Gone, But Not Done: What Going Back Home Shows You About Who You've Become

Listen to Episode 71 of The Bold Life podcast, or read the full episode below.

Six years later, the city looked the same and I didn't

So I'm in the back of an Uber coming out of SFO, and I'm tired in the way you only get tired after a day with three full days' worth of work in it.

That morning was a last-minute scramble to get my son ready for middle school basketball tryouts. Then straight into meetings about bringing innovation into some high-profile projects at work. Then home to do the thing every working mom knows before a trip. I prepped the house. I prepped the kid. I prepped the dogs. I lined up the childcare. Everything had to run without me, because I was getting on a late flight to San Francisco for an AI conference.

The last thing I wanted to do that day was leave. And then, somewhere between the airport and the city, it hit me. It's been six years since I lived here. Six years. And what I noticed wasn't how much the city had changed. It was how much I had.

Most of us assume we'll notice when we change. We don't. We notice afterward, usually somewhere that belonged to the old version of us. And the old versions don't disappear. We carry a lot of selves inside us, and some of them we semi-retire for a season so we can put our energy somewhere else. That's what this post is about, and what it teaches you about how careers evolve. They rarely move in a straight line. And moving forward doesn't mean throwing out everything behind you.

You don't always decide to change. Sometimes you notice you already did.

There was a time when San Francisco was the center of everything I wanted.

I had my girl pack. Very Sex and the City. We went bar hopping all over town, and then Monday morning I'd get up and teach a big ass class of hormonal teenagers who did not particularly want to read my social justice texts or work on metacognitive strategies.

Teaching took a lot of energy. Whatever it took out of me during the week, a night out with the girls put back. That was my system, and it worked.

And I knew exactly what I wanted. The makeup. The high heels. The perfect man. The perfect house to build a home in with him. San Francisco was where it was going to happen.

That kid of mine is nearly 14 now. I lead learning technology for robotic surgery education at a global MedTech company, a function I built from the ground up.

And for a while, my life got pretty boring. Work, home, kid, dogs, repeat. Then it was time to bring creativity back. I was finally ready to step into action as a writer, and the first place that showed up was my podcast.

I threw out half my wardrobe. Most of the heels are gone. I live in flats. I wear minimal makeup. I spend most of my time working and hanging out at home, and I like it. Two or three times a year you can drag me out somewhere. A Lenny Kravitz show in Vegas. A girls' trip to Germany. Other than that, I'm living under a work rock with my dogs.

I didn't decide to stop caring about heels. I didn't hold a meeting with myself about going out less. It happened through hundreds of small choices, until one night I'm in the back of an Uber in a city I used to live in, and the woman who lived here is not the woman riding through it.

What I wanted back then was real. It just belonged to a different stage.

There's an easy story to tell here, and it's the wrong one. I used to care about superficial shit, and now I care about meaningful things. Old me, shallow. New me, deep.

That's not true, and it's not useful.

The woman bar hopping in heels was building a life. She wanted connection, fun, and a future she could see. Going out was how she got her energy back after giving everything to a classroom all week. That was a real need, and she met it.

And she's not gone. She's one of the selves I carry. I semi-retired her so I could put my energy into raising a kid and building a career. That was a real trade, even if I never said it out loud.

Careers work the same way. The job that fit at 32 was right for the woman you were at 32. If you don't notice that your definition of having it all has changed, you keep chasing the old one. The title, the promotion, the lifestyle the woman you were ten years ago wanted. You get it. And you can't figure out why getting it doesn't feel the way you expected.

You've changed. If your goals haven't been updated to match, you're working very hard toward something that belongs to a woman you used to be. And I know how disorienting that is. You worked this hard to build a life, and now some part of it doesn't fit the woman living in it.

Evolution goes back and forth before it moves forward

I used to think change moved in one direction. You leave a stage, you close it out, you move on. That's not how it's gone for me.

I left the classroom for educational publishing. Then I went into learning in surgical robotics. On paper, it looks like I left teaching behind. I didn't. I used to teach teenagers how to notice their own thinking while they read. Now I build learning for surgeons, some of the most accomplished learners in the world, and the principle hasn't changed. A skilled adult learning something new still needs to see how they're thinking, not just what to do next. I didn't leave the classroom. I brought it with me.

I started a couple side businesses along the way. Then for years I was fully corporate. In 2024 I started building again. That wasn't a straight line. That was picking up something I'd set down, as a different version of myself.

Most careers look like this if you're honest about them. You move into management, miss the hands-on work, and go back to it for a while. You leave an industry and return years later with skills you didn't have before. You try something, pull back, try a different version, and then move forward faster than you ever did.

Going back is not failing to move forward. Sometimes it's how you figure out which direction forward actually is, and what you want to keep versus what you don't.

A quiet season can mean you're done, or it can mean you're building something

So when I look at my life right now, the flats, the home, the work, the dogs, the weekend writing, there are two ways to read it.

Reading one: I'm retiring from that life. I ain't about that life anymore. Done.

Reading two: I'm in a transition. I'm moving into a phase that needs quiet time to think, grow, and create while I figure out what to add.

If it's reading one, I stop looking. I decide who I am, and I defend it. If it's reading two, the quiet has a purpose.

This is where Career Signals help. A lot of women look at a quiet, heads-down stretch at work and assume it's a Plateau. Growth has stalled. I'm bored. Sometimes that's true. But sometimes what looks like a Plateau from the outside is Outgrowing from the inside. You've stopped wanting the old things before you've named the new ones.

The strategies are different. A Plateau needs a new challenge. Outgrowing needs a new definition of what you're going after. Treat Outgrowing like a Plateau and you go looking for more of the same at a higher intensity. More responsibility. More hours. And you end up with the same restlessness and a bigger title.

For me, the signal is Outgrowing. The old version of fun doesn't fit, and the new version isn't built yet.

One comment at the front desk almost decided the whole trip for me

The previous version of me loved a four-star hotel. Not too stuffy. Just the right amount of luxury and fun. For work, I stay at a Residence Inn. Predictable, quiet, fine.

This hotel in Union Square was neither. It felt like a mix between an upscale European hostel and the coffee shop from Friends. Young. Vibrant. Urban. A lofty lounge full of people on laptops with lattes.

Not really so much me anymore.

I looked around and said, "This is cool. Urban." And the woman at the front desk said, "Yeah, people don't always like it. Or expect it."

Did a part of me want to turn right back around and find a more premium hotel? Yes.

But practicality won. I couldn't late-cancel and put my company out on the money. And it was a Marriott, so I'd still get my points. Yes, I've become one of those people.

Let's run that moment through The Model.

The circumstance: I'm staying three days in a young, urban hotel, and the woman at the front desk said people don't always like it.

One thought available to me: This isn't me anymore.

If I think that, I feel out of place. And from out of place, I go to my room. I go to the conference. I come back to my room. I skip the lounge. I count the days until I fly home. The result? I prove myself right, and I learn nothing about what the current me might want.

The other thought: I get three days to see if the semi-retired version of me still has anything to say.

If I think that, I feel curious. And curious looks different in action. Maybe I go down to the lounge in the morning. Maybe I check my emails there with a latte before the conference. Maybe I walk over to one of my old haunts after the sessions. Maybe I stay out a little later than I planned. Maybe I don't, and that's information too. Movement creates clarity.

So I picked the second thought. I decided to be one of the guests who would enjoy this hotel on purpose, for what it was, instead of measuring it against the hotel I thought I should be in.

The hotel didn't change. I did. I stopped getting through it and started using it the way it was built to be used.

And here's what that showed me. The problem was never the hotel. It was the comparison. I walked in holding it up against two other versions of me: the woman who loved a four-star boutique and the woman who books the Residence Inn. Neither of them was checking in. I was.

Women do the same thing with their careers. They hold the job they have up against the job an older version of them wanted, and it loses every time. Or they decide in the first week that something isn't for them, before they've given it a real try. Deciding how you're going to experience something isn't pretending to like it. It's how you get real data instead of a verdict you reached at the front desk.

Growing doesn't mean leaving everything behind

This whole story lives in the Recalibrate stage of the Career Evolution Framework. Recalibrate asks two questions. What did I learn? And what's next?

Most women skip it. We finish a big chapter and go straight into the next one without asking what changed in us along the way. Or we notice we've changed and decide the old version is gone for good. That sounds evolved, but it's another way to stop paying attention.

Recalibrating means going back through what you used to want and making three decisions.

What do I take with me? For me, that's the need to refuel after giving a lot. I still have it. I meet it differently now, by building things.

What do I leave behind? Most of the heels. I don't miss them.

And what do I keep available to test? This is the one most women skip. Some things you set down because you got busy, not because you stopped wanting them. This is where the semi-retired selves live. The woman who loved a night out. The writer who waited years for a weekend. Semi-retired isn't retired. You don't have to decide today whether she comes back. You can run a small test. A latte in the lobby. One old haunt. One night out that isn't on a calendar three months in advance. Then you look at what you learned.

Now run the same three decisions on your career. The ambition you had at 30. The work that used to excite you. The thing you said you'd build someday. Some of it you've outgrown. Some of it you still want in a different form. And some of it you set down because the job got big and the kids got busy. That last group is usually where your next move is. And you don't have to quit anything to test it. A stretch project. A conversation with someone doing the work you're curious about. A podcast you record on the weekends.

That's how the becoming happens. I don't figure out who I am now and then decide what to do. I find out who I've become by doing it.

Recalibrate is also where the cycle starts over, back to Recognize. What's actually happening, and what has changed in me? I don't know the full answer yet. I'm still choosing, and I'm doing it with a process.

The risk in a comfortable season is deciding you already know who you are

I don't want to get so settled into the version of myself I've built that I stop letting anything new in.

Curiosity is data. What pulls your attention tells you something about what's missing. Choosing to enjoy that hotel on purpose gave me data that getting through it never would have. If I'd spent three days counting the minutes, that would have been data too, but it would have been data about my attitude, not about what I want.

Changing is natural. Evolving on purpose is what you do with the change. You notice it. You decide which selves get your time this season, which ones you've retired, and which ones are ready for a test.

The last question: what did you set down, and why?

If you're in a quiet season right now, heads down, home a lot, not sure whether you've outgrown your old life or just stopped making time for parts of it, take the Career Signals Quiz. It takes two minutes, and it tells you which signal you're actually dealing with, so you're not solving for a Plateau when what's really happening is Outgrowing.

Take the Career Signals Quiz: https://www.theboldlife.coach/career-burnout-quiz

And I'll leave you with this.

What did you stop doing because you outgrew it, and what did you stop doing because you got busy?

Only one of those is actually gone.