Why It Wasn’t What I Expected

For as long as I can remember, I thought life was supposed to follow a straight line. You pick a dream when you’re young—astronaut, architect, rockstar, whatever—and then you chase it down, step by step. That’s what we’re told, anyway.

But here’s what nobody tells you: most of us end up somewhere completely different. We blink, years pass, and suddenly we’re not the people we once imagined.

Staring at the Mirror (And Not Recognizing Who’s There)

I’ve had more than a few moments where I looked in the mirror and thought, “Who is this?”
Not in a dramatic, movie-meltdown kind of way—just a quiet, subtle sense of not recognizing the version of myself looking back.

Every era of my life feels like it belonged to a different person:

  • The one who thought he’d be an esports player or a band player.
  • The one who ended up in digital marketing, which was never on my vision board.
  • The one who got back into coding after years away.
  • The cyclist, chasing sunrise rides and sore legs instead of… whatever I thought adulthood was supposed to be.

The Unexpected Turns

I never set out to be a digital marketer.
I didn’t imagine I’d be the kind of person who finds joy in analytics dashboards or debugging someone’s messy code at midnight.
And I definitely never saw myself obsessing over cycling gear, logging kilometers like I was training for the Tour de France.

Sometimes I wonder if I’m living in someone else’s body—a stranger who just happens to share my name and a few old memories.

Losing and Finding “You”

Songs like Bowie’s The Man Who Sold the World or Gotye’s Somebody That I Used to Know hit me because they’re about exactly this:
Looking back and seeing a stranger in your own story. Wondering if you “sold out,” or just grew up. If you lost control, or simply changed.
We all become “somebody I used to know” at some point, and that’s okay.

The Truth: You’re Always Becoming

If I’ve learned anything, it’s this: finding yourself isn’t a destination.
It’s a constant, messy, beautiful process of becoming—letting go of the old versions and meeting the new ones, over and over.

Some days I miss the person I thought I’d be.
Most days, though, I’m grateful for the one I’ve become—even if I had no idea he was coming.

Because in the end, you don’t find yourself all at once.
You find yourself a little bit every day, in every surprise, every detour, every mirror.