“You don’t always need a plan. Sometimes you just need to breathe, trust, let go, and see what happens.” ~Mandy Hale   Wake up. Wish I could go back to sleep. Get up and ready for work. Tell myself that today I’ll leave earlier but then leave the same time as usual. Walk to work. Pass all the same people I did yesterday. At the same time. Arrive at work. Listen to the same people complaining about the same things. Complain about the same things myself. Teach my classes. Tell people off for being late—the same people as yesterday and the day before that. Go home. Try to work toward my dream life. Collapse from exhaustion after about half an hour and wonder what the point is. Go to bed. Cry lots. Hope that I don’t wake up in the morning. Wake up again and repeat. This was my routine for a good number of months before I finally couldn’t take it anymore. Did I have the world’s worst job? No, not really. Did I live in a hell hole? Not at all. In fact, you could probably say that I didn’t have any problems, yet I was possibly more miserable than I’d ever been. I couldn’t believe it. How had I ended up like this? I’d tried so hard to change my life. I’d meditated, done yoga, followed my dreams, made a vision board, and bought lots of self-help books. I’d even read them, too! What more was a girl supposed to do? Why wasn’t my life changing? I desperately wanted to leave my job, but couldn’t. I wouldn’t have the money to pay the rent. I wanted to leave my apartment but I had nowhere to go. Not unless I went to stay with my mother and, I couldn’t do that—not at my age! So I plodded on, I tried to be a good ‘spiritual’ person and accept my life as it was. I tried to make the best of things. And sometimes, it worked, but not for long. Eventually the feelings of dissatisfaction would return. The feeling of helplessness. Feeling stuck. Wanting to escape. But there was no way out. I’d be repeating this day forever. And ever. Let It Go Around this time, I was reading a lot about how we need to close one door before another can open. I was also seeing colleagues leave work to pursue a life of their dreams. Rather than giving me hope, this made me feel more downhearted. It was all right for them; they had money, a partner, a new job, or an already-up-and-running business. I was all alone. I was broke. I had no husband to support me. No rich relatives to bail me out. Everything I’d done to try to make a living out of work that I loved had already failed. I didn’t even know what I wanted anymore. I just knew I didn’t want what I had. I’d get [...]