On gratitude, responsibility, freedom, and figuring out what I actually want.
I should have the world by the throat.
By some people’s definition, I probably do.
I live in Hawaiʻi. I have a nice home, a family I love, work that has challenged me for decades, and more blessings than I could reasonably count.
I know how fortunate I am.
And yet, lately, I’ve been carrying around a question that refuses to leave me alone.
Am I spending my life the way I want to?
Not the way I should. Not the way other people need me to. Not the way someone looking at my life from the outside thinks I ought to.
The way I want to.
Because here’s the uncomfortable reality.
I’m 56 years old. If I’m blessed with another twenty good years, that gives me roughly 7,300 days.
God willing, I’ll have more.
But twenty years is not an unlimited supply of Tuesdays.
And I have some decisions to make about how I’ll spend them.
The life I built
There are pieces of my life that haven’t fit together quite the way I planned.
That’s life, of course. Plans are lovely things until other people, unexpected circumstances, and reality get involved.
Somewhere along the way, I became the person who handles things.
The work things. The family things. The property things. The things nobody else quite knows what to do with.
I’m good at it.
Possibly a little too good.
Being the capable one has its advantages. People trust you. They rely on you. You get things done.
But there’s a peculiar downside to becoming everyone’s problem solver.
Eventually, people forget you might have other things you’d like to do.
And sometimes, so do you.
I love my family. I love the home I’ve built. I don’t begrudge the years I’ve spent caring for people or doing what needed to be done.
But I’m beginning to question how much of the next twenty years I want to spend being the person who makes everything work.
Not because I want to abandon anyone.
Because somewhere underneath all those responsibilities is another person.
Me.
And she’s got a few ideas of her own.
Do I really want a motorhome?
Sometimes I imagine buying a Class A motorhome and traveling around the country.
Just me, the open road, interesting places, good food, and a laptop.
I could write about what I find, eat my way through small towns, and discover what’s happening in communities across America.
I’ve been to every state except Alaska.
You would think Alaska would be sitting at the very top of my bucket list, waving its arms and demanding attention.
But somehow, it is, and it isn’t.
The motorhome sounds wonderful.
Then I start thinking about everything that comes with owning a motorhome, and I wonder whether I’ve just invented another expensive responsibility with wheels.
Maybe I don’t actually need to drive across America.
Maybe what I need is the freedom to decide I could.
That’s a different thing.
The woman who left no fingerprints
I’ve spent most of my professional life working behind the scenes.
Agriculture, politics, advocacy, communications, public policy. I’ve worked on campaigns and complicated issues that affected industries and communities across Hawaiʻi.
Much of that work involved writing.
Statements. Strategies. Campaign materials. Articles. Testimony. Messaging. Arguments that needed to make sense to people who didn’t necessarily agree with one another.
And often, the less visible I was, the better I’d done my job.
I used to pride myself on not leaving fingerprints.
The people who needed to know what I contributed knew.
That was enough.
And to be clear, I’m not starting a publication to spill the beans about anyone. I value the relationships, discretion, and trust that made my career possible.
But here’s something I’ve been thinking about.
For decades, I’ve helped other people tell their stories, build their organizations, and advance their ideas.
What about mine?
I’ve wanted to write publicly for at least ten years.
And for someone who has written professionally for much of her adult life, that’s a rather ridiculous thing to be afraid of.
Yet here we are.
Writing has always been both fuel and an outlet for me. I can sit down to write and lose hours without noticing. Sometimes I don’t realize how long I’ve been at it until my hands start aching.
I love taking an idea apart, asking questions, following the threads, and discovering where they lead.
I love building things. I love researching something that catches my interest, figuring out the details, and understanding how it works.
Give me an interesting idea and a few uninterrupted hours, and I’m perfectly happy.
And increasingly, that’s how I want to spend more of my life.
What does freedom actually look like?
For years, I thought freedom might mean traveling more.
And I have traveled plenty. I was working remotely long before COVID made it fashionable. Back then, working away from the office meant more improvising, less reliable access to information, and occasionally wondering whether the technology was actively conspiring against you.
COVID changed that.
Remote work became normal. The tools improved. I could do more from home.
Now, instead of traveling constantly for client work, I spend much more time closer to home, raising my teenage granddaughter.
Life has a sense of humor.
But here’s what I’ve realized.
When I imagine having more freedom, I don’t necessarily imagine living somewhere else.
I imagine waking up in my own home and deciding what I want to do.
Writing, creating, and building.
Working on a project that interests me.
Watching football.
Having a good meal.
Spending time with my family.
Maybe heading out for an adventure when the mood strikes.
Maybe not going anywhere at all.
Some of my happiest days look remarkably ordinary.
Like today.
I’m writing. I’m thinking about things I want to create. My family is nearby.
I don’t feel the need to be somewhere else.
What I want is more days like this—without the constant weight of everything I should be doing instead.
The problem with being needed
Of course, wanting freedom and having it are two different things.
There are bills to pay. Clients who depend on me. A property to maintain. People I care about who need help.
I can’t simply declare myself free of responsibility and expect the universe to pick up the tab.
Although if the universe would like to submit a proposal, I’m listening.
The financial part matters.
I want to build income from things I own. My writing. My ideas. Businesses and products that don’t require me to sell another hour of my time every time I want to earn a dollar.
I’ve always been selective about who I work with. I don’t move my moral compass for a job, a project, or a dollar. If I don’t respect someone or don’t believe in their campaign or what they’re trying to accomplish, I’m not working for them. Or with them.
Life’s too short for that nonsense.
The question isn’t whether I get to choose my clients. I already do.
It’s about building enough financial independence so I can spend more of my working hours creating things of my own.
And I’d like to stop feeling like every unclaimed hour is available to solve somebody else’s problem.
That part may be harder.
Because other people don’t always create those expectations on their own.
Sometimes we’ve helped build them ourselves.
We’ve said yes. We’ve stepped in. We’ve made things easier for everyone else because we could.
And after enough years, the arrangement begins to feel permanent.
But permanent is a long time.
Especially when you’re counting the years you have left.
So what am I going to do with them?
I don’t have a grand retirement plan.
I’m not particularly interested in spending the next twenty years doing nothing. I’d be bored out of my mind, probably by Wednesday.
I want to work. I want to write. I want to create things. I want to follow interesting questions down rabbit holes and occasionally emerge with something useful.
I also want the freedom to watch an entire football game without mentally calculating what I should be accomplishing instead.
Is that really asking so much?
I don’t think the next chapter of my life requires throwing out everything I’ve built.
Quite the opposite.
I love much of the life I already have.
What needs changing is how much of it I get to choose.
More ownership of my time.
More room for my own ideas.
Fewer obligations that exist simply because I’ve always been the one who handled them.
And more attention to the ordinary moments that make me happy.
Maybe I’ll buy that motorhome someday.
Maybe I’ll finally make it to Alaska.
Maybe I’ll write a book.
Or maybe I’ll spend a perfectly wonderful Tuesday at home, writing something nobody asked me to write, watching football, and enjoying the people I love.
I’m beginning to think that sounds pretty damn good.
Because I don’t need to escape my life.
I want more freedom to live it on my own terms.
And if I really do have twenty good years left, I’d like to spend them well.
Aloha,
Lorie 🌺
