Right now it's just me and Harvey. I moved back to Chicago to build this, and most days that means an apartment, a laptop, my dog, and a list of things to get through before I let myself stop. It's quiet. A lot of hours alone with a dog for company, and that's most of what my life looks like right now.
Most of my friends are further along in a version of life I'm not living right now: steady jobs, relationships settled in, weekends planned out in advance. I'm not saying that like I'm ahead of anything, because I'm not. I picked this over a normal job for now, and the cost is fewer nights out, fewer people who understand what I'm doing day to day, and some distance from friends I used to talk to all the time. Some weeks that's the hardest part of any of this. Other weeks I barely notice it.
The part under all that is the imposter syndrome. Between Salt Creek Advisory and HelmIQ, there are days I'm convinced I'm just good at sounding like I know what I'm doing. I'm confident on a client call, then it ends and I sit there wondering if I earned the seat or just talked my way into it. I haven't resolved that. I don't think it resolves. I just keep working anyway, most days without deciding whether that's confidence or just momentum.
What's still true on the hard days: there are Salt Creek Advisory clients and HelmIQ work that don't move forward unless I show up for them, and some mornings that's a heavy thing to carry alone. It's also, most days, the reason I get to be here at all, apartment, dog at my feet, doing this instead of something else. Lonely right now. Blessed too. I don't know that those two ever fully sit still next to each other, but that's where I am.