Take a deep breath and start over
Inertia — Nº194
I used to count the minutes between customers at the bike store where I worked like loose change, watching the clock its hands through another nine-hour shift. Outside, life moved like wheels and wind, and I’d stare out the window with the same longing you’d feel when you’re sick—full of regret, reminiscing when you weren’t. Each minute stretches into twenty, and two years passed like this. Dwelling behind the counter under fluorescent lights that hummed a daily lullaby while I told myself this was to no end.
The store became my snow globe—not just safe, but sealed. A small, contained world where I knew every invoice like a prayer, every spreadsheet like a map to nowhere, and every seasonal rotation like the steady beat of a metronome.
After the pandemic shuttered our doors, and then we creaked them back open, I returned to the uninspiring dance of price tags, customer calls, and negotiations. Sales pleasantly picked up for a while as people enacted their newfound healthy living habits instilled during lockdown. But while it was back to the same space with the same old story, this time was different.
Dreams are stubborn things. They don’t die; they just learn to whisper. Mine emerged as thoughts of writing freely, creative freedom and earning what I was worth. They came in the spaces between customer conversations, in lunch breaks that tasted of “what if”, and in morning commutes when the uniform felt heavier than yesterday.
We tell ourselves such careful lies: “At least this is stable”. “At least it’s something”. We mistake fear for wisdom, hesitation for humility—until our bones forget they were made for moving.
Giving up arrives quietly, wearing the mask of practicality. It creeps in and teaches you to call surrender “being realistic”, to label your cage “knowing your place”. It settles into your chest like cold tea, familiar but never warm enough to satisfy you. You can’t always tell when you’re being “sensible” or underestimating what’s realistic because knowing your place is misguided. You can try to silence the voice that keeps saying, “There’s more”, but it will echo anyway.
Settling may feel safer than seeking, where the routine you know becomes the life you accept. But there comes a point where you get so focused on looking forward that you miss too much from the views to your side.
Change doesn’t announce itself with fanfare. It starts as an itch, a restlessness that says your hands need to remember they can create. It lives in the gaps—between customer conversations, between breaths, between the version of you that is standing still and the one that is walking. I’d watch the cyclists streak past the shop window, their freedom a physical ache in my chest, then let ideas spill onto my phone from the podcast during the walk home, the thoughts in the shower, and the routine at home before bed. I started writing in stolen moments. Small acts and tiny seeds of difference planted in the gaps of my routine. Because you need to leverage the momentum you already have to create even more.
No one tells you that transformation feels like learning to walk twice. You’re ripping up the script you’ve memorised to navigate the world, rewriting it with any confidence you can find. Your first steps are wobbly. Unsure. You stumble between decisions, saying no to familiar options and yes to uncertain opportunities. You question everything—your timing, your talent, your sanity. Some days, the lights above you flicker as if they speak with judgment, saying, “Who do you think you are?”
But courage isn’t about feeling ready—it’s about moving forward while your knees shake, about breathing through the static of doubt until it becomes music.
You start small because that’s how all big things begin. One story. One opportunity. You grab it with trembling hands. Each small win cracks the glass ceiling above you. Each rejection (and I’ve had many) teaches you that failing doesn’t mean failing, that every “no” can bring you closer to yes. You learn to stay present when you want to zone out, to show up even when your words come out wrong, to trust that persistence outweighs perfection, and to tell yourself a new story until it becomes true.
Now I write these words from a different life—one that once seemed impossible. Doing what once felt out of my realm, enjoying change as a driver rather than something to resist. Not because I chased bigger paychecks, but because I learned to breathe deeply and continually start over. Every good and bad moment carries the seed of a new start. And it can take one deep breath to crack open the snow globe you find yourself in and step into something wider and beyond.
Now, when I look back at that shop, I see it differently. It wasn’t a place where dreams waited; it was the ground they grew from. Every rain-soaked commute, every clock-watching hour, and every interaction taught me something to take for the journey ahead. That continues where I am now and always will. To start over isn’t about leaving; it’s about using where you are as fuel for where you’re going.