The Lesson I Almost Missed

I used to think “everything happens for a reason” was something people said to make hard things feel smaller. A nice sentence for a bad week.

I don’t think that anymore.

Two weeks ago I was staring at a cancellation email, watching every website I owned disappear on an eleven-day countdown, wondering if I’d built too much on ground that was never really mine. I told you about it here, in real time, because I didn’t want to give you the tidy version.

I’m not going to give you the tidy version now either. But I will tell you what I’ve figured out since.

The lesson wasn’t “back up your website.” I already knew that one. The lesson was slower than that, and harder to hear over the noise of a launch that wasn’t happening on schedule: slow down. Take the breath. Let this be part of the journey instead of a detour from it.

I’ve spent the last two weeks rebuilding, not just the sites, but something closer to how I think about the work itself. And somewhere in that rebuilding, I started collaborating with someone whose energy for this is contagious. The kind of person who makes you remember why you started in the first place. I won’t get into the details of that yet. But I will tell you it’s part of why I’m writing this post in a completely different mood than I would have two weeks ago.

Everything that happened had something to teach me. I almost missed it because I was too busy being upset that it happened at all.

Wednesday, I’ll tell you what’s next.