I’ve been continuously employed by someone else for more than 25 years. July 9, 2025, was a day for my personal record books. It’s the day I became self-employed. (I like to tell my friends I’m unemployed.)
It was a day so long in the making that when it finally came, it didn’t feel like a victory lap. I’d given notice months before at the company I helped found, but by the time that day finally came, my former partners didn’t even bother showing up. Just me, a few of the employees who used to report to me, and a cardboard box. I even paid to take my former team to my own farewell lunch at our favorite Nepali restaurant.
I left early that day. I didn’t know what to expect, but I was underwhelmed. I said goodbye, let the door close behind me, and drove home.
And then the next morning, I slept in.
That might not sound like a big deal. But after years of burning both ends of the candle, always rushing, always meeting someone else’s deadline, I laced up my running shoes and went for a 7-mile run… in broad daylight. The sun was up the entire time. I’ve logged 20 miles before the sun came up before. I think I’ve run in broad daylight three times in fifteen years.
Later that day, I sat down at my desk with no immediate demands on my time. I wrote for hours. I read. I thought. I wandered a little, shuffled papers, got nothing “productive” done for a while. Around 1:00 p.m., I picked up a client project and chipped away at it until dinner, when I joined my wife in the kitchen. Afterward, we folded laundry and watched a movie.
From a financial standpoint, that kind of day wasn’t sustainable — not yet, anyway. But something shifted in me. I wasn’t performing. I wasn’t measuring my worth against someone else’s rubric. I wasn’t proving anything. I was just… me.
And I hadn’t felt that way in a long time.
For most of my life, I’ve measured success by scale. More revenue. More output. More responsibilities. More roles stacked on top of each other like some weird game of professional Jenga.
Wanting more isn’t inherently bad. But when you wrap your identity around it — when you start believing that wanting less is weakness — it becomes something else entirely.
It becomes weight.
I’ve carried that weight for decades. Sometimes proudly. Sometimes resentfully. I’ve said yes because I didn’t want to look small or weak. I’ve chased work that looked good on paper, but hollowed me out on the inside. I’ve stayed too long, carried too much, and tried to prove I was worth keeping.
Even when I left that last job — the big one, the one I helped build — I fought the urge to leap right into something new. Build another empire. Scale fast. Stack the wins.
But I didn’t give in.
What happened instead was slower, quieter, and, honestly, more uncomfortable.
I started wanting less.
Not in the defeatist sense. Not because I stopped dreaming or lost ambition. But because I realized I didn’t need to expand in every direction all at once to grow. I didn’t need ten clients if two were enough and a good fit. I didn’t need fifteen open tabs in my brain. I didn’t need to chase every possible version of success just to feel like I was doing something worthwhile.
I used to think wanting less meant giving up. Now I think it means choosing better.
Better use of time. Better alignment with my values. Better connection with the people I love. Better boundaries around the energy I spend.
I’ve said yes to fewer things — but they’re the right things.
And yet, it’s not a clean break. I still catch myself scanning the horizon for the next thing to build, the next marker of “enough.” I still compare. I still second-guess myself when someone else’s path looks more glamorous or more stable. There are days I miss the steady paycheck or the adrenaline of big deadlines.
But I don’t miss the exhaustion. I don’t miss pretending. I don’t miss carrying goals that were never truly mine just because they made me look successful.
If any of this resonates with you, I wrote a book you might appreciate.
It’s called You Don’t Have to Escape to Be Free — a collection of honest reflections about identity, meaning, and building a life you don’t want to run away from.
I’m learning to want less, better.
Less that drains me. Less that’s performative. Less that’s built on insecurity or comparison or fear of missing out.
And better.
Better relationships. Better projects. Better alignment between my values and my calendar. Better mornings that start with daylight, not dread.
It hasn’t been easy. Letting go of scale feels, at times, like stepping out of a current I spent my whole life trying to swim with. But I think I’m learning how to walk again without measuring my worth in distance or speed.
I’m still figuring it out.
Still unlearning the idea that more is always the goal. Still getting better at sitting with a smaller plate and realizing I’m full.
Still reminding myself that peace doesn’t come from how much I have, but from how much of it actually fits.
And that is enough.
Thanks for reading, and before you go. . .
I’m Aaron Pace. I write from the middle of things — life, business, fatherhood, faith, and the slow work of becoming someone I can live with. Not as an expert, but as someone trying to pay attention.
If this piece resonated with you, I’d be honored if you followed along on Medium.com here. I write — not because I’ve arrived, but because I’m finally moving again.
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