“I’ll be good enough when ____” or “My life will start when ______” — I remember when that self-talk was pervasive in my own mind. And I remember when I realized that I was full of shit.

I was 30 years old, I had just started my own business on the side of my day job at NASA Kennedy Space Center. My (now ex-) husband wanted me to come out to the movies with our friends, and I told him that I wanted to stay home and get some more things done.

Now, up until this point, he had been very patient with me. When we met, I was working on my PhD on the side of a full time job AND teaching, so I was extremely busy, and I assured him that things would improve once I graduated. Then I graduated, and we moved in together, and apart from the day job, I became consumed with modifying the house so that it felt like it was ours and not just his.

Within the first month, he proposed to me, and now we layered on planning the wedding. After that, it was building a new house together — modifying it with wood floors and custom paint jobs. And just when we thought things would mellow — I started my own business. There was always something that stopped me from having a more fun social life, especially with him, and one day I caught myself spouting bullshit in the middle of my sentence.

I was never intentionally lying, but I was confabulating. Confabulation is a memory error defined as the production of fabricated, distorted, or misinterpreted memories about oneself or the world, without the conscious intention to deceive.

I had started to say, “It is only going to be like this until -” and I stopped short. Until when?? I thought in my head. Would I ever get to a place with my business where I would want to stop growing it? What would be the point at which I would “allow” myself to have fun and relax? I realized that getting my first client wouldn’t be that moment. Breaking even wouldn’t be that moment. I was an unstoppable machine when it came to my workaholism — hustling for my self-worth every damn day of my life.

It is still something that I work on very intentionally. I still get more of my self-worth from my accomplishments than I would like. In a friendly game of “Family Feud” with my traveling cohort in Remote Year, I was the #1 answer to the question “Who spends the most time in the workspace?”

I have repeatedly set goals to work less. Sometimes I have done it, usually by implementing project management, or when I hired the amazing Kayla Wonisch — but I immediately find ways to fill my time back up.

I am enough right now. My goals, or themes, to pull away the main point of this awesome article by Niklas Göke, is not to be in the pursuit of happiness but to have happiness in my pursuit.

There is no “there, there.”

I work now on creating a sustainable way to live my life while being productive and enjoying the damn journey. I don’t know if this is the only journey I get to have, but even if it wasn’t, I choose to enjoy it now.