I was listening to a podcast that featured Ramit Sethi (who wrote I Will Teach You To Be Rich – one of my favorite finance books) and one line stuck out to me so much that I scribbled it on the back of some mail; it’s not even a full sentence, just the part that hit hardest:
…the difference between what we claim we want to do versus what we actually do.
Gut punch.
Now, I am someone who prides herself on living the life she wants. I left the corporate world five years ago to start doing the work I really love, I moved back to the bay area to be near my family and be “home” again, and (up until covid) I traveled consistently to visit new places and have new experiences.
But there’s a little more to it than that.
For some time now, I’ve had two big desires: 1) to have a sprawling place to go and be with big groups of family or friends where we all have our own space but also a great common space to be together, and 2) to live in cities I’m intrigued by for a month at a time to have the experience of “living like a local” without moving permanently to those places.
I talk about these things a lot. I’ve considered what this sprawling place might be like, and I’ve made lists of cities in my mind. These are dreams and they are real and I’m excited by them.
And yet. I have made no move to create a plan to make them happen. And that is precisely what this one fragmented line in a podcast woke me up to.
So here I am, to declare out loud these two big, gorgeous dreams I have that I don’t want to just remain dreams, and to offer each of you, dear readers, the same wake-up call.
What have you been talking about, thinking about, dreaming of, that you really truly want to make real and not just a passing thought???
My first experiment “living like a local” in a studio Airbnb for one week in New York a few years ago.
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