I went back to the spreadsheet last night.
Not because of the phone note. That’s what I told myself while opening it, the way you tell yourself you’re just going to look at the menu, not order anything. But I know why I opened it. Yesterday I found the one idea on that list that didn’t make me cringe, and the next thing my brain does, apparently without my permission, is start running numbers.
The spreadsheet exists because I built it six months ago, about three weeks after the review. I stayed up until 1am on a Wednesday. Doug was asleep. I sat at the dining room table with my laptop and typed every number I knew about our life into a Google Sheet and formatted it with color-coded tabs because that is apparently what I do when I’m having an existential crisis. I organize.
I named it “Household Budget 2025.” Then I renamed it “Options.” Then I renamed it “The Plan.” It is not a plan. It is a spreadsheet with good formatting and no conclusions.
Here’s what’s in it. I make $161,000. Doug makes $94,000. After taxes, we bring home roughly $15,800 a month. Our mortgage is $2,340, which I know to the dollar because I set up autopay in 2014 and still check it every month. Total expenses run about $7,500. That number only got honest once I stopped pretending we don’t spend $640 a month on takeout.
The savings part is where it got interesting. Emergency fund, brokerage account, retirement I’m not touching. I typed it all in, added formulas, and subtracted my entire salary.
What happens is: we’d be fine.
Not comfortable. Not “let’s go to Italy” fine. But Doug’s income plus modest withdrawals from savings covers our expenses for roughly four years. Without touching retirement. Without selling the house. Four years.
I did not know this before I built the spreadsheet. When I saw the number I just sat there. Four years is longer than I thought.
And then I closed it, went to bed, and did not open it again for six months.
I need you to understand that part. I had the answer to the question I thought was keeping me stuck, and I put it in a drawer. I went back to work the next morning. I renewed three accounts in Q1 and felt the usual satisfaction, which was smaller than it used to be but still there. I was a person with a spreadsheet that said she could leave, and she stayed.
I thought the problem was financial. I thought if I could just prove the numbers worked, I’d feel ready. I’d feel permission. The numbers worked six months ago and I felt nothing. Or not nothing. I felt the specific relief that comes right before you realize the obstacle you removed was not the obstacle that mattered.
The money was never the thing.
I think the thing is that I don’t know who I am if I’m not doing this. Not the job specifically. The pattern. Being good at something someone else defined, collecting evidence that I’m valuable, converting that evidence into a salary. I’ve been doing that for 24 years. What I have not done, ever, is the other version. The one where I define what valuable means and then try to convince someone else to agree.
That’s a different spreadsheet. I haven’t built it yet.
But last night I added a new tab. Just one. I labeled it “60-Day Save” and typed three bullet points about what the service would look like. Pricing, target client, scope. Then I highlighted all three cells in yellow because I didn’t know what other color to make them.
I don’t know if three bullet points in a yellow-highlighted tab count as progress. They might be the spreadsheet equivalent of writing “candles??” at 11pm. But they’re in The Plan now. Which is still not a plan. But it has a new tab, and the tab has a name, and the name is specific enough that I can’t pretend I didn’t write it.
I keep waiting for the moment where I feel ready. I’m starting to suspect that moment doesn’t come and that the people who look ready were just better at faking it.
I’ll let you know what’s in those three cells. Probably. After I decide if I believe them.