I couldn't tell you exactly which day that was. Tuesday? Thursday? Last week? Yesterday? At this point, your guess is probably as good as mine.

It's funny how the days start blurring together when you're busy doing something you love. Not the exhausted, overwhelmed, holy-shift-I-have-too-much-to-do kind of blur. This is different. This is the kind where I look up from whatever I am working on and realize several hours have passed, three new ideas have wandered through, one of them has already turned into something, another is sitting somewhere waiting for me to come back to it, and I have absolutely no idea what day it is.

Blursday.

Apparently, that's where I live now.

I've been thinking about that lately because, for years, my life looked very different. I felt like I was wandering somewhat aimlessly from one thing to another. An opportunity would show up and I would explore it. Then another idea would come along and I'd explore that. Something else would catch my attention, I'd learn everything I could about it, and eventually I'd realize it wasn't quite what I was looking for either.

From the outside looking in, I'm sure there were times when it looked like I couldn't stick with anything.

Actually, from the inside looking out, it sometimes looked that way too.

I would start something, get excited about it, learn from it, and then at some point this little knowing would show up and say, Nope. This isn't it.

And once I knew something wasn't it, I couldn't pretend otherwise.

So I moved on.

Another idea. Another opportunity. Another whatever.

Searching. Wandering. Wondering.

The funny thing is, I didn't actually know what I was searching for. I couldn't have described my thing because I had no idea what my thing was supposed to look like. I just seemed to have a pretty reliable ability to recognize what it wasn't.

Looking back now, with that wonderful 20/20 hindsight we humans are blessed with only after we've spent years wondering what the hell we're doing, I can see something I couldn't see then.

I wasn't starting over every time I moved on.

I was collecting pieces.

Some were big pieces. Some were tiny little weird-shaped pieces that didn't seem to belong anywhere. Some probably sat on the table for years while I wondered why the hell I had picked them up in the first place.

But they were pieces.

And underneath all of them, there was one thing that never changed.

People.

For as long as I can remember, I have helped people. I have encouraged them. I have looked for the light when they couldn't see it. I have tried to bring a little hope into whatever darkness they happened to be sitting in and help them find their way toward another possibility.

I've done that my entire life.

What is interesting to me now is that I did it even during the years when I wasn't particularly happy myself. There were plenty of times when things inside of me were dark, sad, confusing, or downright miserable, and somehow I could still find a spark for somebody else.

I might not have been able to see my own way out yet, but I could sit beside someone else and help them find theirs.

I didn't think of that as my thing.

It was just something I did.

Then again, maybe the things that are most deeply ours often feel that way. We don't recognize them as something special because they've always been there.

Everything else kept changing.

The ways I helped people changed. The things I studied changed. The ideas I explored changed. The opportunities changed. I learned things, tried things, left things, came back to things, discovered things I never expected to care about and wandered down more rabbit holes than any reasonable human being should probably admit to.

But some pieces never moved...

Hope.

Happiness.

Helping another human see something they couldn't quite see from where they were standing.

Perspective.

Well, damn. There it was.

Apparently, I had been looking at the individual puzzle pieces for so long that I couldn't see the picture they were creating.

And now, at sixty years old, I can finally see enough of it.

So what if it took me nearly sixty years to put the pieces together?

My 1,000-piece puzzle isn't finished. It may never be finished. Honestly, I hope it isn't. But there are finally enough pieces connected that I can recognize the picture on the box.

I couldn't tell you exactly when that happened either.

There wasn't one giant defining moment where the clouds parted, angels started singing, and somebody handed me the completed picture with a helpful little note saying, Here you go, Sabine. This is what you've been doing for the last six decades.

Although that would have saved some time.

What I do know is that somewhere along the way, I got very clear.

Not necessarily about every piece. I still don't know where all of those go, and there are probably a few hiding under the couch.

I got clear about the picture.

I became clear about what I wanted to create, what mattered to me, what I wanted my life and my work to stand for, and how I wanted people to feel when they crossed paths with any part of it.

Once I knew that, something shifted.

Things started falling into place with what sometimes feels like the speed of light.

I didn't suddenly become better at predicting what would happen next. If anything, I've become less interested in predicting it.

I just started following the nudges.

Be curious.

Explore.

Learn.

Grow.

Adjust.

Then do it again.

Lather. Rinse. Repeat.

An idea shows up and I follow it far enough to see where it goes. Someone says something that makes another piece click into place. I learn something and realize there is a better way to do something I've already built. So I change it. Something that made perfect sense three months ago doesn't fit the picture anymore, so I let it go.

No grand crisis required.

No beating myself up because I "changed my mind again."

Adjust.

Keep going.

Maybe that's one of the biggest differences now. For years, every change of direction felt like evidence that I still hadn't found what I was looking for.

Now I can see that changing direction was how I found it.

And holy shift, am I having fun.

I genuinely love watching all of this come into being. Some parts are more fun than others, obviously. There are still administrative things and forms and technical nonsense and various moments when technology and I have differing opinions about how something should work.

But overall?

My happy meter is pretty damn full.

Someone looking in from the outside might think I work from dawn until dusk.

Maybe I do.

Maybe I don't.

I honestly couldn't tell you.

That's the strange part. When I am writing something, building something, figuring something out, having a conversation that sparks another idea, connecting two things that suddenly make sense together, or watching something that lived inside my head become real, I'm not sitting here thinking about how many hours I've worked.

I'm just doing something I love.

And apparently, when you're having that much fun, calendars become more of a suggestion.

Things are moving quickly enough now that I honestly couldn't tell you when half of them happened. An idea sparks another idea, which changes something else, which connects to something I learned fifteen years ago, which suddenly explains why that weird little puzzle piece has been sitting on the table all this time.

It all becomes a blur.

Kind of like when the Flash runs past and all you see is that streak behind him.

Except mine probably has coffee, a few squirrels, puzzle pieces, and Mr. Finite somewhere in the blurry trail clutching his clipboard and trying desperately to update the timeline.

Poor Fred. I'm pretty sure he's given up asking what day it is too.

So if you ask me when something happened and I stare at you for a second before saying, "The other day..."

Just know that I am probably telling the absolute truth.

It happened the other day.

On Blursday.