Not because I’ve always struggled with it. Quite the opposite, actually. I love saying yes to things. Spontaneous dinners, unexpected invitations, a trip that sounds like a phenomenal idea before anyone has even looked at flights.

But more recently, I’ve noticed something strange.

Something I was genuinely excited about when I agreed to it often felt completely different as the event approached.

And suddenly, there’s another decision to make. Do you honour the commitment because you initially said yes? Or do you give yourself permission to change your mind?

It’s funny how sometimes you barely recognise the person who made those plans. Even though that person was you, just a few weeks earlier.

The strange thing is, even when you have a perfectly good reason to change your mind, saying no can feel surprisingly difficult.

I’ve had plans recently that I was super excited about, only to find myself in a logistical nightmare as the date approached. I couldn’t figure out how to make it all work, which was incredibly frustrating. And yet, the thought of cancelling made me feel awful.

There’s the guilt of disappointing someone who was looking forward to seeing you. And the uncomfortable fact that you were the one who agreed so enthusiastically in the first place.

You truly meant it at the time. You weren’t pretending, and you certainly weren’t planning on backing out.

But somewhere between making the plans and following through, circumstances changed.

So which feeling do you trust?

And so the back and forth continues. You think about cancelling, then convince yourself you can still make it work. You remember how excited you were when you made the plans, hoping the enthusiasm would help you jump all the hurdles that had appeared out of nowhere.

Eventually, I made the call to cancel. I still felt terrible about disappointing the people involved, and disappointed that I couldn’t make it work in the end.

But there was some relief, too. Not because I was happy about cancelling, but because I’d finally made a decision. At least the constant back and forth in my head was over now.

It’s strange how much we can complicate things when the choice is entirely ours.

As children, we spend years wishing we could make our own decisions.

The sleepover is happening. The second ice cream will be eaten. The full bag of Halloween candy will be consumed the minute you get home from trick-or-treating. No asking for permission, no convincing anyone, no being told you can’t do something because of xyz.

And then we grow up, have all the freedom in the world, and find ourselves wishing someone else would make the decision for us.

Life is funny like that.

Of course, changing your mind can mean letting someone down. There’s no sweet-talking that. We’ve probably all disappointed people, just as we’ve all been disappointed by someone else’s change of heart.

But I’ve been wondering why we’re often so reluctant to reconsider a decision, even when we have perfectly good reasons to do so.

Maybe we don’t want to be considered unreliable. Maybe we worry that cancelling means we won’t be invited next time.

And yet, the most disappointing part is that we really wanted it to work out.

To this day, probably my favourite photograph I’ve ever taken. Or did my sister take it?

Either way, I want to tell you the story about the guy in the picture.

I was 18. My sister had convinced me to spend a month in Bali with her after my high school graduation. It sounded like a good idea, especially because I knew all I had to do was pay for it.

She is type A to a T, and I’m most definitely not. Unless it comes to organised spaces. Then I suddenly become very type A. But that’s a story for another day.

She planned everything. I just had to show up. Bliss.

And so we found ourselves in Bali, staying at a boujee version of a surf camp. I’d never experienced anything remotely like it. I’d never travelled that far, especially without a ‘real adult’.

And what a time it was.

My sister had signed us up for surf lessons. It sounds so cliché, but there truly is no feeling like riding a wave. You feel light, free and so happy. It was probably the most fun I’d had in a long time, especially with the stress of senior year finally lifting off my shoulders.

Soon, the local surf guides started joining our camp parties. Long nights, loud music, everyone taking turns playing songs from their iPods through the AUX cable. There was plenty of flirting among the group. Nothing particularly serious. Just innocent fun, laughter and a good time.

And there was one guy I got along with especially well.

We joked around. He helped us with our surfing, watching footage and giving us advice. We listened to music, one earbud in his ear, the other in mine. We convinced a group of people to get up at 6 a.m. to go surfing at a beach farther away. We took long walks along the beach behind the surf camp. Sat next to each other.

Nothing ever happened between us, but I really enjoyed his company. There was an indescribable trust that had developed so quickly.

I often asked him about his life, but he kept his answers short and smiled. I didn’t want to pry, although I always wondered why he wouldn’t share more.

I remember him telling me I should stay longer and come back soon. From what I’d seen at our dinners and Friday night camp parties, I’m sure I wasn’t the only guest hearing this from one of the surf guides.

Leaving hit me harder than I expected. I knew I wouldn’t be able to come back for at least nine months, but I was already looking forward to it. Even then, I knew this experience would be hard to top.

The day before we left, he finally told me something I wasn’t prepared for.

I’d heard rumours that he was married and had a child. I’d even asked him about it once, but he’d shrugged it off, so I let it go.

I remembered the camp owners telling the guides to stay away from the guests. I’d heard of similar situations happening before, and I assumed they didn’t want anything to spoil the guests’ experiences. But everyone got along so well that the rules had been largely ignored from day one.

Then he told me.

I wanted to tell you, he said, looking down at his chest. I have a wife. And kids.

I stared at him, my jaw practically on the floor.

What? Why didn’t you tell me earlier? I asked about it.

He still couldn’t look me in the eye.

I know. I couldn’t. I like you so much, K. I’m sorry.

Nothing had happened between us, but it still felt like a betrayal. I couldn’t quite explain why.

I hadn’t felt disappointment like that many times before. I was heartbroken, and I didn’t entirely understand my own reaction.

But it was time to leave.

On the long flight home, I couldn’t shake the feeling that part of me had stayed behind. Or at least wanted to.

And then life continued.

We messaged here and there over the years. Every time, he asked me to come back. And every time, I said I would.

I meant it. But life got busy, and somehow ten years passed without me returning.

I regret that now. Because eventually, it was too late.

It was a late August summer day. I’d had one of the most exciting years of my life up to that point. The restrictions after the pandemic were slowly lifting, and I’d been travelling near and far.

That day, I was back where I grew up. I opened Facebook for the first time in years.

And there it was.

A picture of his obituary.

Tears sprang to my eyes. I didn’t know what to do with myself. I couldn’t sit still. I’m not much of a crier, which made my reaction all the more overwhelming.

I messaged a few people I still knew from Bali, people who had been close to him. For a moment, I even considered flying there. I just felt like I needed to be there.

One of his closest friends kept me updated about the funeral and everything happening there. He sent me pictures and videos, and I was incredibly grateful to be included from so far away.

Over the following days, he kept checking in with me. At one point, he wrote:

Please don’t think too much of Suta anymore. He’s duty in this world already done. I believe he find the best place in other planet now.

Something about his words comforted me. I respected the way he understood Suta’s passing, and I’ve remembered what he wrote ever since.

I grieved from afar.

We had spent a month together, kept in touch over the years, and somehow he had become someone I felt I knew better than people I’d known my whole life.

He wasn’t perfect. I knew that, but it never changed how much I cared about him.

I still have that photograph as my screensaver. In fact, I deliberately chose it for my new computer. I look at it almost every day.

I wish I could just fly there tomorrow and spend time with him.

I still can’t fathom that I won’t see him again in this lifetime.

Maybe they mean it. Maybe this time will be different.

That’s the difficult part.

Why is this time the time you should believe them? What makes this promise different from the last? Last time they said almost exactly the same thing. And you thought, Okay. Maybe they mean it this time. Maybe they’ve changed. Maybe they won’t do it again.

But now you’re sitting here, hearing it again. So far, nothing has changed. Or do they really mean it this time?

How are you supposed to know?

A promise can be easy to believe the first time. There is no reason not to trust their word. Something happened. They explained why, and gave you a reason to believe it would be different next time. Fair enough. There is no pattern yet.

And sometimes it is different next time. But sometimes, weeks — maybe months — later, you find yourself having exactly the same conversation again.

Another explanation. Another apology. Another reason why it won’t happen again. Another promise.

Then it happens a third time. A fourth. A fifth. A sixth.

At some stage, you start wondering why you continue to believe the same promise.

And eventually, the question changes.

It is no longer whether they mean what they say.

It is what you do when you have heard it so many times before.

Can a promise be sincere and still become meaningless?

There comes a point where you realise you have to stop making your decisions based on what someone says they will do, and start making them based on what they repeatedly do. That doesn’t make the uncertainty disappear. Maybe this time really will be different. Maybe they will keep their promise.

Sometimes, you can see how much they mean it. You can see they are trying. You want to believe them. But with each broken promise, your belief in the next one shrinks a little and the disappointment grows.

You try not to let your disappointment change how you see them.

But how many times are you supposed to believe someone when they tell you something will be different?

They will stop cheating.

They will stop drinking and driving.

They will stop sharing your secrets.

They will stop cancelling at the last minute.

They will show up.

Different promises. Different consequences. The same uncomfortable problem.

Intention is not the same thing as evidence.

And no matter how much you want someone to make a different decision, you can’t make it for them.

You can support them. Listen to their explanations. Make alternatives easier. Tell them what their behaviour does to you. Change what you participate in.

But their choice remains theirs.

Yours is what you do with the pattern.

I know. I know. It won’t happen again.

At what point does another promise stop changing anything?

There is a strange point in repeated disappointment when the words that once reassured you no longer do. They might truly mean it this time. They might truly try.

You can believe that they mean what they say without believing that what they say will happen.

And maybe that is what changes.

Not them.

You.

Sometimes, you offer help.

Make it easier. Offer the lift. Buy the ticket. Have the difficult conversation. Remove the obstacles.

But you cannot make them do the thing.

So eventually, you are left with a different set of options.

Do you distance yourself? Do you stop relying on them? Do you walk away?

Or do you accept their imperfections?

There is only the point at which you have seen the pattern often enough to decide what you do with it.

Maybe this time will be different.

Do you believe them one more time?

So far today, you’ve moved from the bedroom to the kitchen, opened the fridge, poured yourself some orange juice and planted yourself on the couch. Five minutes later, you opened the door for a food delivery. The pizza box is still sitting open on the table.

And then the thought creeps in.

God, I’ve done absolutely nothing today.

Somehow, a perfectly enjoyable Sunday has started to feel like a wasted one.

It’s strange how difficult it has become to let enjoyment justify itself.

We seem to want our time to produce something. Progress. Improvement. Money. Health. Knowledge. Something to show for it.

And increasingly, the things we enjoy seem to acquire a next step.

You like running? Track it.

You enjoy baking? Sell it.

You write? Publish it.

You have an interesting hobby? Make content about it.

When did everything we enjoy need to lead to something?

None of this is inherently bad. I am writing this and publishing it, after all.

When we love something, it is natural to want to become better at it. Turning something you enjoy into your work can be an immense privilege. Ambition is exciting. It gives us something to work towards.

But somewhere between enjoying something and wanting it to become something, the expectation changes.

Leaving it alone can start to feel like the inferior option.

Not improving it. Not tracking it. Not sharing it. Not selling it. Just doing it because you like doing it.

And it goes beyond hobbies. We have become excellent at giving almost everything we do a productive justification.

We walk to improve our health.

We work out to become a better version of ourselves.

We travel to broaden our perspective.

We read to learn something.

Hell, we even rest so we can be more productive later.

All perfectly good reasons.

But what happened to:

I do it because I like it.

Full stop.

No personal growth. No knowledge to share with the world. No lesson learned. No future business venture. No underlying health benefit. No audience.

Last Christmas, I found myself colouring in pre-drawn Christmas cards with glitter pens. Ironically, I had bought them after seeing someone colouring with them on Instagram.

At first, I was glad nobody could see me. I almost felt embarrassed. A fully grown adult colouring in Christmas cards with glitter pens.

But then I kept going.

Some nights I coloured five. Some nights I didn’t colour any. I didn’t need to finish 50 cards by December 15th. I picked the ones I liked and left the others.

Every night, before I went to bed, I laid the finished cards out on the kitchen table to dry.

And every night, I smiled.

I liked doing it.

That was it.

Yes, technically I was still producing something. There were Christmas cards at the end of it. But I wasn’t trying to become better at colouring them. I wasn’t building towards anything. I wasn’t even particularly interested in whether they were good.

It sounds almost too simple to be worth saying.

Maybe that’s the point.

Maybe that is what we have become uncomfortable with: letting something be enough on its own.

We talk about “wasting time” as though time only counts when something comes out of it.

An afternoon with nothing to show for it. An interest that goes nowhere. Something we never become particularly good at. Even describing them that way makes them sound like failures.

But if we enjoyed the time, what exactly did we waste?

After we broke up, I was so used to sharing my life with someone at such a young age that it didn’t take long before I found myself seeing someone else throughout my senior year of high school. Not a match. Quite toxic, actually. A good distraction from the stress of finishing school, though. So I stuck it out until I moved abroad.

And suddenly, there he was. A Latin American from Ecuador. He was funny, witty and so smart. Being young, infatuated and naive is a dangerous combination. Having someone promise you the world and not deliver, and then move away, is painful.

But life carried on.

As it turns out, things that were foreign to me made me curious enough to explore them. In places, things and people. He was French. French. I didn’t like French much in school and never understood how so many people were infatuated with a French accent. I disliked it. Thankfully for me, there was no French accent.

Then the sobering reality hit: we were not a good match. Not at all. Thankfully, I was moving to a new country around that time — a welcome fresh start. But moving alone doesn’t always solve the issue.

So the only option left is distraction. A night out with friends. A bar in a new city. Everything is exciting again. You get another drink.

Barely at the bar, a guy offers to buy you a drink. Why not? You say yes, have a quick chat and exchange numbers. The next morning, you wake up to a text from him. You text back a couple of times, but he seems quite persistent and you’ve really only just got here. New city, new life. You don’t want to repeat old mistakes. So very unlike you, you delete the number and move on.

A few weeks later, you’re at another club, someone shouts, “Hey!” You ignore it. Again, “Hey!” This time you look up, someone waving from behind the DJ desk. You look at him and shout, “I know you!” No idea what the name is. Then you realise: oops, this is the guy whose number I deleted.

He walks over and asks why you never texted back. You make up some story about a broken phone and losing all your numbers. He gets your number again. You go home thinking, how is it possible to run into someone twice within two weeks in this huge city?

And then it starts. Texts back and forth, him always wanting to meet up. Once in a blue moon, you agree. But then something more important comes up and you find an excuse. Time and time and time again. He never stops persisting, but not in an annoying way. In a charming way, so you think, aw, that’s actually so nice.

This was me. And my 12-year on-and-off situationship — before that word even existed in the dictionary.

He called me every day throughout summer, made sure I woke up for my night shifts at my summer job, talked to me about life and joked around on the phone for hours. I’d never had such deep conversations with a guy before. So when he asked about past heartbreaks or people disappointing me, I told him about a guy I’d met in Bali who had hidden the fact that he had a wife and kids.

Then there was silence on the other end of the phone.

“Hey. I need to tell you something… I have a son.”

It was about 2 a.m. I thought he was joking. When he told me the story, it didn’t bother me as much as I thought it would. There was something about him I liked, but he was 10 years older than me and I was still so young. It was so nice having someone there for me, but I couldn’t imagine actually dating him.

As the universe wanted it, he was in New York that same summer I was there for my internship. We met up. It felt a bit odd. He kissed me at a bar. I didn’t like it. I decided to ignore him for the rest of the summer. I wanted a summer in the city with my new friends. After all, I was living the Devil Wears Prada life.

After I returned to London in late summer, he told me he’d met someone in Canada after his New York trip. Third heartbreak. And I wasn’t even with him.

Years passed. We spoke on and off. I met someone else. But something felt different after that. I closed up like never before. Looking back, I don’t think I ever opened up in quite the same way again.

That summer, I met someone and fell into what I assumed would be a short-lived romance. It felt easy and different. He felt mature and I felt safe with him. The fact that he was going through a divorce didn’t bother me at first. It was a summer fling, after all. Another man with another kid, I thought. I could never do this long-term.

I missed the window of when the goodbye should have happened.

What started as a summer fling drifted into an odd, mostly platonic companionship that continued far beyond the summer. Somewhere along the way, wanting to be there turned into feeling like I should be there.

Then there was something that felt easy. Almost weightless. He was funny, nice, extroverted. But I couldn’t quite bring myself to commit. So I didn’t. I let it run. Until he felt he had chased a loose goose for too long and decided this wasn’t for him. I couldn’t even blame him. And I shouldn’t have. But rejection was a new feeling to me. One that revealed a toxic side of myself I had never met before. I was horrified by who I saw in the mirror during that time. I promised myself I would never let myself become that version of me again.

I kept that promise.

I had spent years in or between relationships. I’d learned about 17 lives’ worth of lessons. I felt like I had seen it all. And I realised I didn’t even know myself without being with someone else. I had spent my adolescence and adulthood so far sharing my life with someone. So I paused.

And I never pressed play again.

All of the energy I had unknowingly spent on relationships, all the time I had spent thinking about somebody else, freed itself back up. My creativity skyrocketed. I went back to fashion and art. I spent hours making things.

Weeks turned into months, months into a year, and before I realised it, I hadn’t exchanged a text message or call with a man in almost two years. I do not recall a single moment of missing it. Missing something. Missing someone by my side. I was genuinely so at peace with myself. I invested time in my passions. Spent more time with family, deepening bonds with friends near and far. I enjoyed listening to their stories, helping them out of situations and giving them advice. I was glad none of it was about me. I never once thought, gosh, I wish this was me.

Maybe it was because I didn’t even know who I was without being with someone.

I was just me. Getting to know myself again. As an adult. Alone.

And I was enjoying it.

Many people don’t even enter their first relationship until ten years after I had been in mine. That is mind-boggling to me. Sometimes I laugh and think, maybe I’m just taking that time now.

Yes, of course, nothing else in my life stopped. But that part did.

For now, at least.

I was watching the people who owned or chartered the boats as they stepped on and off the yachts (sans shoes btw, because who wants to ruin the teakwood the deckhands spend all day scrubbting?).

By the time the guests had left for dinner at Dai I Gemelli Al Molo, the crew finally seemed to slow down. A few of them stepped off the boat. Moments later, one of the crew members sat down next to me by the water and called his family on FaceTime.

It wasn’t long before I found myself listening in.

He admitted how exhausted he was. It had been a long summer. Demanding guests. Barely a day off.

Five minutes earlier, I’d been looking at a superyacht.

Now I was looking at someone’s life.

Once travelling became part of my normal, I started paying attention to other people’s.

The places themselves were still interesting, of course, but especially as some of them became familiar, I started noticing what was happening around me.

What are people wearing? What are they talking about? What do their houses look like?

What is life like over there?

A few years ago, I found myself in Amsterdam at a random café … well, fine, I did google where to get the best matcha, but: priorities (shrug).

I sat down and took out my earphones. The café had floor-to-ceiling windows facing a pedestrian area — prime real estate for people watching. As I sat there daydreaming with my matcha, I overheard a conversation.

Two girls, chitchatting about life in Amsterdam. One of them was American and seemed to have moved there fairly recently. She was talking about settling in and I could hear she was still struggling to adjust.

I recognised the feeling. I had been there, many times.

Settling in had become more familiar to me than the feeling of being settled.

I put my earphones back in. I didn’t want to feel like I was imposing on their conversation too much.

I started noticing moments like these elsewhere too.

Like the day I made the 40-minute drive into the mountains close to where I grew up to see a new doctor. It was a beautiful drive, through scenery I clearly hadn’t appreciated enough as a kid.

Sitting in the waiting room, I overheard a conversation between two assistants at reception.

Something I’ve come to love about people I’ve met in this area is how grounded and direct they can be. One of the women was telling the other that she had to drive down to the valley after work to pick something up. She was dreading it. What was fascinating was that she talked about the town down in the valley as though she were heading somewhere genuinely busy.

In comparison to what I was used to, it was small. I had spent most of my adult life thus far in huge cities.

I smiled.

What was a small town to me was a big excursion to her. I understood.

The funny thing was, her perspective could easily have been mine.

My normal if I hadn’t lived abroad for most of my adult life. My normal if I hadn’t been surrounded by all of these different people and cultures around the world.

But it was not my normal anymore.

For a tiny moment in time, it made me feel closer to the people and places I had grown up around. That is why I smiled.

A tiny bit of my now unfamiliar suddenly reminded me of how familiar it once was.

The feeling came back quickly. I hadn’t forgotten.

It almost felt like a relief.

I remembered.

And then there are places I haven’t been to at all.

At some stage, I found myself watching movies about high-altitude mountaineering. Then documentaries. Then YouTube. Then live coverage. Then I apparently needed to know the ideal weather windows for mountains I had absolutely no plans to climb.

At least, not immediate plans.

Mountaineering led to climbing. Climbing led to remote adventures. Remote adventures led me back to wildlife conservation and the rainforest.

Apparently, even sitting at home, I still find a way to go somewhere else.

I think that’s what I keep coming back to. Learning about what life is like for other people makes my own world bigger. Their ordinary is my unfamiliar. My familiar is their unfamiliar. And once in a while, I get to watch it happen the other way around.

It was April. I was in New York City with my family for my mom’s birthday. I had spent so much time in the city throughout the years that I didn’t realise how at home I’d actually started to feel there.

I took my family to Central Park and decided to hop into a coffee shop for a quick coffee. They waited outside. As I was standing in line, I looked out the window and saw them in conversation with a random stranger. They were talking and most of all: laughing.

It was the kind of laugh you can tell is real from across the street. I snapped a picture. I wanted to remember this moment.

Right there, I could see them fall in love with a place where I felt so at home. It was beautiful. Not the words, just being able to witness my familiar become more familiar to them.

These days, I take my headphones off more often. Not because I need to know everybody’s story. I just like catching glimpses of lives I otherwise wouldn’t know existed.

Sometimes I understand something differently. Sometimes I find something I want to take into my own life.

Often, I learn more than I realise in the moment.

I think I’ll always want to know what life is like over there.

Just as you’ve battled your way through the snow and into the store, there he is. A guy you definitely had a crush on at 14. You’d completely forgotten he existed, yet here you are with the butterflies going the wrong way.

Then: panic. He hasn’t seen you yet, so realistically there are three options and about two milliseconds to decide:

1. You abort the mission completely and leave, to the disgruntlement of your parents, sans milk. But if he sees you booking it back to the car, you somehow look even more ridiculous.

2. You strategically calculate where he might move next and figure out whether you can make it to the milk aisle via the cereal and then straight to checkout without being noticed.

3. You just decide to embrace it and ignore the sad reality of looking like the worst version of yourself the one time you run into someone from your past. You risk the awkward small talk. Why does that seem like the worst option?

The stars really have aligned. Why does that never happen when you play the lottery or go to the casino?

Whatever, not the time.

So you go with option 2 because disappointing your parents around Christmas is never a good call and who doesn’t love living on the edge a little bit? You sneak through the pasta aisle, towards the cereal and then to the back of the store where the milk is. Milk secured, you almost run to the register and just hope he won’t be next in line behind you.

Why do we feel that way? It took me a while to realise that literally every single one of my friends feels the same way about running into people from their past. It’s not even that you didn’t like the person. You might have even been friends. But what is it about those random encounters at your hometown grocery store that make you wish the ground would swallow you whole?

Crush, classmate or friend, the reaction is always the same: need for emergency evacuation.

Evidently, conducting a covert military operation through the pizza aisle feels more reasonable than an encounter from your past.

And apparently, temporarily stepping back into your old life is more intimidating than being a grown adult with a fully functioning frontal lobe, perfectly capable of handling five minutes of small talk.

And yet, there you are, a shiver running down your spine, thinking: I need my mom.

Unfortunately, the day came when I realised that wasn’t going to be much help. I was out and about with my mom and auntie when my aunt gave my mom a not-so-gentle nudge and whispered, “Look, over there. Let’s get out of here!”

Apparently at some point you can be 60, see Gertrude from 1983 by the frozen vegetables and still think:

Oh Christ. Not now.

I’ve been thinking about that sentence for months.

Not because I disagreed with it.

Quite the opposite.

I think part of me had always known.

I just hadn’t thought about what a stage might actually mean.

For the past few years, my days had been largely spoken for.

And then, suddenly, they weren’t.

It was strange how quickly the space appeared.

And stranger still what seemed to be waiting for it.

Looking back, I think that’s what made the sentence feel so familiar. I had spent years making things in the margins.

A clothing line. A film course that somehow led to Cannes, then Tribeca, then a small movie in Los Angeles. Ideas scribbled down and saved for later. Things I started because I couldn’t quite leave them alone.

They were never really side projects to me.

They were just the things I cared about most.

And yet, somehow, I had kept them on the side.

Maybe because there was always something else that occupied the center. Something sensible. Something stable. Something that made sense when someone asked what I did.

The other things were harder to explain.

Or at least, I’d assumed they were.

They weren’t part of some carefully constructed plan. One thing would catch my attention and I’d follow it, sometimes much further than was reasonable.

And those were usually the things that made me feel most alive.

I think I’d always known what that meant. I just hadn’t given it much room.

The sentence came from a woman I met earlier this year.

She spends her days trying to work out what people are actually good at — not just what they’ve studied or happened to make money from, but the things that seem to sit somewhere underneath all of that.

By the time I met her, I’d already spent hours answering questions and completing tests designed to turn parts of a person into pages of results.

She went through them one by one.

Some were strangely specific.

Mostly, I nodded.

Then I started telling her about the things the pages couldn’t really account for.

The clothing line. Film. A taste of acting.

The things I’d loved making. The places I’d somehow ended up because I’d followed one interest into another.

And somewhere in the middle of all of that, she looked at me and said:

“You need a stage.”

I remember looking at her and thinking, yes.

Not Really?

Just: yes.

I think she could tell, because she said it again.

What surprised me wasn’t that she’d seen something I hadn’t.

It was more like she’d walked into a room I’d been standing in for years and pointed at something I hadn’t quite known how to name.

I’ve wondered since then what she meant by it.

Maybe she meant an actual stage. We’d been talking about acting, after all.

But I don’t think that’s why the sentence stayed.

A stage can be a lot of things.

It can be a film set. A page. A room. A screen. A microphone. A conversation.

Maybe it’s one thing. Maybe it’s several. Maybe it’s all of it.

Maybe it isn’t even a place.

Maybe it’s simply what happens when you decide that something is allowed to move from the edge to the center.

Because I’ve never had much trouble making things.

Sharing them is different.

There is a particular moment when something you’ve made stops belonging entirely to you.

Until then, you can change it. Hide it. Abandon it. Decide it isn’t ready. Decide you’re not ready.

You can keep it on a hard drive or in a notebook or inside a conversation with someone you trust.

It can be almost anything while nobody else can see it.

And then you put it somewhere.

Other people get to decide what they think of it.

Or misunderstand it.

Or love it for a reason you hadn’t intended.

Or ignore it completely.

You lose a little control.

Maybe that’s part of what a stage is too.

Not just somewhere to make something visible.

Somewhere you’re willing to let go of what happens once it is.

I’ve been thinking about that more than anything else.

Maybe because so many of the things I’ve cared about most took me somewhere I couldn’t have planned.

One thing led to another. An interest became an experience.

I couldn’t have written most of what came next.

Perhaps the things we keep returning to are worth giving a little more room than we usually allow them.

Perhaps some of them have been waiting in the margins for longer than we realise.

And maybe that’s what a stage actually is.

Not somewhere to perform.

Somewhere to put the things that matter to you.

Somewhere to let them take up a little more space.

Somewhere they can be seen.

I’ve been thinking about what that means.

And what it might mean to finally give something a stage.

I don’t know what mine looks like yet.

I just know I need one.