“Sometimes you don’t realize how much you’ve changed until you come home to the same life and notice you’re showing up differently.”

Well... I'm home. And apparently while I was gone, nobody installed the self-cleaning house I was promised. My bags also did NOT magically unpack themselves, the clothes inside them did not crawl into the washing machine, and my office didn't quietly put itself back together while I was wandering around Utah. Honestly, very disappointing service around here. LOL.

Actually, I don't think I even technically made it home before real life came looking for me because work started before I got off the last flight, let alone before the drive home. Then I walked in the door to dogs who obviously needed approximately seventeen years worth of attention because I had committed the ultimate betrayal and LEFT THEM, half a dozen things that immediately needed my attention, bags everywhere, laundry, shopping lists, an office that needed to be put back together, messages, meetings, client work and all the other normal pieces of life that apparently didn't agree to pause just because I spent a week in another country.

Of course, I knew coming home was going to be a little chaotic. That's just how it goes when you've been away for a week, especially when you leave during one of the busiest seasons you've had in a long damn time. I left with multiple projects in motion, a client's book moving toward launch, business ideas bouncing around in my head, regular client work still happening and approximately 4,782 things that would eventually need my attention when I returned. I certainly wasn't expecting to come home to an empty calendar and spend three leisurely days unpacking my suitcase while sipping coffee on the deck. Although somebody somewhere apparently decided I needed at least SOME forced downtime because right in the middle of trying to get myself back into the swing of things, we had a THREE-HOUR power outage. Because of course we fucking did.

And normally, something like that would have driven me insane. I had shit to do, I had just gotten home, there were things everywhere and my brain was ready to GO. Instead, I kind of had to laugh because at this point the timing of these things has become almost comical. It was like someone somewhere looked at me, looked at everything I was already trying to accomplish and went, Yeahhhh... she's going to burn herself out by Thursday. Pull the plug for a few hours. So there I sat. No computer, no internet, no magically completing the list, and somehow the world continued spinning anyway.

That's probably the part that has surprised me most since coming home. Not the workload, the house, the laundry mountain or the half-unpacked bags I'm still stepping around. It's how I feel in the middle of all of it, because something shifted while I was away and I'm not even sure I can pinpoint exactly where or when it happened yet. Maybe it was standing out at the Salt Flats with all that open space around me. Maybe it was the sunshine. Maybe it was driving around Utah by myself with nowhere I absolutely had to be for a few hours. Maybe it was the conversations, the convention, the people I met or my visit to the quantum wellness studio and getting to experience some of the things I've spent so much time learning about. Maybe it was simply getting out of my normal environment long enough for my brain to quiet down and let some new shit come through. Realistically, it was probably a little bit of everything, and I'm sure I'll unpack those pieces over the next few blogs because there is NO way I'm trying to cram that entire trip into one giant post.

What I do know is that I came home with ideas. So. Many. Fucking. Ideas. But more importantly, I came home with clarity, and I'm realizing there's actually a pretty big difference between the two. I've had plenty of seasons where my brain was firing seventeen ideas at me at once and I mistook that for clarity. I'd immediately want to build all seventeen, launch twelve of them by Friday, redesign something that didn't need redesigning, create six new offers and somehow squeeze all of it between client calls, laundry and feeding the dogs. Then I'd inevitably get pissed off at myself because apparently I couldn't become Superwoman and execute an entire year's worth of ideas in a Tuesday afternoon.

This feels different. I'm excited as hell about what's coming and there are definitely a LOT of things I want to create, change, explore and build after this trip, but I don't feel like I need to do all of them right fucking now. I can make the list, capture the idea while it's fresh, figure out where it belongs and then come back to what actually needs my attention today. I can do one thing, check it off, move to the next thing and actually acknowledge that I accomplished something instead of immediately staring at the twenty-seven things that aren't finished yet. It sounds stupidly simple when I write it out like that, but that has NOT always been how my brain worked.

There used to be so much guilt attached to everything I wasn't getting done that I barely noticed what I was accomplishing. If my bags were still half unpacked, I saw the half that needed unpacking instead of the half I'd already dealt with. If there were three loads of laundry left, I didn't give a shit that I'd already done two. If I finished five things on the work list, my brain immediately jumped to the next ten. And God forbid I sat down for an hour when there were things that could technically be done, because apparently somewhere along the way I decided I was supposed to be fucking Superwoman 24/7.

I don't want to be Superwoman anymore. That bitch sounds exhausted. I want to build big things and grow my businesses. I want to help more people. I want to create the ideas currently exploding out of my brain. But I also want more travel, more experiences, more random adventures, more time with my husband, more time with my kids and more mornings sitting on my deck with coffee while the dogs run around the yard. I don't want to get so fucking busy building the life I want that I forget to actually live the damn thing.

Maybe that's what Utah gave me, or maybe Utah simply gave me enough space to finally recognize something that had already been changing. I don't know yet, and for once I don't feel like I need to figure it all out today. There are plenty of stories from this trip that I want to tell, and I think some of those realizations will probably make more sense as I write them. The Salt Flats deserve their own story. The convention has stories. My day at Solex Quantum Wellness Centre absolutely has stories. Even wandering around Utah alone gave me some things to think about that I wasn't expecting. So we'll get there - just not all at fucking once.

For now, I'm home. The dogs have gotten their love, the office is back together, work is moving, the laundry is slowly getting handled and yes, my suitcase is still only half unpacked. My list is long and my brain is absolutely buzzing, but it isn't suffocating me. I'm checking things off one at a time without carrying the stress and guilt I used to pile on myself because I couldn't magically do everything at once, and that might actually be one of the biggest things I brought home from Utah.

There is work to do, laundry to wash, ideas to build and a whole lot more of this trip to unpack - literally and figuratively. But none of it has to happen today. I can do the next thing, enjoy the checkmark, and then move on to whatever comes after it.

And holy shit, it feels good to be home.