Everything is a Version

I’ve noticed a pattern lately. I write a post, design something, make progress toward a goal, and start imagining a better, clearer version.

Immediately, I think: this could be better.

To be fair, sometimes it's because you design things that look like crap. The print is wonky or it just didn't turn out the way you wanted it to (exhibit A, my morally gray candle). 

I used to interpret every stumbling block as failure or an indication that I wasn't good enough. It always felt like I was struggling to finish things or, even more likely, giving myself reasons not to start.

I’m different now. Everything feels lighter, less serious. Where creating used to feel like a life or death situation - especially if I planned to share it publicly - failing isn't really a big deal. I'm super imperfect and I'm confident everyone who loves me knows that. As for other people? That's none of my business.

I love the first drafts with their terrible placeholder titles and rambling beginnings. Something exists that didn't exist before.

If I don't love it, it isn’t: this is wrong.

It's just: this is now.

That’s what this season of my life feels like too.

I’m signing paperwork, packing boxes, watching parts of my old life close while trying to build something new before I can fully see what it becomes.

And it’s not just me changing.

When your kids are little, you quietly write versions of their future too. Not totally on purpose, but because the path you followed is the one you understand. You picture prom and graduation and college move-ins and summers back home. You imagine time unfolding a certain way.

My son has been saving money for months, making plans for his own apartment. I’m proud of him for building a life that looks like his and not mine. But it hit me recently that he may have slept in my house for the last time the other night. 

Is that a dramatic thought that seems a little extreme in the light of day? Yes. But, I still cried in that moment. 

Not because anyone is leaving dramatically or out of unhappiness. His life just keeps moving forward and he's doing it on his own terms.

I just didn’t realize we had reached this version already.

That’s the thing about versions – you don’t know you’re living in one until the next one starts to appear. It doesn’t replace what came before. It builds on it.

The first draft wasn’t wrong. It was simply all I could see at the time.

Nothing is final.

As long as we keep moving forward, we will likely end up somewhere we couldn’t have imagined. The universe is good like that.