New Growth in Familiar Places | Week 6 Post-layoff

Ever had that moment when something completely familiar suddenly feels foreign? This week, I found myself staring at my login screen, fingers hovering over keys that had been second nature just weeks ago. After almost fourteen years of typing this sequence without thought, my muscle memory needed a moment to catch up with my new reality.

Just six weeks after leaving my corporate role, I found myself back in these systems as a consultant, helping with the annual audit process. Like visiting your childhood home to find the furniture slightly rearranged - you know exactly where you're going, but you have to think about each step a little bit more now.

This Week's Reality Check

• Days since corporate layoff: 45
• Car adventures: 1 (Subaru brake assist wiring for camper towing!)
• Camper projects completed: 0 (turns out client work, audit season and car wiring take priority!)
• Hours spent finding the perfect camper flooring: Still counting, but currently paused
• Hours spent in once-familiar software systems: 10
• Dogs reminding us to take breaks: 2
• Vet trips: 1

What We're Actually Doing

When my former employer reached out about helping with their annual audit, it felt like the perfect next chapter in this transition story. My former team had worked together seamlessly for over a decade, each of us mastering our specific roles in a complex process that always earned top marks from the auditor. Now they're navigating their first audit season without me - or rather, with a different version of me.

What we're discovering is that expertise runs deeper than muscle memory. Even when your fingers hesitate over familiar keystrokes, the knowledge that guides those clicks remains rock solid. While we're growing our own business we're learning that building a business doesn't mean burning bridges. Sometimes it means creating new paths that can run parallel to the old ones.

Being invited back to help with audits feels like a gift - a chance to support a great team while growing in a new direction. It's humbling to have former colleagues trust your expertise enough to bring you back, and exciting to discover how naturally the consultant role fits. Being a consultant to your former team comes with its own learning curve: setting clear boundaries about availability while managing other client commitments, recognizing when to lean on old knowledge and when to approach things fresh. And somehow, our dogs seem to know exactly when we need a walk to process these changes.

Meanwhile, our Subaru got its own upgrade this week - brake assist wiring for our future camper adventures. Between that, client work, and diving back into audit season, our plans for camper lighting and flooring projects are temporarily hanging out in the "soon" category. But maybe that's fitting - like any good growth, some things need to wait for their season while others take center stage.

Perhaps that's the real art of reinventing midlifehood - not starting completely over, but rather taking the best of what we've built and reshaping it into what we need now.

Let's Talk

When was the last time you returned to something familiar - a place, a skill, a relationship - and found yourself both completely at home and slightly out of step at the same time? It's funny how much you can learn about yourself when you're finding your footing in familiar places. Whether it's returning to a former workplace, picking up an old hobby, or reconnecting with old friends - we'd love to hear your story of finding new growth in familiar places.

Looking Forward

Next week brings more collaboration with my former team, continued work on client projects, and more opportunities to find our footing in this space between familiar and new. With each login, each meeting, each decision, we're creating a new kind of normal - one that honors where we've been while staying true to where we're heading. Join us as we navigate this dance between two worlds, and maybe even get to those camper projects!

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