I’ve been running less this week. Slower too.

Partly because I’ve got a few niggles - knees, ligaments - and I’m trying to be sensible with a couple of races coming up.

I tried to run the Boston Marathon yesterday (on the treadmill) - I got 6km in and had to call it!

But even running less, I’ve had plenty of time to think.

One thing that keeps coming up is judgment.

Or maybe it’s not judgment exactly.

Maybe it’s fear of failure. Or fear of being seen trying and not quite getting there.

There isn’t a specific person I’m worried about. It’s more that vague, generic someone.

The person you see on the school run. Someone who vaguely knows you.

Someone who might see something you post online and quietly form an opinion.

And when you really look at that, it’s strange - because those people have almost no actual power over your life. And yet their imagined judgment can stop you doing things you care about.

I saw a video recently that really hit me - in a good way.

It zoomed out - from a dude sat at his desk, to a street, to a town, to the country, to the planet, and then beyond.

Past the Earth, past the moon, out into the universe.

The caption was something around worrying about posting that stupid content online…

And the point was simple: in the grand scheme of things, we’re tiny.

Almost completely insignificant.

And still, we worry deeply about what that person from the school run might think.

For a long time, thoughts like that used to scare me. Thinking about death, about how finite everything is - it sent me into anxiety spirals.

I’ve had my struggles there. But something has shifted over the years, with some conscious practice around that.

I’m starting to see the beauty in a finite life. The meaning in it being brief.

And once you accept that, a different question shows up:

Am I wasting this?

If I really accepted how small and short this life is, would I hesitate less?

Would I go more directly after what I actually want - not what looks good, not what fits the expected, not what I think I should be doing.

I’d probably move away - even for a bit.

I’d worry less about titles and possessions.

I’d be more present with my kids - not wondering if I’m doing the “right” version of parenting, but actually engaging with the moment in front of me.

Because I do that sometimes. I catch myself worrying whether homeschooling is the right thing.

Whether we’re doing enough. Whether we’re too different.

And then I remember: life is going to look completely different for them in ten years anyway. I don’t want fear or imagined judgment to be the thing that shapes their childhood - or my enjoyment of their childhood.

What does “not wasting a life” look like for me day to day?

Honestly… it’s dead simple.

I don’t need huge adventures every day. I don’t need big status symbols or wild success. I like routine. I like simple days. I like moving my body, being with my family, having some of my own time, having a clutter-free space.

I don’t have a big expensive dream car. I don’t need a huge business.

I’d happily downsize our entire life - if the experience around it felt right.

And sometimes I wonder if I’m comparing my quiet wants to other people’s loud lives.

If I’m confusing visibility with value.

Maybe a simple life is enough.

Maybe it always was.

And maybe the real work right now isn’t becoming louder or bolder - but letting go of the fear that I need permission to live the way that feels true to me.

I don’t have this figured out.

But I’m thinking about it.

And I don’t want to waste a life worrying about what tiny, passing opinions might think about me.

I set out this year saying I’d like to create content - to share more about my experiences online - and hopefully post stuff that people find useful, entertaining or even comforting.

I’ve not still started properly.

But, there’s an idea I keep coming back to from Carl Sagan from The Pale Blue Dot.

There was an image when Voyager 1 turned back toward Earth from about six billion kilometres away. Our entire planet is just a tiny speck...

Sagan wrote about what that perspective really means:

And I love this line:

The point wasn’t nihilism. It wasn’t “nothing matters.”

It was the opposite.

Sagan was reminding us how brief and fragile this life is - and how strange it is that we spend so much of it worrying about judgment, status, and imagined opinions.

From that distance, the things we’re afraid of being judged for - trying, sharing, changing, choosing a different path - shrink dramatically.

It doesn’t make life meaningless.

It makes it precious.

— Chris

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