THE SETUP

I wasn't always like this.

There was a version of me at 22 who came back to Ohio after college and felt relief.

Actual, bone-deep relief to be somewhere familiar again.

I'd always had a bit of wanderlust, sure, but nothing stronger than the pull toward what felt safe. What felt right. The relationship, the job, the house.

You know, the life I thought I was supposed to want because everyone around me wanted it too.

I tried. God, I tried.

At 31, when it all fell apart, I built it again. Different person, same blueprint. I really wanted it to work this time.

But within months, everything in me felt stifled. Suffocated.

What I didn't know then was that something deeper was calling.

A detour I didn't yet understand but couldn't ignore.

It felt like I was living inside a movie script I never would have written for myself.

And I was starting to realize why:

I didn't have the right internal contents yet. The self-made, self-governed awareness that would allow me to write my own version.

THE PIVOT

And by 35, when it still hadn't come together - when I was still convinced I wanted that traditional life but couldn't seem to make myself stay in it - I had one of two choices to make:

1. I could stay sad about it. Disgruntled. Frustrated. In a constant state of lack for the life that everyone else had and which I didn't.

Or, I could choose to make the best of the situation. And

2. Assume - boldly- that if the templated life hadn't yet come into fruition, then maybe it meant I had an alternative awaiting my awareness.

THE ACTION

That's where my real story begins.

I left corporate America.

Started my first business.

Began solo traveling.

For years I lived in two places, tethered to the old life while building the new one.

Until one day I realized I'd outgrown even that. The compromise. The safety net. The hedge.

I flew the coop. And then I flew beyond.

What's happened since - years of experiments, discoveries, internal shifts - is captured in part through the writing here.

Moments from the journey. The becoming in real time.

THE CONCLUSION

It's been 11 years since making that choice to boldly assume my pathway required a detour.

And I sense, based on my internal shifts, that this detour will soon route me back to the pathway of love after a glorious journey of self-partnership.

Whiteboard with writing on it, placed on a wooden surface.

I'd taken a class once where someone said something that stuck with me:

"you only experience yourself in everything."

If I assumed that's true, then the environments I had been in - familiar, safe, templated- couldn't reflect back what was still dormant inside me.

The life I wanted required parts of me that hadn't yet come alive.

Parts that could only emerge in new conditions.

Thus, Jenn's Journey was born.

When life lures me into conditions that replace the pull to move with the pull to root, I'm ready.

Until then, I'll continue being the embodiment of a still, verdictless life. And I'll continue to ask myself, am I living it right?

Welcome to Jenneral Thoughts.

My favorite series was actually the one documenting my failed attempt to fly the coop. Read the failure:

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