The Proof of Concept of Me

Week two of six living alone in Dallas, and I thought I’d have it figured out by now. But just like in change management, the first trial run rarely goes the way you plan.

After last week’s writing, I realized I was assigning meaning to feelings and states I hadn’t even experienced yet. I was telling myself a story about what it all meant before it even happened. So that makes a plan easy right?!?

This week was different — an office week. I had the rhythm of getting ready in the morning, being around people, hitting the gym, even going out to dinner one night. I didn’t spend much time alone. But when Friday night rolled in, I felt the shift. That question of, “What am I going to do with this weekend?” hit me differently.

And just like last week, I froze.

I caught myself trying to make up a story again — this time over dinner Friday night. I realized this was only week two of six, and I felt a wave of blah. Judgment of myself. Most of the things I thought of doing involved spending a good amount of money, and my inner critic snapped, “If you were going to spend that much, you might as well have flown to see your family.”

The house felt bigger. The voice of productivity was louder. And honestly? It didn’t feel like freedom, it felt like failure — like I was already “behind” on enjoying my own time. That was the sting: the thought that I wasn’t even doing alone-time “right.”

That spiral reminded me of the work I’m in right now with our marketing transformation. When you get everything on paper in an assessment, it already looks overwhelming. But then you find a path to an MVP1 (proof of concept) — and even more issues pop up. Things you didn’t see before or anticipate in the assessment. The old way of thinking says, “This is failing.”

But the truth is, THAT IS the work of change management: letting things break in testing so you can discover what’s real instead of wrestling with imagined fears. That first release or proof of concept isn’t about getting it right; it’s about surfacing what’s true so you know where to focus next to scale.

And that’s exactly what I needed to remember for myself.

So I made my list of 10 things I could do on Saturday — and I chose one. I drove 40 minutes to an old recycled bookstore, CD, and album shop. I spent two hours wandering, curious, exploring sections I’d never normally walk into. I did spend $100 (I have a book addiction lol) — but I also had lunch, drove home, got my Apple headphones fixed, and by the time I walked in the door, I realized something important:

I never had time to wonder why I was by myself or make up any story. I had been too busy getting lost in the state of curiosity.

Prompts for our week:

• How do you react when your proof of concept “breaks” — do you call it failure, or do you see it as discovery?
• What’s one thing you could do this week that would let you get lost in curiosity — no outcome required?

Because that’s what I’m learning: assessment is not about predicting the ending. It’s about opening the space for progress — and sometimes progress looks like two hours in a dusty bookstore, proof that curiosity is enough to carry you forward.