This is (almost) 41?

Since I turned 40, it’s been a year of incredible change. I would say nothing went to plan but I’ve never really been a planner.

I’ve always been much more of a… “pantser”. Instead of following a carefully laid out path, I fly by the seat of my pants and see where it lands me. I mean, it landed me a business that I started with $50 and an email list. A husband who proposed to me on our second date. It also landed me in L.A., after one night of consideration. Throughout my 20s and 30s, flying seemed great. I trusted the seat of my pants to get me where I needed to go. And when I didn’t know where that was, I trusted it would at least be a fun ride. I was out for adventure and new horizons. I was a doer and didn’t care how exactly things got done. Plans just put a damper on all that.

It wasn’t until about 5 years ago that I started getting very well acquainted with what happens when one doesn’t plan. Like for instance, when I didn’t have any plaaans to pay the IRS for the business I started. Long story short, being a one-note ‘pantser’ at 20, at 30, finally left me exhausted and anxious at 40.

Earlier this year, even with every motivation I had to dedicate more time and thought to setting a plan of action and following through, I was drained to my core imagining putting new dreams to actual pen and paper. Figuring out all that how and what and when - an anxiety-inducing toe-dipping method to adventure, better experienced by just jumping right in. I mean, the laborious analysis you trudge through with dipping your toe. What if it’s too cold? What if you get spooked looking too far beneath the water? Will you end up even going on the adventure at all? Thinking too long about a new endeavor can turn it into a drag…I suppose it’s no mystery why I’ve employed a strictly pantser method my whole life. But at the same time, I’ve become all too familiar with ‘jumping right in’ into unknown waters and missing the faint outline of a shark. A little bit of planning can save your life. Or in my case, my 30s.

Going through the archives of the original Tiny Closet blog, I looked at posts I’d written on my 30th and 31st birthdays. So happy I was, just to be out of my 20s. Entering a new decade with an emerging new passion, and tired of waiting for the things that hadn’t yet come to me in my 20s, it’s clear I was yearning. And from memory, my ambition was fierce. The years leading to 40 were an exponential ascent to chaos. It’s like all those careless, exhilarating pants flights had racked up some kind of compound interest of consequences, to be paid in full - now. Turning 40 has been brutally humbling. Not because of my age but because of the events that unfolded with it so serendipitously. Humbled, weary, fed up, with 41 fast approaching, I might now finally be ready to consider a well thought out future. Where I keep my seat on the ground and take one step at a time.

While I’m still reinflating myself from the events of the year, I’ve actually been dying to share my life behind-the-scenes of The Tiny Closet after being shrouded in operations the past 8 years. I’ve felt a strong pull for a while to share my experiences to those who may benefit from it. My experiences, triumphs and hilarious failures of just being a 30-something, now 40-something year old woman entrepreneur could’ve been a great help to me, starting out (like how terribly you can run a business and still miraculously make money…or like when I scheduled a month off to get a hysterectomy, and went back to work a week later). Anyway, so where did I leave off? Talking about self care in 2018… funny. I’m just a resilient gal, living her life one day at a time and taking copious field notes. Hope it helps.