I’m still second-guessing yesterday. Well, I guess it goes back a few weeks ago.
I should have caught the error. I should have tested more, slowed down, and combed through the data more carefully. Instead, the client found it before I did. What I built was “working,” but it wasn’t right. I was proud of what I built—all the intricacies of how I handled the data, but it was wrong.
That stings. It’s a reminder that the frantic pace I set for myself isn’t actually producing the results I convince myself it is.
My wife asked me if this is something I really want to do. “Elephant Dung Wrangler” with a traveling circus seemed like a good option after yesterday’s discovery.
It’s been one month and seven days since I walked away from the company I co-founded. That number, somehow, feels tiny and enormous at the same time. In those 37 days, I’ve hired six people, picked up projects in seven states, and spent nearly every day caught between gratitude that I get to do this at all and anxiety that I won’t be able to hold it all together. The money hasn’t caught up to the work yet. I’m waiting for invoices to get paid while my team builds things I promised we’d deliver. I feel like I’m sprinting inside a wind tunnel with no idea where the exit is. If there is one.
The temptation is to do what I’ve always done: stretch the days thinner, sleep less, eat whatever’s closest, and work until my body insists on stopping. I know where that ends — burnout, the kind that erodes a lot more than energy. But there’s a voice in me, louder than I want to admit, that says, just a few more days like this and you’ll be caught up.
It’s never true, but I still listen.
And yet, when I stop long enough, I can feel how much better I am with enough sleep, enough time moving my body, and enough time that isn’t filled with screens and deadlines. The fear is that if I choose those things, the business won’t survive. The quieter fear is that if I don’t, I won’t survive.
My assistant told me, after knowing me for just a few days, “If you keep this up, I think you’ll maybe live another three years.”
She’s the same age as my oldest child.
A few years ago, my wife and I slipped away to St. George for our anniversary. Her parents watched the kids, and for a couple of days we just wandered with no schedule or agenda.
We hiked one of the red rock trails just outside town. The air was hot and dry in the way only the desert can be, and the trail wound up through dust and sandstone that glowed in the late afternoon sun. I remember the sound of our shoes crunching the gravel, the occasional lizard darting across the path. We didn’t walk quickly. We weren’t going anywhere in particular. My wife reached for my hand, and we just moved together in silence for long stretches.
At one point, we stopped to sit and look out over the beauty all around us. I didn’t think about my phone, unanswered emails, or client problems that I needed to solve.
There was no rush. It was just the two of us watching the light shift against the rocks. She leaned into me, and I thought: this is the kind of time I want more of. Not the minutes squeezed out between tasks, not the scraps of attention left at the end of an exhausted day — but the kind of time that feels expansive and unmeasured. Ours.
We talked about our kids, about faith, about what it might look like to grow old together. I don’t remember any conclusions we came to, only the steadiness of the conversation. We sat there in the desert that’s been there for eons and couldn’t care any less about time.
Maybe I’m over-romanticizing, but it was one of those moments when time really does stand still, and we just existed in the moment.
Most days, I don’t live that way. My life now feels like lists and deadlines stacked on top of each other. Even when I finish something, I already feel late for the next thing. The St. George version of me feels like a stranger. But he’s still there, somewhere. I can almost reach him when I’m sitting on the bed at night, when the house is getting quiet and my wife leans against me, or when I spend some time with one of my kids and let them talk about whatever’s on their mind. Those are the moments when time feels like it belongs to me again.
I don’t know if I’ll ever find the balance I’m looking for. Maybe “balance” is the wrong word — too clean, too neat. What I want feels less like a solution and more like a rhythm. A way of working without disappearing into the work. A way of being present without abandoning the responsibilities that let me provide for my family.
I keep circling back to the same question: what does it mean to live in the time I have, instead of always trying to bargain for more?
I don’t have the answer yet. Some days it feels like I’m closer. Other days I fall back into the familiar patterns that promise everything and deliver nothing. But I am still here, still trying, still holding onto the hope that I can choose presence over panic, rhythm over rush.
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 here on Medium. I write — not because I’ve arrived, but because I’m finally moving again.
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 my reflections on identity, meaning, and building a life I don’t want to run away from.
You can check it out here:
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