What Would You Do If You Were 35, Unemployed, and Newly Single?
That was me two years ago.
I was completely burnt out from work. It got to the point where I knew I couldn't keep doing it anymore, so I quit.
Around the same time, I ended a five-year relationship.
And suddenly, a huge part of the life I'd been living just... disappeared.
No job to wake up for.
No meetings.
No deadlines.
No relationship to come home to.
And for the first time in years, I had something I'd always thought I wanted:
Time.
A lot of it.
I thought I'd feel free.
Instead, I realised something slightly terrifying.
I had no idea what I actually liked doing.
If you take away work, responsibilities, plans, and all the things you're supposed to be doing...
do you actually know what's left?
Do you have something you genuinely love doing when nobody needs anything from you?
Because I didn't.
I didn't have some secret passion I'd been waiting years to pursue.
I didn't suddenly wake up wanting to paint or write a book or move to the countryside.
I was just sitting there thinking:
Okay... now what?
So I did what a lot of us do when we feel a little lost.
I travelled.
Bali. Thailand. Japan.
And honestly, it was great.
New places. New food. New people.
You wake up every day and there's somewhere to go and something to see.
For a while, you don't have to think too much about your real life.
But then you come home.
And somehow, all the questions you left behind are still there waiting for you.
Do you ever travel like crazy, secretly hoping that somewhere along the way, something in your life will magically click into place?
Like you'll come back different.
Clearer.
More inspired.
Maybe you'll finally know what you want to do with your life.
And sometimes you do come back feeling amazing.
For a week.
Maybe two.
And then normal life starts again.
And that feeling starts creeping back in.
What's next?
Another trip?
A new job?
A new goal?
Something else to look forward to?
And maybe travel isn't your thing.
Maybe for you, it's work.
You fill your calendar.
You chase the next promotion.
You start another project.
Maybe it's going out every weekend.
Shopping.
Dating.
Watching one more episode.
Scrolling until you're too tired to think.
Whatever it is, there's always something keeping your brain occupied.
And maybe the real question is:
Why are we so uncomfortable when there's nothing happening?
We spend years saying things like:
“I just need a break.”
“I wish I had more time.”
“I can't wait until this week is over.”
But then we finally get that empty afternoon...
and what do we do?
We reach for our phones.
We find something to do.
We start thinking about tomorrow.
We've become so used to being productive, entertained, distracted, or working towards the next thing...
that when nothing needs our attention,
we don't actually know how to just be.
At least, I didn't.
Maybe you've had that feeling too.
You think the problem is that you haven't figured out what you want to do next.
So you keep looking for an answer.
What's the next career?
The next project?
The next place to live?
What should your life look like?
But what if you don't need to solve your entire life right now?
What if the question could be much smaller?
What actually makes an ordinary Tuesday feel good?
Not a holiday.
Not a huge achievement.
Not something you'd post on Instagram.
Just...
a normal day.
Maybe it's cooking something you actually want to eat.
Walking your dog and watching her run around like it's the best day of her life.
Taking a nap on the sofa in the middle of the afternoon.
Sitting somewhere with the sun on your skin.
Watching leaves move when the wind comes through.
The temperature of the air.
The smell after it rains.
The way the light changes in the late afternoon.
Things so ordinary that most of the time, you don't even notice them.
None of these things are going to change your life.
But they can change how your life feels for a moment.
And maybe that's enough.
Maybe we don't always need another escape.
Another holiday.
Another purchase.
Another goal.
Another version of ourselves that we're supposed to become.
Maybe sometimes...
we just need a moment where nothing is required of us.
No one needs an answer.
Nothing needs to be completed.
You don't need to optimise the moment.
You don't need to make it productive.
You don't even need to use it to “work on yourself.”
You can just...
stop.
Because even when you're technically not working, your brain can still be doing.
Planning.
Thinking.
Worrying.
Replaying something that happened three days ago.
Figuring out what comes next.
Maybe that's why sometimes having free time doesn't actually feel like rest.
Your body has stopped.
Your brain hasn't.
I don't think I figured any of this out in some big, life-changing way.
I didn't come home from Japan with a new purpose.
I didn't suddenly become someone who knew exactly what she wanted.
I just started paying more attention to smaller things.
What made an ordinary day feel good.
What made me curious.
What I wanted to spend another hour doing, even when nobody was asking me to do it.
Eventually, one of those small things became an idea.
I knew nothing about manufacturing.
Nothing about packaging.
I didn't know what MOQ meant.
I definitely didn't know that choosing a spray pump could somehow become a major life problem.
But for the first time in a while, I wasn't asking:
“What should I do with my life?”
I was asking:
“How do I make this?”
Weirdly, that was much easier to answer.
You start.
You Google things you don't understand.
You email people who know more than you.
You order the wrong samples.
You make decisions.
You change your mind.
You waste some money.
You learn.
And then you do it again.
Two years later, that small idea became EMBUED.
But I don't think that's really the point of this story.
The point is that I never found the big answer I thought I was supposed to find.
I still don't know what you're supposed to do when you're 35, unemployed, newly single, and suddenly holding all this empty space in your life.
Maybe there isn't one answer.
Maybe you don't need to figure out your whole life before you start moving again.
Sometimes you just find one small thing that feels worth following.
And you see where it takes you.