Member-only story
Shoot Your Way Out of the Slump
Assets, liabilities, and getting out of the shame spiral.
“All that you touch
You Change.
All that you Change
Changes you.”— Octavia E. Butler, Parable of the Sower
Last month, I made a spreadsheet with 233 line-items. This wasn’t your garden-variety to-do list. It wasn’t groceries or goals or milestones or movies I wanted to watch. They were debts. Some literal. Some figurative.
2025 and 2026 haven’t been my years, and I owe people. Work. Money. Apologies. Thank-yous. Emails I never wrote. Calls I never returned. Favors I promised and forgot. People I disappointed. Conversations I had spent months avoiding because enough time had passed that “sorry it took me so long to respond” had itself become embarrassing to send.
The idea was simple: go down the list and make things right. But — and I’m not spoiling the ending here — they didn’t go according to plan, or even go all that well.
Apologies often didn’t repair the relationship. Finished projects weren’t heralded as triumphs. Most people had moved on, most ships had sailed, most opportunities had passed me by. The die was cast. Some bells can’t be unrung.
