We are currently living in a rural setting close to Dedham Vale in the U.K. I hear large double decker tour buses pass by a couple of times daily on their way to the National Trust parking lot at the end of the road. This is more remarkable than it sounds. The lane in front of our house is a narrow, one-way dirt track hemmed in on both sides by some pretty poky hedgerows that mean business. I find myself looking up from my writing out of morbid curiosity. I keep thinking a bus will get stuck and they’ll have to cut it out. This time there was no bus.

It was cows that were on the move.

A trailer full of cattle had stopped briefly below my pastorally blessed window . They were packed in tightly; black and white, wide eyed, and curious yet nervous. On their way to an unknown destination, some ears, eyes, and noses bounced up and then down looking for the reassurance of known things. Others kept their heads down.

I was surprised by a twinge of sympathy for them. No, not because they’re headed to slaughter. They have cattle that roam freely all over the incredibly beautiful National Trust land and I was sure that this delightful area was their final destination. But because it occurred to me that I have found myself in similar circumstances. Exactly a month into my decision to quit a paying career and launch into writing, I don’t hold a perspective that far removed from thosee bovines. I can’t really see the way in front of me much yet, but I’m getting glimpses of where I’m at. I’m not sure if my nose is buried in another cows butt but it sounds about right – at least part of the time. After a decades long career where success revolved around my ability to anticipate and plan, just being “in the now” is bewildering sometimes. How do you stop being driven?

The funny thing: I wasn’t always driven. I spent a good portion of my childhood and young adulthood allowing life to happen. A bit like a Pooh stick, I drifted as far and as fast as the currents took me. Right up until they took me to some pretty hard places. A husband who decided he’d found someone better. Divorced. Unemployed. Bankrupt. Three beautiful young faces looking to me to hold things together. I became driven to take care of those faces. I became good at it, then just kept doing it because that’s what you do, isn’t it? If you’re good at something and it’s relatively lucrative, you stick with it. Wise people counseled me to keep going as long as the money was good.

It’s only now that I am beginning to understand how driven I was. I kept going, year after year, carrying a load that I’d put on myself. Those beautiful young faces had turned into adults that set off on their own adventures and that I don’t get to see often enough. But I kept on, telling myself I didn’t want them to have to care for me when I got old because I’d been selfish and hadn’t taken care of my own future. There were trips to take. Homes to build. And me as I’d built myself. I was a strong, independent professional woman who took care of her own. Others did not take care of me.

Of course, there was a lot more in there that was amazing. Love and adventure and realizing dreams I’d long held. But at the end of it all, I felt like I’d used myself up and there was nothing left in the tank. My soul was in desperate need of nourishment. And I heard a call. Like locating a sound in a canyon, it was inescapable and yet determining where it came from was difficult. As it turns out, 1989 was calling

While we were married, the kid’s dad pushed me to figure out what I wanted to do with my life. I honestly didn’t know. I was 23 years old, I’d been married for 6 years, and I had two children and an infant. I felt like a failure because I couldn’t settle on a path, but in hind sight, I hadn’t been given a lot of space or time to figure me out yet. But one thing I knew. I was attracted to stories and writing. At the time, I didn’t feel that I had much to say that anyone would find interesting. I was along way away from having much of anything figured out. But I knew that when I was older and wiser, I would. The age of 53 or 54 – that was when my gut told me would be the time. I’m not sure I realized how serious I was about it back then, but my future self made a pact with me, that in what seemed a very distant future, I would get to say those things and tell stories that deserved to be shared.

Over the years, I would sometimes take that pact out and look at it. Like you would take a piece of your grandmother’s jewelry that had been promised to you. It wasn’t yours yet, but you wanted to see if it was still as beautiful as you remembered.

I turned 53 in 2017. My husband, Robert, and I had just packed up our lives, left Dallas, and moved to live in a converted California water tower at a friends winery. I had quit my sales job, said goodbye to regular manicures, gave away about 50 pairs of high heels and half as many suits, and left a life that had been more than 30 years in the making. I allowed myself to gain weight and strictly maintaining a size 4 became a thing of memory. I began letting go of the many things I no longer required.

My company offered me a role that I could work from home. It was an incredibly generous offer, and I figured it might stop my husband from launching into a full blown panic if I didn’t go from making a lot of money to nothing in one go. My new boss, God bless him, was even happy to let me take a three month leave of absence before I started. A lot of needed change there and all of it things I had signed up for.

I still wasn’t where I needed to be, but I was closer. Sonoma Valley is an interesting place. Lots of people live there who pursue their passions. It wasn’t long before I felt like everybody was pursuing their dream – except me. I’d gotten a lot of change, up to an including a much happier husband, but I wasn’t at my end game. If I’d talk about leaving my job to pursue something creative, the normal response was, “Well, could you work part time?” or ” Can you consult for them after you leave if you need the money?” Everybody else thought I’d already arrived at the perfect life. I was earning a good living and living on a winery in a truly beautiful part of the world. The wine was even good. How lucky does one person need to get?

Yet I was still thinking, “It’s time to call an audible here. When is it your turn? When are you gonna keep that promise you made to your younger self? When are you going to start living the life you know you need to live?” And it was a matter of need. I’m not proud of it, but I’d started having melt downs between the conference calls that occupied a good portion of my day. My dreams reflected the same inner struggle – that I was being pointed in another direction. The creative spark you need in order to write had abandoned me. And while we generally enjoy a wonderful relationship, I wasn’t feeling heard by my beloved husband.

Desperate, I left Sonoma and went to Houston to try and get some perspective. In more of a work centered culture, I felt like it would be easier for me to keep pushing through a career that no longer served any of my goals beyond the financial. Neither I nor my husband were happy with that solution long term, but I was right. It was easier to get in a working groove and keep my head down in Texas.

My husband began to understand the depth of my need to go in another direction, and he finally gave me the first of the two things I needed to feel good about quitting my job. Permission. Yes, I needed his permission because he was the one who would be supporting both of us when I was no longer bringing in a paycheck. I also needed his buy in because putting my needs first was and is awkward for me. I needed to know that he understood how important this was for me to do, and in many ways, how hard it was. This wasn’t a comfortable place for me. The last time I financially depended on someone else my whole world fell apart.

The final piece, a plan that included a budget, we did together. I haven’t lost my mind altogether.

I have opened my hands and that which no longer belongs there has slipped away. So I write, and I walk, and I research, and I plan. But now what I’m planning is my creation. Am I uneasy? Hell yeah. I’m afraid and I’m not sure what’s at the end of this ride. What would be the worst? To find out I’m a lousy writer and that this whole scheme was nothing more than a product of my youthful, sleep deprived imagination.

The rest is up to me now. I’m hoping the trick to not feeling driven is to be the one driving and to be in the right vehicle. I’m imagining myself at the wheel of the cattle truck, and I’m going to do my best to enjoy the journey as I bump along. Robert’s got shotgun, and my payload is riding behind me. We laugh, we smile, and sometimes we even sing. There are stops along the way. Maybe even a temporary setback or two. And that smell coming from the back? That’s just the sweet fragrance of fertile outpourings of creativity.