“I Thought I Was Making Progress. Turns Out I Was Just Taking Notes.”
For a long time, I believed progress had a shape. It was linear. It moved forward. It came with milestones, approvals, and the quiet satisfaction of knowing you were doing life correctly. I mistook motion for momentum and optimism for clarity. When things didn’t work out, I told myself I was almost there—as if life were a badly signposted highway and I’d missed the exit by a few feet.
What I didn’t account for were potholes.
Not the dramatic kind—the ones that make for good stories later—but the small, daily craters that jolt you just enough to make you question your alignment. The job that seemed right until it wasn’t. The relationship that taught you more through its ending than its duration. The choice that looked sensible on paper and absurd in practice. None of these felt like failures at the time. They felt like detours. Temporary inconveniences. Notes I didn’t realize I was taking.
I was convinced that if I just chose better—worked harder, waited longer, trusted sooner, trusted less—life would smooth itself out. That wisdom was something you acquired before the mess, not because of it. But hindsight has a cruel sense of humor. It reveals that the mess was the curriculum. The potholes weren’t interruptions to the journey; they were the journey, quietly shaping how I moved, what I noticed, and when I finally slowed down enough to listen.
This book was not written from the vantage point of arrival. There is no triumphant before-and-after, no clean arc from confusion to certainty. It was written from the middle—from the place where you realize that every confident step you took was also a footnote in a longer story. A story about trying, recalibrating, and learning that progress is often only visible in reverse.
Life Choices and Potholes is a record of those notes. Some are thoughtful. Some are sarcastic. Some were scribbled in moments when clarity felt wildly overrated. Together, they form a map—not of where I was going, but of how I learned to stay present while not knowing. And if there’s any progress worth claiming, it’s this: I no longer rush to pave over the potholes. I slow down, take better notes, and keep going anyway.
Kay’s Odyssey 
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