I used to wish for more time.
More time to think. More time for myself. More time that wasn’t already carved up and claimed by someone else’s priorities.
And now I have it.
My days are no longer contained by the corporate schedule. No more being at my laptop by 8am, working toward priorities someone else set. My youngest graduated high school and left for college. For 20+ years, my life had structure: the work demands, the kids needing me, the constant hum of “what needs to happen next.”
I always made sure I had my own thing. But even that existed within the container of everything else.
Now? The container is gone.
And I’m standing here in all this open space I used to crave, and I have no idea what to do with it.
I thought this would feel like freedom. And maybe it will. But right now? It mostly feels disorienting.
The kids make their own appointments now. I don’t need to make sure the house is stocked all the time. No one’s asking me what’s for dinner or if I remembered to order more milk or when they need to leave for their thing.
I could fill every hour with my business. God knows there’s enough to do. But that’s not the point either. I didn’t leave corporate to recreate the same hamster wheel with different branding.
So here I am. In the hallway.
Not the before. Not quite the after. Just… the in-between.
For so long, I knew exactly who I was. I was the exec who could walk into any room and know what needed to happen. The mom who managed everything. The leader who always had the next move figured out.
Now? I wake up on a Tuesday and think: “What am I supposed to be doing right now?”
And I don’t have an answer yet.
I’m learning that this hallway, his untethered, uncomfortable, weirdly quiet space, isn’t something to rush through. Even though every part of me wants to.
It’s where I’m supposed to be right now.
I don’t have wisdom about what comes next. I don’t have it figured out. I’m not on the other side with a tidy lesson about reinvention.
I’m just here. In it. Figuring it out as I go.
And if you’re in this hallway too, if you’re standing in the space between who you were and who you’re becoming, not quite sure what to do with yourself now that the old structures are gone, I want you to know:
You’re not lost.
You’re just in the hallway.
And maybe that’s exactly where we’re supposed to be.
I’m writing more about this, the messy, untethering, still-figuring-it-out work of being between chapters. If these reflections resonate, I’d love to have you along for the journey.