What happened to the version of you who wasn't afraid to begin?

Not recklessly.

Not without thought.

Just... before every decision required six conversations, a spreadsheet, a pros and cons list and a detailed analysis of everything that could possibly go wrong.

I've been thinking about that this week.

Partly because I was chatting with a friend I've known since my newspaper days. She's one of the few people left who remembers me in my twenties and, according to her, I've forgotten quite a lot about myself.

The conversation started innocently enough. Then she began listing things I'd done as though they were completely ordinary.

The News Editor role at 24.

The magazine I started from scratch.

The hour-and-a-half commute while heavily pregnant.

The various occasions where I apparently looked at a challenge and thought, "Well, let's give it a go."

She was listing these things as though they happened yesterday. I was listening to her wondering who on earth she was talking about. Not because those things didn't happen. They did.

But somewhere along the way I'd quietly moved that version of myself into the past. She'd become a character from an earlier chapter.

A younger version.

A braver version.

A version who belonged firmly in the "used to" category.

Which was slightly inconvenient because my friend didn't seem to recognise that distinction at all.

To her there wasn't a younger Josie and an older Josie.

There was just Josie.

The more I thought about it afterwards, the stranger it seemed. None of those things had disappeared. I'd simply reassigned them.

As though courage had an age limit.

As though resourcefulness was something I used to own.

As though life quietly confiscates parts of us once we reach a certain point. The evidence didn't seem particularly interested in cooperating with that story.

The woman who became a News Editor at 24 and started a magazine from nothing hadn't vanished. I'd simply stopped consulting her. And perhaps that's what stayed with me most.

Not the reminder that I'd once done those things. The reminder that I still could.

Not because I have all the answers now.

I didn't have them then either!

Looking back, most of those decisions arrived looking suspiciously like extra work and a terrible idea.

The difference is that somewhere along the way I'd started treating uncertainty as evidence that I shouldn't begin.

My friend, meanwhile, seemed to remember a version of me who regarded uncertainty as fairly normal.

Which is awkward, because I suspect she's right.

J x

Join Me In FireWoven​

P.S. Pay attention to the qualities you've quietly moved into the "used to" category.

They may not be gone.

You may simply have stopped consulting them.