Before I get to the story time here are a few cool things going on:

• The First Batch of the Little Brown Pill has hit podcast shelves.
• I will be appearing at Southern Fried Gaming Expo with Wise_N_Nerdy and Fandom Face-Off
• We are less than 100 days away from Dragon Con 40 and I am getting to do some really cool things!

The last couple of months have been interesting.

I'm about two months into a consulting contract, and honestly, it's taught me a lot more about myself than it has about the company I'm consulting for. At the same time, I've been going through therapy, which has probably been one of the best decisions I've made in a very long time. It's funny because I've heard people talk about coping skills for years. I've been around churches, therapists, self-help books, and enough personal development conversations to fill a warehouse. I knew the language. I understood the concepts. But I don't think I ever really understood what those things looked like in practice until recently.

For me, it hasn't been some dramatic breakthrough moment nor has it been a lightning bolt or a revelation. It's been quieter than that. I've been learning how to turn down the volume on all the noise - my negative voices, my assumptions, my perceived expectations, and my tendency to carry everyone else's problems as if they somehow belong to me. One of the things my therapist did recently was so simple it almost felt silly. She grabbed the shoulder of her shirt, pulled it outward, and pretended to drop it on the floor. Then she said, "That's not yours to wear."

For whatever reason, that one stuck.

I've spent a lot of my life carrying things that were never mine to begin with. When somebody is upset at work, I carry it. When somebody ignores advice I know would help them, I carry it. When somebody is frustrated, angry, stressed, overwhelmed, or disappointed, yeah - all of that too. What I'm learning is that I can care without carrying. I can support someone without taking ownership of their emotions.

It sounds obvious when you read it on a page, but for someone wired the way I'm wired, that distinction has been life-changing.

The consulting contract has forced me to practice that lesson almost daily. I walked into this opportunity thinking I could help people avoid mistakes I've already made. They hired me because they had seen what I'd done elsewhere. Some of them had even been mentored by me before. I didn't walk in thinking I knew everything, but I did think I could come in, offer a roadmap, and help them move faster by avoiding some of the potholes I'd already stepped in.

Instead, I've had to learn a different lesson:

It's not my company.

It's not my problem.

It's not my life.

It's not mine.

That doesn't mean I stop caring. It never meant that I stop offering ideas or solutions. It just means that once I've shared what I think, the outcome belongs to them. If they choose a different path, that's their choice. The surprising thing is how much peace there is in accepting that reality. Not immediately, mind you. Some days I still have to remind myself. Some days I still have to mentally grab that burden by the shoulders and drop it on the floor.

But I'm getting better at it.

At the same time, I've been creating again, and that's been good for my soul. The first batch of The Little Brown Pill is out now, and I am absolutely loving it. There is something incredibly freeing about sitting down behind a microphone and deciding that for the next hour I'm not bringing my baggage into the room. I'm leaving the stress, frustration, negativity and fear behind. I'm just showing up as myself.

Listening back to those early episodes has been interesting because I can hear myself relaxing into it. The conversations flow better, I'm less guarded, and there's a version of me showing up that I haven't heard in a while. More than anything, it reminds me why I started podcasting in the first place. It was never about downloads, sponsors, fame, or any of that. At its core, podcasting has always been about telling stories and sharing experiences because I refuse to believe I'm the only person going through something.

If I'm struggling with something, somebody else probably is too.

If I've learned something, maybe somebody else needs to hear it.

That thought hit me especially hard recently when one of the guys I've been working with looked at me and said, "I think I'm where you were before you started therapy." That hit home so hard. I could see it all over him. We spent a long time talking, and I found myself sharing lessons I'm still learning myself. Not because I've figured anything out nor because I've mastered life. I'm only a few months ahead of him on this particular road. But sometimes that's enough.

Sometimes people don't need an expert - they just need somebody who's been there before.

That conversation stayed with me for days because it reminded me that there's always value in the struggle. Maybe part of the reason we go through difficult seasons is so that when somebody else arrives at that same place, we can help them find a shorter path through it.

The other thing that's been happening lately is harder to explain. For most of my life, I've had this ability to visualize possibilities. Not predict the future. Not see specifics. But I could usually see where momentum was headed. I could see opportunities, recognize patterns and imagine what came next. A few years ago, that disappeared. I couldn't see tomorrow. I couldn't see next month. I couldn't see next year. The future felt blank, and for a long time I thought that part of me was simply gone.

I'm starting to see possibilities again and it's like I can finally breath.

Maybe it's because I'm healing. Maybe it's because I'm creating again. Maybe it's because I'm finally learning which burdens belong to me and which ones don't. Whatever the reason, I'm finding myself excited about the future again. I'm thinking about new shows, live events, tours, projects, collaborations, and all the crazy ideas that tend to find their way into my head. Nothing is guaranteed, and none of it is certain, but that's never really been the point.

The point is that I can see the road again.

And for the first time in a long time, that feels pretty good.