56 Days to Launch | Creating Tomorrow While Living in Today

We were catching up with some of our favorite YouTube channels on a Tuesday night when I got the official news. After almost 14 years at my nonprofit job, I was being laid off. A few days later I sat in my home office, staring at the official document with its carefully worded language.

Instead of panic, I felt a strange sense of calm. I looked at the vision board on my office wall that I created at the beginning of the year, the first one I'd ever created. It had visual representations of adventure, freedom, health and happiness. Bryan and I each created our own board and they each had these common themes. We were dreaming out loud about what could be possible. We'd been dreaming about "someday" plans for a different kind of life since 2020.

"Someday" just got a deadline: December 2024.

A History of Reinvention

This isn't our first time starting over. Back in 1992, I was a college student who fell in love with a restaurant guy. What followed was 27 years of 24/7 work demands and limited opportunities for travel, but we loved what we were doing so it didn't feel like work at the time. We owned and managed bar and grills that Bryan ran while I juggled keeping the books for those businesses and working a full-time accounting job.

In 2003, we left our friends and family in Texas to open a new place in Chicago, where I was originally born and still had family. Eight years later, we moved back to Texas and started over again with, yet another place, because we missed friends and family and got tired of those cold winters. But in 2017-8, everything changed. Bryan had some serious health challenges that, we believe, were directly tied to work stresses and demands. None of the doctors we saw during that time could give us a definitive reason for his health issues.

Two decades in the restaurant business had taken its toll. This wasn't just fatigue - it was a soul-deep realization that something needed to change. In 2019, we sold our share of the business to our business partner and Bryan left daily operations. Our friends thought we were crazy. "You're walking away from something successful?" "What are you going to do now?" But I had started asking myself questions that wouldn't go away:

• What if we measured success by life lived, not hours worked?

• Could we build something that worked around our life, instead of living around our work?

• What would 'enough' look like if we designed it ourselves?

Finding Our Path

Sometimes life's biggest gifts come disguised as practical decisions. When I went to college, I had no idea what type of career I wanted. All I knew was that I liked numbers, so I chose to major in business with a Finance focus. Then after college, I met Bryan and we ran businesses together for more than twenty-five years while bookkeeping was a side project for me. I even had a small "mobile bookkeeping" business as my side hustle as far back as 1997! Doing this bookkeeping work showed me something bigger: we could build a life that worked for us, not just a business that worked.

Each step taught us something new about what we really wanted:

• We could help others without sacrificing ourselves
• Technology meant we could work differently than we had before
• Our experience wasn't a limitation - it was a foundation
• "Success" could be redefined on our own terms

The Plot Twist

So now, at 56, instead of updating my resume, I'm updating our vision of what's possible. That layoff? It's not an ending - it's a launch pad.

We're keeping our home base in North Texas (our dogs, Chula and Zori, took a vote - they're rather attached to their backyard and Kiwi, our cat, would rather chase things around the house), but we're redesigning life around three core ideas:

1. Work can support life, not consume it
2. Less might actually mean more
3. The best adventures are those that don't involve stressing about going back to work

What We're Building

Our next chapter isn't about escaping - it's about intentionally building something different. We're thinking it will look like this:

• Working in ways that leave room for wonder
• Traveling in our camper to places we've always talked about
• Building a life around experiences instead of schedules
• Learning new skills just because they interest us
• Discovering what "enough" really means

The Real Talk

Let's be honest - this is both terrifying and exciting. We wake up some nights wondering:

• Are we crazy to change everything at this age?
• Can we really build this kind of life?

But then morning comes, and we remember:

• Maybe the biggest risk isn't changing everything at 56. Maybe it's reaching 66 and wishing we had
• Every major joy in our lives came from taking a chance
• We've already proven we can reinvent ourselves

Your Turn

Maybe you're:

• Facing your own unexpected transition
• Dreaming of a different kind of life
• Wondering if it's too late to change
• Looking for proof that midlife can be a beginning

We're creating this space to share our journey - the wins, the wobbles, and the wonder of starting again at 56. Because maybe the best chapters start with a plot twist.

Let's Connect

Are you navigating your own reinvention? Dreaming about a different way to work and live? We'd love to hear your story. Drop a comment below or reply to our newsletter.

Next week, we'll share:

• Our practical preparation timeline
• The conversations that helped us decide
• Our favorite resources for this transition

Until then,

Kathy & Bryan

(Plus Chula, Zori & Kiwi, Professional Dream Supporters)