Something New (New Chapters, Ch. 3)

New Chapters ◦ Chapter Three: The Return ◦ Entry 5

This essay is part of my New Chapters series — a collection of personal essays organized into themed chapters that trace different seasons of rebuilding and becoming.

← Previous: One More Life

On starting over, building home, and creating a life from scratch 🌿

July and August had been a whirlwind. 

In the early days of July, buying a house was still something I was trying to figure out whether I could even do. A week in, I applied for a USDA Direct home loan, got approved much faster than I expected, and suddenly... the thing I had been working toward for years became real. 

We went into house-hunting mode almost immediately. I studied listings and property taxes. We drove through towns in five counties. We walked through houses and imagined our furniture in them. I made offers. I lost houses I had already started picturing as ours. And every time, we regrouped and kept looking. Somewhere in those crazy few weeks, "maybe someday" had turned into we are actually doing this. We just needed to find the house first.

By the last week of August, the boys and I were still looking. I was worn down. I was growing discouraged. It felt like we'd never find our home. Then, on a Wednesday night in LeRoy, we walked through another house. This one felt different. It felt immediately familiar. 

By the next day, Thursday, August 27, we had made an offer, and the whirlwind of the previous two months had suddenly narrowed to one thing: waiting to find out whether this house was going to be ours.

Finally, the listing agent contacted my realtor Mike in the afternoon with an update of sorts. At first, there was a concern about my USDA home loan. She had dealt with USDA financing before and had concerns about their tough inspection process. Mike went to bat for us. He explained the process, told her about his colleagues and their recent successes with USDA, and answered her questions. And then we waited some more.

For a little while, I thought that was the thing standing between me and the house.

But then the concern changed. The realtor called Mike again that evening and explained that the house was part of an estate. One of the daughters was the executor. It had belonged to their mother for decades, and she had raised six children there. The family was having a hard time letting it go.

There was nothing I could do about that.

I understood it, which somehow made the waiting worse. Somewhere, a family was deciding whether they were ready to say goodbye to a house that had held decades of their life. And on the other side of that decision, I was desperately hoping they would let it hold the next part of mine.

They told us we would have an answer by noon Friday.

So I waited. All day Thursday. All Thursday night. I worried about the financing. I worried that the family would decide they weren’t ready. I worried that I had let myself want this one too much.

Then Friday morning, I went to work and acted completely normal. I answered emails. I did whatever was sitting on my desk. I set up a meeting. Then I went to the meeting and sat there like a person whose stomach was not churning while somewhere else, people I had never met were deciding whether I was about to buy a house.

I knew we were supposed to hear by noon. I was aware of every passing minute.

Then my phone lit up.

Mike.

Pls call me when free - good news.

I looked at those words and knew. I excused myself from the meeting and walked out. I called Mike.

They had accepted my offer.

I got the house.

And then, somehow, I had to go back to work.

Later that afternoon, I sat through two hours of training on travel reports. Someone was explaining mileage and reimbursements and forms I was presumably supposed to be learning how to complete, while my mind kept wandering somewhere else.

The kitchen. The bedrooms upstairs. The backyard. The deck.

We got it.

Then I would drag my attention back to travel reports. A few minutes later, my mind was there again.

It has been a couple of weeks now, and everything still feels surreal.

Most of the time, my life looks exactly the same as it did before. I wake up in the same room. I drive to the same job. I come home to my parents’ house. I order groceries. I spend time with the boys. I go to bed. Nothing around me has changed yet.

And then, in the middle of some completely ordinary part of my day, the house pops into my head: Oh! I bought a house.

It feels almost like remembering something I had temporarily forgotten, and every single time, I feel this little burst of happiness inside.

We have a house. That house is ours.

I keep looking at the pictures. I have seen them so many times that I practically have the listing memorized, but I still pull them up. Except now I am not studying them the way I did when I was house hunting. I am not trying to decide whether I like the kitchen or whether the bedrooms are big enough or whether I can picture us living there.

I already know the answer.

Now I look at them and think, That’s ours.

That kitchen is ours. Those stairs are ours. Those bedrooms are going to belong to my boys.

I have started mocking up rooms, changing flooring and furniture and paint colors on my phone just to see what everything might look like. I have looked at dining room tables and couches and sideboards. I have thought about where the television should go and what furniture will fit in which room. I have mentally pulled up carpet I do not yet own. I am decorating a house I cannot currently enter, which is a very strange way to live.

And then there are the things that are considerably less exciting than furniture.

A few days after we got the news, I made a checklist of everything I am going to need when we move. I am starting almost completely from scratch, and it turns out a functioning household requires an alarming number of things. Plates. Towels. Scissors. Cleaning supplies. An air fryer. Trash cans. Shower curtains. All the tiny things that exist quietly in a home until you suddenly realize you do not own any of them.

I decided I would start buying a few things every week rather than trying to buy an entire household at once.

The first week of September, I placed a Walmart order. Just a regular Walmart order. Nothing exciting. Before I checked out, I looked at my house checklist and added three things: Paper towels. Ziploc bags. Aluminum foil.

That was it.

The first three things I bought for home.

Not a couch. Not a dining room table. Not even a plate. Paper towels, Ziploc bags, and foil.

And somehow, even that made me happy.

Because they aren’t for where I live now. They’re for my house. For my kitchen. For cupboards I cannot open yet and a life we are waiting to move into.

I keep having moments like that lately, when the enormity of what is happening sneaks into something completely ordinary.

Maybe that is why it all still feels so surreal.

For years, buying a house was something that belonged to a future version of my life. First I needed to get through the divorce. I needed to figure out where we were going to live in the immediate future. I needed to find steady ground again. I needed to pay off debt. I needed to save money. I needed to rebuild my credit. I needed a job that could support us. I needed to get approved for a mortgage. I needed to find a house I could actually afford.

There was always another thing between me and home.

And now that I am almost there, I would be lying if I said I wasn’t scared. It is going to be hard financially. I know that. There will be months when the mortgage and the utilities and groceries and whatever old-house surprise has decided to introduce itself make me wonder what on earth I was thinking.

I know what it means to do this on one income. I know I am taking on something enormous.

I am scared.

And I did it anyway.

Not because I stopped being afraid, but because somewhere along the way, I became capable of doing the thing that scared me.

Soon, my boys are going to live in a house their mother bought for the three of us. I can barely type that sentence without crying.

Their bedrooms. Their backyard. Their stairs. Their home.

A home I bought.

But that life is still just ahead of us. Right now, I am still here. In between. Looking at pictures. Mocking up rooms. Searching for furniture. Buying paper towels. Slowly gathering the pieces of a life we are preparing to move into.

Maybe it is because I am standing so close to the beginning of that life that I can finally see the last few years a little differently.

For three years, I have called all of this rebuilding.

Rebuilding my finances. Rebuilding my career. Rebuilding our routines. Rebuilding my life after the one I thought I was going to have ended.

But lately, I have started to wonder if I have been using the wrong word.

Because rebuilding suggests putting something back together. Restoring what was there before.

And that isn’t what I have done.

I am not recreating my old life. This house will not look like the house we lived in before. Our family will not look the way it did before. There will not be another adult income helping with the mortgage or another person responsible when something breaks.

The more I look at the life in front of me, the less it resembles anything I had before.

For three years, I thought I was rebuilding the life I had lost.

I wasn’t.

Turns out, I was building something new.

Next: Coming Soon →

  

Visit the New Chapters landing page to explore each chapter and read the story in order.

Read More

The Habit of Holding On

On higher standards, quiet phones, and learning to let go 

Lately, it feels like my phone has gotten quiet.

I keep noticing it. Not because I am waiting for one particular person. I am not.

I think I am waiting for proof. Proof that somebody misses me. That somebody is thinking about me. That somewhere, someone has looked at the absence I left behind and thought, I really lost something there.

I wish somebody cared that they lost me.

It is not an especially comfortable thing to admit.

There have been several endings lately. Some mattered more than others. Some involved love. Some never had enough time to become love. Some were relationships I stayed in for years. Others were possibilities I held onto because I wanted to see what they might become.

Different people. Different circumstances. But I have been noticing something they all have in common.

Me.

More specifically, the way I have behaved when I wanted something to work.

I stay. I accommodate. I explain. I forgive. I reconsider. I convince myself I can live with things that make me uncomfortable. I tell myself nobody is perfect. I tell myself relationships require compromise. I tell myself I am being understanding.

Sometimes I have been understanding.

Sometimes I have just been abandoning myself very quietly.

For years, I confused my ability to endure something with evidence that it was worth enduring. I could tolerate it, so I did.

I stayed in situations that made me uncomfortable because I loved the person in them. I told myself I could handle complicated dynamics. I could be flexible. I could be patient. I could ask for less.

So I did.

I made my needs smaller because sometimes it felt easier than risking the relationship altogether. I convinced myself that if I were understanding enough, patient enough, accommodating enough, eventually I would feel secure.

Sometimes I stayed for years.

Other times, I stayed emotionally invested in something much shorter because the beginning had felt so intense that I kept waiting for that version of it to come back. I kept trying. Kept reaching. Kept hoping there was still something there to save, even when I was getting very little in return.

I have spent a lot of time hanging on after there was barely anything left to hang on to.

And even when I finally left, leaving was rarely the end.

I thought about going back. A lot. 

Sometimes I did.

I have reopened doors I had already closed. Reconsidered decisions I had already made. Missed someone so badly that I began rewriting the reasons I had left in the first place.

Distance has a funny way of softening the parts that hurt. You remember the affection. The inside jokes. The familiar voice. The person you reached for automatically. You do not always remember, with quite the same clarity, how lonely you felt while they were still there.

I am trying to learn the difference.

Missing someone does not necessarily mean I made the wrong decision. 

Loving someone does not necessarily mean I should be with them. 

And wanting something to work does not mean I can make it work by wanting harder.

That last one has probably been the hardest. I love deeply. When I am in, I am very in. I am loyal. Devoted. Affectionate. I pay attention. I try to understand the person I love. I want to make their life easier. I want them to feel cared for.

Those are qualities I like about myself.

But I am beginning to understand that they can become dangerous when I offer all of them to someone who is giving very little back. Devotion can turn into over-functioning. Patience can become permission. Understanding can become an excuse I make on someone else’s behalf. And loyalty, without reciprocity, can keep me somewhere long after I should have left.

I have done that. More than once.

But lately, something has started changing.

I have walked away from things that hurt. And more recently, I walked away from something before it had the chance to hurt me in the same way.

There was no giant betrayal required. No dramatic final offense. No moment that would make everyone immediately agree that leaving was the obvious choice. There was simply a situation I looked at and thought, I know myself well enough to know this will make me unhappy.

And instead of waiting until I was deeply attached, resentful, or years into trying to convince myself I could live with it, I left.

That was enough.

I am not sure it would have been enough for me before.

I used to think I needed a very good reason to leave someone. Now I am learning that something being wrong for me is a good reason. Something making me consistently uncomfortable is a good reason. Something requiring me to ignore my own needs is a good reason.

And sometimes, simply wanting something different is a good reason.

This sounds empowering when I write it down. In reality, it has been lonely as hell.

Nobody tells you that raising your standards can make your life lonelier before it makes it better.

There is no immediate prize for deciding you deserve more. Sometimes there is just an empty space where a person used to be. Sometimes there is a quiet phone. Sometimes there is the temptation to reopen a door simply because you hate the silence on your side of it.

That is the part I am learning to live with now.

Not every empty space needs to be filled by the person who used to occupy it. Not every silence means I should reach backward. Not every ache is an instruction.

Sometimes I miss people I should not be with. Sometimes I still love people I should not be with. Both things can be true.

And sometimes I miss people I never loved at all. I miss the possibility. The excitement. The chemistry. The version of the future that existed briefly in my head.

That does not mean I need those people back either.

I think what I am really longing for is something I have not quite had yet.

Someone who loves me the way I love.

Not identically. People show love differently. But with the same seriousness.

Someone who does not need to be convinced that I am worth showing up for. Someone who cares when something hurts me because it hurts me, not because I have finally reached my breaking point. Someone who does not suddenly discover my value once I am halfway out the door.

Someone who cares about losing me.

I have spent enough time wondering whether someone will come back after I leave. For a long time, I thought that was the proof that I mattered: the text someone finally sent. The apology. The realization. Someone deciding, after I was gone, that losing me had been a mistake.

I do not want to wait for that proof anymore.

I do not want to spend my life hoping someone realizes what he lost after I am gone. I want someone who cares about losing me while he still has the chance not to.

Until then, I am trying to believe that the quiet is not emptiness. It is space I stopped giving to the wrong people.

I am not all the way there yet. I still look back. I still miss people. I still question myself. But looking back does not have to mean going back.

I can miss what was good and still admit that something was not enough. I can care deeply and still decide I need more than I am being given.

Maybe that is what is changing: I am learning to believe that wanting more is not asking too much. Maybe it is finally asking enough.

Read More

What I Watched: August 2026

August was a much busier month on my screen. I finished another excellent season of The Pitt, barely moved the needle on my very ambitious Grey's Anatomy rewatch, went to the theater twice, and watched enough documentaries to once again confirm that apparently my favorite genre is “strange things that actually happened.”

Note: the dates listed are the dates I watched or finished watching that particular title.

Shows

The Pitt ★★★★★
HBO Max · 2026 · Season 2 · Episodes 10–15 · August 5, 2026

I finished the final six episodes of season two this month, bringing another completely chaotic shift in the emergency department to an end. I loved this season. The Pitt manages to keep the pace almost relentlessly intense while still making me care about the doctors, nurses, patients, and all of the smaller stories unfolding around them. There is always another emergency coming through the doors, but somehow it never feels repetitive.

I also really liked the addition of Dr. Al-Hashimi this season and the tension between her approach to running the department and Robby's. By the final stretch, I was completely invested in how everything would play out. This remains one of the best shows I've watched in a long time, and now comes the unfortunate part: anxiously waiting for season three.

Grey's Anatomy
Netflix · 2005 · Rewatch · Season 2 · Episode 10 · August 10, 2026

My extremely slow Grey's Anatomy rewatch continues with one lonely episode this month. “Much Too Much” brings Meredith's latest one-night stand straight into Seattle Grace with a particularly awkward medical problem, while the hospital prepares for the complicated delivery of quintuplets. Meanwhile, Cristina is adjusting to a new level of commitment with Burke, and Alex manages to make a mess both professionally and personally.

I obviously know where all of these characters and stories are headed, but revisiting early Grey's is still so much fun. At the rate I'm going, however, this rewatch may last the rest of my natural life.

Documentary Films & Docuseries

A Toxic Love Story ★★★☆☆
Netflix · 2026 · Documentary Film · August 5, 2026

This starts as a story about a relationship gone wrong and then gets progressively more bizarre as revenge enters the picture and the situation escalates. Every time it seemed as though the story had reached peak ridiculousness, there was apparently another level waiting.

It was definitely a wild ride. I wouldn't necessarily call it an exceptional documentary, but the story itself was strange enough to keep me interested, and I enjoyed watching all of the increasingly unbelievable pieces fall into place.

The Man Will Burn ★★★☆☆
HBO Max · 2026 · Docuseries · 4 episodes · August 12, 2026

I've always known what Burning Man was in the broadest sense, but I didn't really understand just how enormous the event is or how much of its own culture exists around it. This docuseries takes viewers inside the festival and the temporary city that appears in the Nevada desert every year, along with some of the people who have made Burning Man an important part of their lives.

I found the whole thing fascinating simply because it's so far removed from anything I've ever experienced or would probably ever do myself. There were parts that dragged a little, and four episodes occasionally felt like more than the story needed, but I enjoyed getting a glimpse inside a world I knew very little about.

A Child of My Own ★★★☆☆
Netflix · 2026 · Documentary Film · August 17, 2026

A fake pregnancy eventually becomes entangled with the abduction of a baby, which should tell you immediately what kind of rabbit hole this documentary becomes. The case itself was fascinating and completely bizarre, and I was interested in seeing how all of the pieces came together.

The presentation threw me off a little, though. The documentary uses a hybrid format that mixes real interviews with reenactments, and there were times when I had to stop and figure out whether I was watching an actual person or an actor recreating what happened. I think I would have preferred a more traditional documentary format, but the story was interesting enough to keep me watching.

The Idaho Murders: College Nightmare ★★★☆☆
Netflix · 2026 · Docuseries · 3 episodes · August 21, 2026

This docuseries takes a closer look at the murders of four University of Idaho students and the investigation that followed. It was obviously a massive case, but I hadn't followed all of the developments especially closely while they were happening, so there was quite a bit here that was new to me.

I found the series interesting and eye-opening, particularly in the way it laid out the timeline and showed how the investigation unfolded. It's an incredibly sad case, especially knowing how young all four victims were, and the series gave me a much better understanding of a story I'd previously known mostly through headlines.

Skywalkers: A Love Story ★★★☆☆
Netflix · 2024 · Documentary Film · August 22, 2026

This follows a daredevil couple whose idea of quality time involves climbing enormous skyscrapers and performing terrifying stunts hundreds of feet above the ground. I spent a significant portion of this documentary wondering why anyone would willingly do this, which naturally meant I couldn't stop watching them do it.

I was especially interested because I'd already heard about the couple following their more recent climbing drama in New York City. Seeing their history and how their relationship became intertwined with these increasingly dangerous climbs gave me a lot more context. Fascinating people and a fascinating lifestyle. Absolutely not something I will ever be adding to my own bucket list.

Shipwrecked: Nightmare at Sea ★★★★☆
Netflix · 2026 · Documentary Film · August 24, 2026

This was probably my favorite documentary of the month. Survivors recount what happened when their trip at sea turned into a terrifying shipwreck and the chaos that followed. Hearing the story directly from the people who actually lived through it made everything feel especially frightening.

It was engaging, tense, and really well done, and I was invested pretty much the entire time. Apparently none of this has cured me of my love of cruises, though. So there's that.

Death of the Pastor's Wife
Netflix · 2026 · Docuseries · 3 episodes · Watched Episodes 1–2

This docuseries examines the death of a pastor's wife and the troubling circumstances surrounding the case. I watched the first two episodes in August but didn't finish the series before the end of the month, so I'm holding off on rating it until September. So far, there are plenty of questions surrounding what happened and enough strange circumstances to keep me watching.

Movies

The End of Oak Street ★★★☆☆
Theater · 2026 · August 24, 2026

The End of Oak Street starts with an ordinary suburban family whose entire neighborhood is suddenly transported somewhere completely unfamiliar after a mysterious cosmic event. From there, things get increasingly strange as the family tries to figure out where they are and how to survive.

It's a little absurd and definitely asks you to just go along for the ride, but I had fun with it. It isn't necessarily something I'd rush to watch again, but it made for an entertaining trip to the theater.

The Odyssey ★★☆☆☆
Theater · 2026 · August 28, 2026

I can absolutely appreciate that The Odyssey is an impressive and beautifully made movie. It's an enormous production, the story is obviously epic in scale, and I love Anne Hathaway. Unfortunately, appreciating a movie and actually enjoying myself while watching it are two very different things.

This was just too slow and too long for my taste. I understood what it was doing and could recognize the quality of it, but I was bored for too much of the runtime to rate it higher. Sometimes a movie can be objectively impressive and still very much not be my movie.

By the Numbers

Titles Watched: 11

Movies: 2 • 2 theater visits

Documentary Films: 4

Docuseries: 3 • 9 episodes watched

Shows: 2 • 7 episodes

Streaming Services: 2

Average Rating: 3.2★

Most-Used Streaming Service: Netflix

Oldest Release: Grey's Anatomy (2005)

Newest Releases: 9 titles from 2026

Star ratings are reserved for completed movies, documentary films, and completed seasons or docuseries. Shows still in progress aren't rated until I finish the season.

Superlatives

Favorite Watch: The Pitt

Favorite Documentary: Shipwrecked: Nightmare at Sea

Least Favorite: The Odyssey

Most Fascinating: Skywalkers: A Love Story

August had a little bit of everything: an excellent season finale stretch, some very strange true stories, two trips to the theater, a terrifying shipwreck, people scaling skyscrapers for fun, and exactly one episode of my apparently decade-long Grey's Anatomy rewatch. The Pitt was still the clear winner, but this was a much more interesting viewing month overall.

➜ Up Next

In September, I'll be finishing Death of the Pastor's Wife, continuing my very slow Grey's Anatomy rewatch, starting Hulu's new docuseries Welcome to the Family, and getting back into HBO's Monsters of God. I already started that one, but I need to rewatch the first episode before continuing with the remaining four.

Read More

An Investment in Diet Coke (One Minute Memoir)

A Memoir on Morning Rituals, Targeted Advertising, and Ninety-dollar Solutions

Setting: August 2026 — Somewhere between the drive-through and financial irresponsibility

I get a large McDonald’s Diet Coke every day. 

Every. Single. Day.

On workdays, I stop at the drive-through on my way in. On weekends, it’s one of the first things I do after I shower and get moving. At this point, it’s less of a beverage choice and more of a structural component of my life.

Sometimes I’m lying in bed at night, thirsty, already thinking about the Diet Coke I’m going to get the next morning.

This is probably not normal. But it is consistent.

A few months ago, I ordered a couple of drink coozies meant to keep cups or cans cold. They were fine. Or at least, fine in the way that something technically works but does not actually solve your problem.

My Diet Coke would stay colder for a little while, but if I was drinking slowly, which I often do, eventually the ice would melt and I’d be left with increasingly warm, increasingly watered-down soda. Some days it takes me three or four hours to finish one.

Clearly, something had to be done.

Then Facebook showed me an ad for Frost Buddy. This was not just another insulated tumbler. This thing was specifically designed so you could slide a large McDonald’s drink directly into it.

Finally, targeted advertising had stopped trying to sell me clothes and started addressing my actual problems!

I clicked.

One was $45. That felt a little ridiculous. Then I saw that shipping was free if I added something else.

So naturally, instead of spending $45 on an insulated holder for my Diet Coke, I spent $90 on two insulated holders for my Diet Coke.

Financially, flawless.

They arrived, and I immediately put one to work. My McDonald’s cup slid right inside. Hours passed. I kept drinking. And drinking.

Four hours later, there was still ice in my cup.

I regret nothing.

This post is part of my One-Minute Memoir series — short reflections on small moments that still manage to say something big.

Read More

The Lives I Almost Lived

On possibility, uncertainty, and imagining what comes next

Lately, I have spent a surprising amount of time imagining lives I do not actually live.

I can turn almost anything into a life. Give me a house listing, a promising conversation, a job posting, a town I have never seriously considered, and my brain will begin furnishing it almost immediately.

I have a rich inner life. Once something feels possible, my brain starts filling in the rest.

House hunting made this especially easy.

I would walk through a front door and, within minutes, start assigning bedrooms. Caleb wanted the one with more outlets. Holden wanted whichever one he had decided was his within the first thirty seconds. We would notice a hill in the backyard and immediately picture sledding. I would look at the kitchen and wonder where everyone would drop their backpacks.

For twenty or thirty minutes, we lived there.

Then I would walk back out the front door and start doing the less romantic math. How much are the taxes? How far is the drive? Is there a bathroom upstairs? How old are the windows? Do I love this house enough to overlook the thing I already know will bother me every single day?

Sometimes the answer was yes for a little while. Sometimes I knew before we reached the car that it was no. Sometimes I loved a house and still decided not to pursue it.

Some things are easy to leave behind because they were never really yours. Others get close enough to make you rearrange the furniture in your head.

And not every almost ended because I decided it should. Sometimes the listing disappeared. Someone else’s offer was accepted. The taxes made the numbers impossible.

And just like that, a life I had quietly begun building in my head was gone.

It is strange to miss something that never actually happened.

But I do.

Not in some dramatic, devastated way. More like a small internal collapse. A tiny future gets folded up and put away.

House hunting made the pattern impossible to miss, but it was not the only place it showed up.

I have done the same thing with work. I have interviewed for jobs and tried to imagine myself walking into those buildings every morning. I have started jobs and learned what it feels like to become a slightly different version of myself somewhere no one knows the old one. I have even received rejection letters from jobs I had already stopped caring much about, little reminders that a future can disappear before you have fully decided how much you wanted it.

Relationships have worked this way too.

I do not mean that I meet someone for dinner and immediately invent an entire future together. But give me enough good pieces and my mind starts connecting them. A person is kind. Funny. Easy to talk to. There is chemistry. There are conversations that hint at something more.

And suddenly I can imagine the ordinary parts. A Saturday night. A long drive. A quiet evening. The way someone might fit into the life I already have.

Imagination does not always care about likelihood.

It cares about possibility.

And possibility can be generous. It gives you enough material to start filling in what is not there yet.

I have learned that I can have a genuinely good day with someone, laugh with them, feel close to them, and still drive home knowing I do not want the life that would come with continuing down that road.

That realization surprised me more than I expected.

A few years ago, I was not spending much time imagining possible futures at all. I was mostly trying to get through what was directly in front of me. Divorce. Money. Work. Parenting. The practical mess of rebuilding a life after the old version no longer existed.

Back then, the goal was mostly to get through the week.

Now I have enough room to think farther ahead. And with that room has come a different way of looking at possibility.

For a long time, when something appeared in front of me, I focused on whether it could work. Could I get the job? Could I afford the house? Could this relationship become something? Could I make the logistics fit?

I was so used to figuring out whether something was possible that I did not always stop to ask whether I actually wanted the life attached to it.

That is what has changed.

Now I ask different questions. Do I want this job? Do I want this house? Do I want this commute? Do I want this person in my life? Do I want this version of Tuesday morning?

That last one might matter more than all the others.

Because a life is not really the beautiful kitchen during a showing, or the polished job description, or the best version of someone across a dinner table.

A life is Tuesday morning.

It is finding somebody’s missing shoe before school. It is driving the same road until you stop thinking about the turns. It is knowing whether the kitchen has enough counter space when everyone is hungry at once. It is deciding who gets access to your evenings. It is figuring out whether the ordinary parts of a life feel good enough to keep living.

That is harder to imagine than the exciting parts.

It is also more useful.

I can make almost any possibility beautiful in my head. What I have gotten better at is looking past the version with perfect lighting and asking what happens after it becomes ordinary.

A house can be lovely and still not work. A job can sound impressive and still not be right. A person can be wonderful in plenty of ways and still not fit into the life I want.

Being able to picture something is not the same as wanting to live inside it.

Since I started writing this, one of those imagined lives has started becoming real.

There is a house now.

Not ours quite yet, but close enough that the boys have stopped talking about hypothetical bedrooms and started talking about their actual bedrooms. Close enough that I can picture the furniture, the routines, the drive home. Close enough that one of those ordinary Tuesday mornings no longer feels entirely imaginary.

Soon, the exciting part will give way to the ordinary one.

The drive will become familiar. Backpacks will land somewhere inconvenient. The boys will argue over something before school. I will stand in that kitchen on an unremarkable weekday morning, probably wondering where somebody put their shoes.

The life I once pictured during a showing will stop feeling like a possibility. It will just be our life.

And after all the lives I almost lived, I think that is what I understand differently now.

The life worth wanting is not simply the one I can imagine.

It is the one I still want when I picture Tuesday morning.

Read More