NOTES FROM BECOMING
Not every failure is a problem to solve.
There was a point where the shop could still have been turned around.
That’s what made it difficult.
Not the pressure.
Not the uncertainty.
The fact that it was still salvageable.
From the outside, the answer was obvious.
Work harder.
Adjust.
Push through.
And for a long time, that’s exactly what we did. Because it didn’t look like failure. It looked like something that just needed more from us.
The change didn’t announce itself
It showed up in small moments.
A customer being rude —
and instead of smoothing it over,
I looked at them and said, “I suggest you do your shopping elsewhere.”
That wasn’t like me.
Not the words.
Not the tone.
But more than that —
no instinct to recover it.
Another day, opening the recycling and finding it filled with dog waste.
Deliberate.
And instead of anger,
there was something colder.
A quiet recognition:
I don’t want to be part of this.
The days started to narrow.
Things I would have laughed off
began to take up space.
Energy.
Attention.
Time.
And the work itself started to feel heavier.
Not because it was harder.
But because it no longer returned anything.
That’s when it changes.
It doesn’t break all at once.
You just stop caring in the same way.
Not when something breaks.
But when you stop caring in the way you used to.
We could still have fixed it.
That’s the part people don’t see.
But by then, the cost was already visible.
In how we moved through the day.
In how things landed.
In the quiet hardening that made it possible to keep going.
The longer we stayed,
the smaller everything felt.
The town.
The days.
The choices.
Like being held in place by something you couldn’t quite name.
And underneath all of it —
a recognition that kept returning.
This isn’t ours.
We didn’t leave early.
We left when it was already hard.
And that matters.
Because waiting doesn’t just delay the decision.
It changes you while you stay.
It’s easy, afterwards, to say it was a step toward something else.
But at the time, it felt like letting go of something that still had a future.
Just not ours.
Most people think the risk is leaving too soon.
But there’s another risk.
Staying long enough
that something inside you hardens
just to keep going.
And by the time you leave,
you’re not walking away clean.
You’re walking away
knowing exactly what it costs
to stay in something that isn’t yours.
A Small Invitation for This Week
Notice where you are still trying to make something work
because it can —
not because it still feels like yours.
.
CLOSING
You’re welcome to read more about working with me on the
Coaching with Jo-Anne page.
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