The Man You Thought You'd Be

A companion post to Wonder & Wander, Episode 4

When I was a kid, my future had a pretty clear shape.

I'd stay local. Live somewhere in Nebraska. That was the map — not because I felt trapped by it, but because my world hadn't expanded yet. I'd quietly accepted that life. It felt like mine.

So when my future took me somewhere else entirely, it caught me off guard. And the first thing I had to do — before I could be curious about what was coming — was grieve what I'd assumed was already decided.

The Grief Nobody Talks About

We don't usually associate grief with a life that never happened. We save that word for loss — death, divorce, endings you can point to.

But there's a real kind of grief that comes from letting go of a version of yourself you'd already started to inhabit. The man you thought you'd be. The life you'd quietly accepted as yours.

That version doesn't disappear when you outgrow it. It has to be mourned. And most men skip that part — which means they spend years measuring their actual life against a ghost.

What Was Waiting on the Other Side

My first job out of college was hard. Genuinely hard. New places, unfamiliar rhythms, the particular loneliness of building a life somewhere you didn't grow up.

But something else was happening underneath the difficulty. My map was expanding. I was meeting people I never would have met. Going places I never would have gone. Encountering ideas that didn't exist in the world I'd grown up in.

That expansion changed me. Not all at once — slowly, quietly, the way real change tends to work.

Both Made Me Who I Am

Here's what I know now that I didn't know then: you don't have to choose between honoring where you came from and embracing where you've been taken.

Nebraska made me. The road out of Nebraska made me too. The boy who assumed he'd stay, and the man who learned to be curious about what's next — both of those are mine.

I hope I can keep that openness. Keep meeting each new horizon the way I've learned to — not with dread, not with a rigid plan, but with something that feels a lot like wonder.

A Question to Sit With

Is there a version of yourself you've been measuring your actual life against — a man you thought you'd be by now? What would it mean to grieve that version, and make room for who you actually are?

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Listen to Episode 4 of Wonder & Wander on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, and follow the show so you never miss a conversation around the fire.