The Backline of Midlife
Some beginnings don’t come with fireworks.
No declarations.
No big reveal.
Just the quiet drag of a box across the floor, the hum of a fan in a new space, and the kind of silence that finally feels like possibility instead of loss.
This is where I’m starting from.
The Year That Broke Me a Bit
I spent the last year feeling like I was on the outside of my own life, watching it from somewhere slightly removed.
Work dried up. Not all at once, but enough to make me question everything I’d built. I’ve always made it work—pieced things together, freelanced, created—but this time was different. The financial stress cracked open everything else: my health, my mindset, my ability to keep pretending I was okay.
My body followed.
Weight gain—again.Ive talked about the roller coaster. Its exhausting and my fault.
Knees giving out. I should have listened to Dr Armstrong so many moons ago. Hockey was hard on my knees.
Stomach wrecked. Tammy says it’s likely IBS… I just want it to stop
Eyes are deteriorating, especially the left one with BRVO, like my body was trying to say what I wouldn’t admit: something has to change..
Backline of Midlife
This isn’t some victim arc.
I’ve had incredible accomplishments.
Graduated in graphic design and advertising back when it meant sketch pads, markers, typesetting by hand.
I cut my teeth in the early days of the internet—when websites were built line by line, when communities were carved out in forums and chatrooms, before social media ruled the world.
Payment processing, digital communities, early social platforms, media creation—been there, built that.
I’ve worked with big clients, hungry startups, small dreamers chasing something real.
Earned my stripes in the digital trenches when it wasn’t glamorous, just necessary.
But even with all that under my belt, I’ve often coward in the presence of my own fears.
I let perfectionism box me in.
I let pain pull me sideways.
I let plain old panic shut down the bigger parts of me that wanted to show up in the world.
Now, at the backline of midlife, I feel the edges of time pressing in.
Not crushing, but undeniable.
There are fewer chances left to squander, and I don’t want to waste another one.
It’s time I got the most from my life.
Starting from here.
Leaving the Old Life (and the Old Me)
I left a senior marketing role in 2015—interim director of marketing, with the steady paycheck, the corporate ladder stretched out before me like a conveyor belt to retirement. I could see exactly where it was all going.
And I didn’t want any part of it.
I wanted sun on my skin, salt in my hair, dirt under my nails from building something of my own.
Not just marketing other people’s stories—but living mine.
I wasn’t new to travel. I had seen pieces of the world already—London, Amsterdam, Scotland, Mexico.
Everywhere I went, something stirred.
A deep, stubborn longing for more.
When I was in my teens, I dreamed of moving to a small beach town in Mexico.
I pictured it vividly: a little cabin steps from the ocean, days spent surfing, swimming at dawn, shaping sculptures and creating art under the slow spin of a ceiling fan.
No internet. No emails. No urgency.
Just life, raw and real.
Of course, life doesn’t bend so easily.
We need money.
We need structure.
We get pulled into jobs, into deadlines, into expectations.
But that dream never really left me.
And in 2015, when I landed in Isla Mujeres, it felt like maybe, finally, I could build something close to it.
I thought Isla would be my hub.
A place to launch more adventures, to travel, to explore, to live light and free.
But it wasn’t meant to be.
Life had other plans.
I fell into a relationship.
Six years deep, and complicated in every direction.
It ended in late 2021, maybe early 2022, though honestly, endings like that don’t stick neatly to a calendar.
The healing wasn’t clean either.
The loss wasn’t just about someone else—it was the loss of a part of myself I had finally found.
During those years, I had glimpsed a version of me that was more real than I had ever known.
I believed in myself, in what I could create, in what I deserved.
I saw my own strength in ways I never had before.
When it ended, I didn’t just grieve the relationship—I grieved the clarity it had given me.
At first, I tried to merge what I had found with who I had always been.
It was messy, hopeful work.
I lost nearly 50 pounds.
I trained, hard.
I moved my body with purpose again.
I dug deep.
I was starting to find a groove—a rhythm that felt like mine.
And then, mid-2023, I met Tammy.
The woman I share my life with now.
Tammy didn’t fix anything.
She didn’t rescue me.
She simply saw me—fully—and gave me room to stand in my own skin again.
Flawed, creative, saltwater-wired, and endlessly curious.
With Tammy, I found permission to be the Sam I had worked so hard to rediscover.
But even with love in my life, something still wasn’t clicking.
The rest of my world was out of alignment.
I was still clocking hours on work that drained me.
Still hustling for survival instead of reaching for meaning.
Still waking up with a weight in my chest that said, “this isn’t it.”
I wasn’t living.
I was surviving.
And no matter how much love surrounded me, I knew—deep down—that I had to make a change.
Not for anyone else.
Not for validation.
For me.
To honour the dreams I planted when I was young.
To finish the journey I started when I walked away from that safe marketing desk ten years ago.
Starting from here.
Starting with me.
The Move That Mattered
The move wasn’t filmed.
Too real.
Too heavy.
Too damn exhausting.
But that’s part of the story too.
Maybe the most honest part.
There’s a version of moving that looks good on camera—timelapses of boxes stacked neatly, friends laughing while carrying a couch, the golden light of “new beginnings” shining through spotless windows.
This wasn’t that.
This was sweat and swollen fingers.
This was three solo golf cart trips across cracked streets, leaking oil the whole way, knees burning and begging for relief.
This was loading and unloading until my hands cramped, wondering if I’d even make it through the day.
Then my buddy Cosne showed up—steady, no questions asked—and for a while, the weight felt a little lighter, the grind a little less brutal.
But the real shift? That still had to happen on my own.
I can show you glimpses—cardboard bruised from the weight, clothes stuffed hastily into bins, plants buckled under the heat, the last sad pizza box from the final night in the old place.
I can show the boxes, the unpacking, the little pieces of “before” making their way into “after.”
The random receipts from a version of my life that doesn’t quite fit anymore.
The notebooks half-filled with plans I outgrew without even noticing.
But the real shift?
That didn’t happen in the packing.
It didn’t happen in the lifting or the sorting or the swearing under my breath.
It happened after.
It happened when the last box hit the ground and the echo in the new apartment was mine alone to hear.
It happened sitting outside on the new patio—bare feet on cool concrete, sweat still drying on my skin, heart still hammering from the weight of it all.
It happened when I realized I wasn’t running anymore.
I wasn’t clinging to what had been lost.
I wasn’t trapped by what hadn’t worked.
I was breathing.
For the first time in what felt like forever, I was breathing on my own terms.
And that’s when I knew.
This wasn’t just a move.
This was a reset.
Not loud.
Not polished.
Not pretty.
But real.
And real is enough.
This space has a garden.
It’s not big or flashy, but it’s enough.
Enough to feel the sun stretch across my skin first thing in the morning.
Enough to sit outside with a coffee, barefoot, letting my mind settle before the noise of the day creeps in.
Enough to watch the tiny anole lizards dart through the foliage, their quick green flashes a reminder that even in stillness, life moves.
I arranged the plants myself—pots dragged from old places, new greens picked out carefully, a mix of old soul and fresh start.
There’s something about setting them down, shifting them, making a space feel claimed and alive again.
It’s not a manicured garden; it’s more of a living patchwork—wild in places, quiet in others, breathing around me.
Some mornings I catch the sun just right, slanting through the leaves, casting soft shadows across the patio.
Sometimes there’s just the sound of the wind clipping through the palms, the low hum of the island waking up.
No headlines.
No rush.
Enough to remind me that peace doesn’t come from having more—it comes from creating room for what matters.
Enough to remember that beginnings don’t always shout.
Sometimes they whisper through the cracks and the roots and the quiet corners we make for ourselves.
And here, in this small garden, in this small beginning, I’m learning to listen again.
Starting From Here
So this is it.
No rebrand.
No reinvention.
Just a return.
A return to someone I may have known once upon a time, in flashes and fragments.
A person I desire—with all my heart, all my stubborn will, and all my worn-out soul—to rediscover again.
To pull forward the pieces of myself I once trusted, and to find new things still worth learning, worth fighting for.
To face my fears not with shame, but with a new-found perspective carved out on the backline of midlife, where the waves are slower but heavier, where every choice feels sharper because there’s less time to waste.
I’m not looking for some dramatic arc.
No reinvention worthy of headlines or hashtags.
No curated story of triumph tied up in a bow.
I’m looking for something simpler.
I’m looking for truth—raw, unfiltered, mine alone.
For health—not just in muscle or weight, but in spirit, in breath, in presence.
For balance—between the hunger for more and the grace to stand still.
For creativity that feels like oxygen, not obligation.
For clarity strong enough to quiet the noise when the doubts come calling.
I’m looking for the version of Sam that’s been there all along—
quiet beneath the stress, steady beneath the stories, stubborn beneath the scars.
The version of me who didn’t quit, even when it would have been easier.
The version who still knows how to trust salt air, deep water, and the messy, beautiful business of trying again.
This year, I choose to move with intention.
Not to rush.
Not to prove.
But to build slowly, piece by piece, a life and work that reflect who I am—not who I think I should be, or who the world told me I was supposed to become.
I choose to honour my body, even in its brokenness, even in its betrayals.
To feed it.
To listen to it.
To stop punishing it for being human.
I choose to tell real stories.
Stories that don’t need a filter.
Stories that don’t have a clean ending yet.
I choose to live the dream I set out to chase ten years ago—even if it looks different now.
Even if the edges are worn and the road is not the one I mapped out when I started.
Because it’s still my dream.
Because I’m still here.
Because the ocean’s still out there waiting.
This is my reset.
This is my backline.
This is my hand on the board, eyes on the horizon, ready for the next wave.
And I’m starting from here.
