I’m still unpacking from our move.
The kind of unpacking where every box becomes a decision:
keep / toss / why did I move this?
This week I opened one filled with black-and-white composition notebooks from 2023.
I started flipping through them and found two versions of something I’d once called my founder’s story.
What I’d been through.
What I stood for.
What I wanted to build.
Reading them was strange.
Because beneath the language,
the positioning,
the professional story…
I saw something more familiar.
Me trying to explain myself.
To me.
I started those pages as a branding exercise.
Somewhere along the way, they became something else.
Me trying to label a discomfort I was struggling to understand.
At 30, I left a stable corporate role and earned a Master’s in counseling psychology.
I thought helping people might feel more meaningful than selling technology.
For a while, it did.
Then the old restlessness returned.
Eventually, I found myself back in the business world.
By 40, I had changed jobs so often I stopped introducing myself by title.
I kept thinking the next gig would be the one that finally fit.
The one where I would feel settled.
Certain.
Comfortable in my own skin.
Instead, every new beginning slowly became the same story.
A few months of optimism.
Then restlessness.
Frustration.
And the quiet feeling that somehow I still wasn’t where I was supposed to be.
I remembered how restless and exhausting those chapters of my life were.
Constantly trying to reinvent myself.
Exhausted from trying to “figure it out.”
Believing clarity was always somewhere just ahead of me.
The setting changed. The feeling didn’t.
At 50, my restless energy found new places to go.
Distance running. Triathlons.
A long-term job where I could finally introduce myself by title.
By 60, grief and loss stripped some of that restlessness and striving away.
Rereading words I wrote three years ago, I realized something.
I’m becoming less restless.
Maybe that means I’m finally starting to belong in my own life.
— Mark Wigginton
Midlife Guide | Next Chapter Navigator
📬 MarkW@FocusingOnResults.com
🌐 www.focusingonresults.com
🔗 Connect with me on LinkedIn
P.S. If this message resonated with you, it might speak to someone else too. Forward it to a friend who’s ready for their next chapter—you never know what kind of shift a few words of encouragement can spark.
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