“I Can’t, I Have a Cat on My Lap”
Today, I find myself perched in the corner of my living room with a blanket and a Catrick Swayze on my lap. Naturally, as everyone knows, when you have a cat on your lap, you are legally and morally incapacitated. You cannot move, you cannot refinish the stairs, and you most definitely cannot risk offending the cat by reaching for a responsible thought.
It’s been a few months shy of a year since I closed my last brick-and-mortar business. Almost a whole year of revisiting my love for creative writing, rediscovering, and reinventing. And lately this summer, procrastinating, because sunny Minnesota days are precious and fleeting.
Minnesota Summers, Murphy’s Law
Take this week, for example. The other day: 85 degrees in the shade, 80% humidity, air so thick you could chew it. Today: high winds, rollers on the lake, 50 degrees, and a frost warning.
By the weekend? Probably one more mosquito hatch, as if to say stay humble, bitch.
This is precisely why we follow our golden household rule:
“If the sun is out, the inside projects wait.”
We only get about three months of solid, glorious heat, and come January, when it’s -40 and your lashes freeze together, you’ll regret every second you spent sanding a built-in instead of sitting on the beach with a book.
Retirement, Reinvention, and a Lot of Sawdust
My husband recently retired this June, and the summer quickly became a chaotic game of “what did Rae start a year ago that WE get to finish” dominoes. Nothing says I’m retired more than hittin’ it 12 hours a day on every single project we’ve been saving for over a decade.
We are apparently such hard workers at the core that we’ve had to remind ourselves, sometimes three times before lunch, that this is not a timed event. There’s no foreman with a clipboard judging how fast we sand, and nobody’s handing out gold stars for finishing before dinner. Relaxing is a skill we’re still trying to pass.
We knocked out a wall, which led to retreading the stairs, which of course meant sanding, staining, and restoring the 80-year-old built-in. That project revealed layers of paint, three different wood grains, and approximately seven crises. One stain migraine later… boom, it’s almost September.
I wish I could tell you this was a neatly planned HGTV storyline, but alas, twas not, and I now have approximately nine open cans of stain in slightly different shades of Regrettable Walnut.
The Wall That Started It All
If you’ve been following along with Unfinished Business: The Art of Reinvention, you already know this story started with a wall. Specifically, the one I impulsively demolished in the middle of a chaotic season.
That wall started the remodel, which started other projects, which started the “Why Can’t You Be Happy with the Way Things Are?” conversation that led to a book, the podcast, and honestly, this entire reinvention chapter of my mid-forties.
Are you keeping up?
I will say, I once thought that success was about working nonstop, building businesses, and being able to buy name brand groceries. Turns out, success at this stage looks different:
Time.
Time for projects.
Time for each other.
Time to annoy the hell out of each other.
Time to “make up” AFTER you annoy each other, and yes, that kind of making up. Every person out there knows exactly how much making out you don’t do with kids in the house OR working 80 hours a week.
And mostly, time to be grateful for it all.
Building the Brand
The first book in the Unfinished Business: The Art of Reinvention series is on track to be finished this fall. It’s ridiculously honest, vulnerable, and laugh-out-loud relatable. It’s also the most creatively fulfilling thing I’ve ever done.
I’ve spent the last year writing, rewriting, and occasionally arguing with myself about subtitles, fonts, and whether the atomic starburst belongs 2 millimeters higher or lower on the cover.
While fonts and starbursts consumed my nights, something else surprised me this year: I realized I want to tell this story out loud, not just on the page.
After the book launch, I will also offer keynote speaking and small events, sharing everything I’ve learned from:
Building and selling a successful start-up for six figures
Curating experiences for thousands of people
Surviving two decades of business chaos
And, hopefully, inspiring people to write their own reinvention stories
If there’s one thing this past year taught me, it’s this:
You don’t have to have it all figured out to start over.
You just have to start.
Coming Full Circle
So here I am, walnut stain under my fingernails, open laptop, and an entire new chapter of life unfolding.
Reinvention doesn’t always look graceful. Sometimes it’s messy. Sometimes it smells like varnish. And sometimes, it looks like a woman in her mid-forties, cat on her lap finishing a book, about to embark on a speaker series to promote her story this time around, rather than a million bath bombs, tickets to a concert, or a box of truffles. Each just as significant as the other.
Reinvention simply adds new chapters to an already meaningful story.
“Ten years ago, you only dreamed of what you have now.” – David Sedaris, Masterclass
And right now, mine looks like this:
A little chaos covered in sawdust and sheetrock.
A lot of gratitude.
And hopefully, this book, finished before the next snowfall.