What’s one thing you wish you had started doing earlier in life?
For a long time, I worried that I had started late. I took a different road from many of the people around me. While others were getting married, buying homes, raising families and building careers, I was walking a different path. I did not really begin what I now think of as my life’s work until I was 30. At the time, that felt late.
Part of me thought I had made sacrifices and now needed to catch up. Housing especially made that anxiety feel real. Prices kept rising, and it was easy to look at people who had started earlier and imagine that they were ahead.
But I can see now that I was using someone else’s timetable to measure my own life. The years before 30 were important years. They shaped me. They gave me experiences and convictions that became part of everything that followed.
I also had much more time than I thought. I gave those worries too much authority. I spent too much energy feeling that I was behind.
Perhaps the thing I wish I had started earlier was simply believing that I wasn’t. It would have been liberating to decide sooner what was enough. Once you know what matters, the need to keep pace with everyone else begins to lose its grip.
I didn’t need to catch up with anybody. I needed to work out what mattered, decide what was enough, and build a life around that. I wish I had learned that earlier.
The Afterword 
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