I am unemployed, depressed, broke, and still trying. All of those things are true at the same time.

I feel like a failure at life. I feel like I have nothing to show for my 44 years on this earth but massive debt. And I feel like I don’t want to live like this anymore.

Sometimes I think about not waking up anymore. But I also know what that would do to my mom. So I know I have to get up and try again and again every day.

It is just so hard.

I feel like moving home two years ago was the beginning of the end for me. I can’t be happy in Louisiana. I’ve tried. But I miss Texas. I miss my friends. I miss having a life that felt like mine. Honestly, I miss me.

And now that Mason is moving back to Texas, part of me wants to go too. I wonder if going back could revive me. If being around my friends, having my own place again, finding a job and rebuilding a life there could help me find the version of myself I’ve been missing for the last two years.

But I can’t just leave my mom by herself.

And that’s the part I don’t know what to do with.

What if the thing I need to save myself feels like abandoning someone I love?

So what do I do now?

I’m sitting at PJ’s Coffee thinking of a master plan.

But the page is blank.

I keep thinking there should be some big answer. Some five-step plan for rebuilding my life. Get a job. Pay off the debt. Lose the weight. Move back to Texas. Find my spark. Become DDC again.

But I don’t know if that’s how rebuilding a life actually works.

Maybe there isn’t a master plan.

Maybe right now there is just the next thing.

Today, the next thing was getting out of the house.

The next thing was coming to PJ’s.

The next thing was opening my laptop.

The next thing was admitting that I’m not okay.

And the next thing was writing this.

I don’t know where I’m going from here.

I don’t know if I’ll stay in Louisiana or eventually make my way back to Texas. I don’t know when someone will finally say yes to one of these job applications. I don’t know how I’m going to climb out of the financial hole I’m in. And I don’t know when I’m going to feel like myself again.

I wish I did.

I wish I could end this by telling you that I figured it out somewhere between my first sip of matcha and the last sentence on this page.

I didn’t.

I’m still unemployed.

I’m still depressed.

I’m still broke.

But I’m also still trying.

And for today, that’s the only part of the master plan I know for sure.

DDC

Lesson: You don’t have to know how you’re going to rebuild your entire life to start rebuilding it. Sometimes the master plan is simply doing the next thing.

Question: When you don’t know what comes next, how do you keep yourself moving forward?