As I read through Week Eight of The Artist’s Way, I continue to linger on this idea of finding balance within the poles of extremes. Cameron writes, “Fantasizing about pursuing our art full-time, we fail to pursue it part-time – or at all.” This single sentence shines a light on the issue most of us encounter with anything new we are starting. Let’s explore this further.

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100 Liminal Days is an experimental project of embracing my current transitional season after exiting my business by sharing an honest, real-time account of my self-initiation experience in daily posts. I’m using The Artist’s Way as a guiding tool, and sending shorter weekly recaps only via my newsletter. Visit Day 1/100 to learn more and sign up to get the weekly recaps delivered to your inbox.

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When I look back at the last eight months of my life after selling Trusty Oak, I can see a positive shift has happened in my thinking. I’ve moved from looking for a single path forward to realizing a multifaceted approach would serve me better. I’ve let go of this pursuit of the one thing I will do for the rest of my life.

Not Just One Thing

In the beginning, I held onto this advice I remember hearing in March 2024 when I attended the AltSummit in Palm Springs. One speaker was sharing about how she grew her YouTube channel and was giving advice about how to monetize your channel. I don’t remember a whole lot about this conference because at the time, I was in the thick of burnout and feeling quite stuck with my business, but the phrase I carried with me was this:

Start with a topic you can talk about and teach on for the next 15 years.

For whatever reason, this was the thing I have held onto tightly from that talk, and I have used this as a way to approach my discovery process for what my “next chapter” of work might look like. Perhaps it is because I feel like YouTube is one of the best platforms for my goals, or maybe it just resonated because I’ve desperately wanted to find my one thing to go deep on, to identify with, to align my personal brand around.

But now, I see how this way of thinking has held me back. It’s not only that I have been looking for that one thing I can talk about for 15 years. It’s also that because I have looked for the one thing, I have allowed myself to find a million reasons why this one thing or that one thing won’t last for 15 years.

Take the topic of delegation, for example. I have spent a good part of my career in the virtual assistant industry establishing myself as a thought leader on delegation. I had a monthly newsletter, recorded videos for social media and YouTube, created a self-paced delegation course for business leaders, and even wrote a book about how to delegate effectively.

And as I sat in that presentation when this YouTuber making a decent living with her channel told us to find a topic we can talk about for 15 years, I realized delegation was not my thing. Despite having deep knowledge in this area, my passion for talking about it day after day was never there. I did it because I believed it was the best way I could help struggling leaders, and it was a great segue into offering them a human to delegate to by referring them to Trusty Oak.

Don’t get me wrong – I do love helping people improve their delegation skills, and I believe strongly in delegation as a key part of self-care that empowers others and builds trust within teams. All of that is great, but my mistake was that I was putting so much pressure on myself to make this my one thing when I really needed to expand my thinking to other areas.

Don’t Take a Leap of Faith, Take a Baby Step

The thing is, looking for the thing you can do for 15 years is too big of a leap forward (if you even actually find it and take action.) But if instead we look for what’s alive in us right now and accept that what we choose to do today may only be a temporary area of focus, we feel less intimidated when it comes time to take some action.

One of things that feels really good on Day 47 of a 100-day challenge is recognizing that consistency and commitment – regardless of motivation or passion – actually works like a flywheel for momentum. Making this project mandatory for myself has helped me develop a habit of writing. I am a writer now! There’s no question about that. I write every day. I don’t feel weird calling myself a writer anymore because it is literally what I am doing with a significant portion of my time these days.

But I have gained momentum by doing it consistently. I started out needing three hours or more to write a single 1,000-1,500 word blog post. Some days it would take me as many as five hours to complete it. When I made the conscious decision to reduce my time blocks from 3-hour sprints to a 2-hour sprints, I started having a few sessions where I was able to complete my post in less than an hour and a half. As I write this post, I’ve already drafted more than 900 words in the last 40 minutes.

The point is, because it became a habit and I committed to practicing writing every single day, the speed at which I can do this has increased. The reason it takes less time is not that I got faster at typing 🙂 It is because I got faster at thinking and deciding. I’m in a flow instead of questioning every sentence. My flywheel momentum carries me through those days I lack inspiration or aren’t sure of what to write. To be honest, I had no idea what I was writing about today until I just let myself riff on that single sentence about how easy it is to get caught up in the idea of doing one thing full-time and failing to take a small step toward doing it at all!

Signing up for the qigong teacher training felt a bit like taking a leap, but when I zoom back, it really is just another baby step.

• Baby step #1: Commit to the class.
• Baby step #2: Attend the first class.
• Baby step #3: Practice today.
• Baby step #4: Practice the next day. And so on.

And the other truth is, I can do this forever – or not. Perhaps learning qigong is helpful to me in this season. Or maybe teaching qigong in 2026 provides me with a little bit of income. Or maybe I teach qigong for the rest of my life, build a viable business, and leave a qigong legacy in Austin that lives beyond my days. I don’t have to know how far I will go. I just need to keep taking baby steps toward what feels alive for me right now.

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