The first small step

My first step came on the evening after that one conversation that had shifted something in me. It was tiny. A walk with my dog.

I just needed to get out. My head kept going, and as I walked, loop after loop, it slowly got quieter. I decided nothing that evening. But for the first time I stopped only thinking the question and actually did something with it.

Back home I built myself a small program. Not a polished app, nothing fancy, just a tool for a single question. What does my completely ordinary daily life actually cost?

I entered the numbers of my daily life, month by month, everything that runs whether I think about it or not. And then there was a sum I had never seen in black and white like that. It was lower than I had always assumed.

As long as it was only a wish, it cost nothing. The moment I wrote numbers next to it, it became a plan.

Why that was enough

A walk and a spreadsheet sound laughably small when the thoughts are this big. But that was exactly the point. They did not overwhelm me. They got me moving, and that was more than I had managed in a long time.

This first step later turned into my daily video diary. But that is another story.