle.

To be clear, before I left my job I did secure a 6 month contract that would provide me with steady part-time income for the remainder of the year. This was new for me because 5 years ago I would have easily left without a plan or net in place. I’m in the middle of the project right now that happens to be all about supporting business owners of color.

Before dawn I drove a dear friend to the airport where he’s catching a flight to the rest of his life. One in which is beloved dad will no longer be present. One in which his mom’s best friend and life partner will no longer be around to share all the big and little things. One in which his sister may one day walk down the aisle with her brother blessing her future instead of her dad whose honor it would have been to do so.

Life changes in an instant. And I’m really struck by the swiftness with which it can happen. One minute to the next. 

Today is the first day of the rest of my life.

I walked away from my director position yesterday after what was a fulfilling, stressful, rollercoaster of an experience. I started documenting my thoughts and feelings here six months ago while on sabbatical catalyzed by heart and mind overload. Being able to look back at where I was and what I was thinking has been an uncomfortable and equally interesting exercise.

After a long and productive day at my desk (so few of these grace my weeks), while powering down my computer and about to put my iPad away, I did a quick check of my personal email. I opened one from a blog I recently started following and was struck by an overwhelming sense of sadness as I read the words, “I was shocked and saddened to hear about the suicide this morning of Anthony Bourdain.”

Ear buds still in my ears from the day of working and tears in my eyes, Lauryn Hill sang, “Change, it comes eventually. I wrote these words for everyone who struggles in their youth. Who won’t accept deception, instead of what is truth,” I sat there heartbroken.

When things feel urgent, I know that I’m supposed to slow down. When they start to feel frantic, I’m supposed to stop. When I can’t or don’t, the universe has a way of forcing me to pay attention to what is actually urgent.

I’m being presented with a beautifully precious opportunity to show up for one of my most beloved friends at a time that will forever shift her life. Her dad’s health has become critical, very quickly. He’s one of the most physically fit and adventurous, intellectually brilliant, wickedly cynical, lovingly supportive men and fathers I’ve ever known.

When you feel change coming, like really feel the churning energy but have no idea what or when, I wonder if it’s better to have the rug pulled out from under you and then just figure stuff out or to jump off even if you don’t know what the floor beneath will be like.

I’ve been experiencing emotional and psychological twists with work the past few weeks and it’s like, I see the rug being jerked and so badly want to jump off, but still have a bunch of unanswered questions. Not to mention an amount of guilt and attachment to certain things, some of which are outside my control.

By definition, acclimation is “the process in which an individual organism adjusts to a change in its environment (such as altitude, temperature, humidity, photoperiod, or pH), allowing it to maintain performance across a range of environmental conditions.”

Does “allowing it to maintain performance across a range of environmental conditions” mean getting to a place where one can positively maintain performance? Or does it mean simplymaintaining under the set of conditions, even if at a low-level?

Over the past three weeks, to the day, I’ve spent a lot of time thinking and breathing. What a gift being able to get away from work and home has been. I truly didn’t think it was available to me, but after talking it through with a few beloveds, I was convinced that simply asking for what I needed couldn’t hurt. 

The place I’ve been staying has been filled with so much comfort, love and support — I could totally stay longer. And I’m also feeling really good, calm and prepared to venture back. This has been time very well spent.

I know there are tools and tricks for training a crazy brain that doesn’t know how to help itself, but I sure wish there was an actual switch.

Flick — quiet brain. Flick — meditation brain. Flick — contemplation brain. Flick — productive work brain.

Left to my own devices, I’ll catapult myself down a rabbit hole of back and forth wondering about this, that, the other thing and this again. It’s really hard to hone in on one theme and dig in. I imagine this is how it is for everyone. But if so, how does anything ever get done?

For fifteen years, maybe even twenty, I’ve been dreaming, thinking and wondering about the Motor City. I cannot recall if it was a movie or a book or what, but something has had me fascinated by this place in a huge and inexplicable way for a long time. Today I am fulfilling the fantasy.

I drove in on I-96 on what became a gloriously partly cloudy instead of heavy and gray Saturday and beelined it for the Eastern Market, opening day for the season. My timing was juuuust right to catch the final few vendors packing up.

I woke up in the middle of the night with a sharp pain in my neck that was radiating down to my shoulder blade. It was so excruciating that I had to hold my head with my hand as I adjusted positions in bed. 

This morning I took a thousand milligrams of acetaminophen and still no relief. I’m now waiting impatiently for a massage appointment this afternoon and calling everywhere to get a chiropractic appointment. Good grief

As I sit here looking at Rocco, I’ve got tears in my eyes. He’s been observing me the last couple of days, checking out my stuff and taking an occasional lap to wherever I am before returning to his orthopedic bed.

It’s clear that he’s an old man, I can see it in his eyes and in the way his body moves. He’s big and hairy and calm and gentle.

With nothing but time and the highway ahead, I’m feeling many emotions. Excited, anxious, worried, relieved, inspired, eager. 

I arrived on this journey after one of the most overwhelming emotional experiences of my life.

It was a Sunday evening this past October and we were at our neighborhood brewery having dinner