You’re Not Behind. You’re in a Chapter You Haven’t Re-Read Yet.
Detours don’t announce their purpose in real time. Most chapters only make sense once you’ve lived past them.
Somewhere along the way, many of us inherit a quiet belief that life is supposed to move in a recognizable order.
That if you’re doing it “right,” you can point to the milestones like signposts and say: here. Here. Here.
And if you can’t, if your life is a little messier than the outline you once imagined, it starts to feel like failure. Like you missed a turn. Like everyone else got the map, and you didn’t.
I’ve been circling this lately with my therapist. Not as a dramatic crisis, but as a recurring hum. The sense that I should be further along than I am. That I should be able to justify every season of my life with a clear outcome.
Around the same time, I found myself listening to a recent episode of Jay Shetty’s On Purpose podcast about feeling behind. What struck me wasn’t any single idea, but how familiar the feeling was. The way it slips into the background of capable, functional lives. The way it disguises itself as motivation, when it is often just pressure wearing a productive face.
It mirrored what I had already been sitting with: that the discomfort isn’t always about where we are. It’s about the story we’re telling ourselves about where we should be.
I believe in story.
I believe that meaning often arrives late.
Still, the feeling shows up.
The chapter that looks like “in-between” is still shaping you.
In 2014–2015, I worked three part-time jobs to stay afloat in New York while waiting to move to Los Angeles. One of them was at the Metropolitan Opera Gift Shop.
In some ways, it was glamorous. I was back inside the arts again. Rehearsal music drifted through the halls. Chagall murals were displayed in the house with grandeur.
In other ways, it was hard. Long shifts on my feet. Working Christmas Eve. Making ends meet in a city that doesn’t make that easy.
That year, I couldn’t go home for the holidays.
My parents came to New York and stayed with me in my four-floor walk-up in Queens so we could be together.
At the time, it felt like a holding pattern. Later, I realized it was training.
I learned how to sell without selling. How to read people quickly and kindly. How to invite someone into an unfamiliar world without making them feel out of place.
I became very good at recommending Roberto Alagna’s Pasión to women just starting to flirt with opera (If you know, you know).
I also fell deeper in love with the art form myself. I snagged orchestra tickets and brought friends to Carmen and Un Ballo in Maschera. Opera stopped feeling distant. It became something shared.
That knowledge stayed with me.
When I interviewed at LA Opera after moving west, I was hired the same day.
And in 2016, while behind the press stand for The Magic Flute, I first came up with the book idea I’ve spent the past two summers workshopping at the Disquiet Literary Program in Lisbon, and that I’m still writing today.
None of that was obvious when I was ringing up Chopin Liszt notepads and folding scarves.
But without that season, I wouldn’t be here.
“Behind” is usually a narrative, not a fact.
What I keep returning to is this: feeling behind is rarely about what’s actually happening. It’s about the story you’re telling about what’s happening.
We decide a season “doesn’t count” because it isn’t legible as progress.
We call something a detour because we can’t yet see what it’s giving us.
We label a year as wasted because it didn’t produce a headline.
Listening to the On Purpose podcast while working through these ideas, I kept thinking about how often we confuse visibility with value. How easily we dismiss anything that isn’t immediately recognizable as success, even when it is quietly doing essential work underneath the surface.
Story doesn’t work like that.
In good stories, the part where it looks like nothing is happening is often the part where everything is being set up.
The character is learning skills they’ll need later. They’re developing the taste that will guide their choices. They’re becoming someone who can hold the next chapter when it arrives.
The problem is that when you’re living it, you can’t see the structure. You can only see the absence of the outcome you thought you’d have by now.
The invisible work is still work.
One of the most painful things about modern life is how quickly we dismiss anything that isn’t easy to display.
If your season doesn’t translate into a title, a post, a before-and-after, or a clean announcement, it can start to feel unreal.
But some of the most important growth you’ll ever do won’t be visible.
You’ll be learning how to stand up again after disappointment. How to make decisions without applause. How to trust your own pace. How to stay devoted to what matters even when it isn’t yielding immediate proof.
That is a foundation.
One question can change the chapter.
When you feel behind, the impulse is to rush.
To make a fast decision just to quiet the discomfort. To choose a life that looks like it’s moving, even if it isn’t true. To treat anxiety like urgency and call it ambition.
But “behind” is not a compass. It doesn’t point you toward what you want. It points you away from uncertainty.
So, here is the question I’ve been practicing instead:
What is this season shaping in me that I’ll need later?
Because in hindsight, the Met Opera gift shop wasn’t the time before my real life began.
It was part of the path.
It gave me language. Taste. Confidence. Social ease. Art-world fluency. A deeper love of the form. It made opera feel close enough to share, and that instinct to share what I love became a thread through everything that came next.
You don’t need to justify your life to believe it matters.
If you’ve been quietly panicking about timing, this is what I want to offer you:
You’re allowed to be in a chapter you can’t summarize yet.
You’re allowed to be in the middle of something that won’t make sense until later.
You’re allowed to have a season that looks unimpressive on paper but changes you in ways you’ll one day be grateful for.
A life doesn’t become meaningful because it follows a clean timeline, but because you live it by paying attention.
And attention, over time, turns ordinary days into something you can actually build from.
A small ritual for the days you feel “late.”
If you want something gentle and practical, try this in your journal:
The chapter I’m in right now is…
The story I’ve been telling about this chapter is…
If I assumed this chapter mattered, what might it be giving me?
What might I understand about this season a year from now?
You don’t need to force the answer.
Just don’t abandon the chapter while you’re still living it.
Because one day, you’ll re-read it and recognize it as essential.
Living in the Present Is a Creative Act
I saw About Time last weekend while I was in Connecticut with my family. Some of them were watching it for the first time. It’s a film I’ve returned to again and again, but this viewing felt especially timely.
How Artist Dates Help You Reclaim Your Creative Self
What keeps a creative spirit open in a life that keeps insisting she close?
11 Questions To Help You Hear Yourself Again
I have been journaling more than usual lately. Not in the structured, productive way I used to—when every page felt like a performance review for my own life—but in a slower, quieter way. A way that feels less like documenting and more like returning.
This so eloquently describes what it FEELS like to be in transition. It's the messy middle of where you are now to where you want to go. I've felt this many times in my life, too. I think everyone does. Stuck turns into momentum, eventually, once you've gotten more clarity on what you want and start driving toward that outcome.
This really resonated. So often the seasons that feel like “waiting” are actually the ones quietly shaping us, teaching us, and preparing us for what’s next. A beautiful reminder that the path doesn’t have to make sense in the moment to be meaningful.