What If the “Right Time” Were an Excuse?

For years, there was always a when.

When the baby is older. When the toddler goes to school. When he's old enough to need me less. When my commute isn’t so long. When my husband's hours get shorter. Maybe when I can do it on weekends. When my time comes. Once my teen can drive himself. When I can be more flexible.

The list went on for years. A different when every time, always just out of reach, always attached to some future version of my life that would finally have enough room in it. Always depending on an assumed need, a perceived troubled dynamic that won’t be fulfilled in my absence.

I was creating excuses. 

By the time I actually considered signing up for a coaching program, I'd spent 20 years as a translator and editor, at least a decade too long doing freelance work I had ceased to find fulfilling. By then, I was convinced I was already lacking: brain cells, endurance, courage, take your pick. 

Who was I to think I could start something entirely new in my mid-forties? I can walk into a room and forget why I went in there to begin with. How was I supposed to survive an intensive program, book reports, homework, webinars, dozens of hours of coaching sessions, all while building a business from the ground up, raising my teen boys, and running a household?

This wasn't an adaptable, do-it-when-I-feel-like-it thing anymore. It was a serious undertaking, and a sizable part of me was certain I'd be foolish to attempt it. I'd make a mockery of myself. What would my kids think if I failed? My husband? My friends?

I never said any of this out loud, but it haunted me for months.

And then I remembered all those other “when’s.” There is always a when. Because life doesn’t suddenly pause when you decide to pay attention to your dreams; your family doesn’t magically stop needing you when you finally make time for yourself; problems that need your input don’t just vanish the minute you choose to pursue your goals. 

What was truly driving my decade-long rescheduling was my fear of putting myself out there and discovering what I was capable of. Or more bluntly put, what I wasn’t capable of any longer.

In other words, how valuable was what I had left in me besides the roles I’d been playing?

I wasn't actually waiting for the right time. I was pretending to. Because facing the person I would be outside of the familiar was the scariest part of it all.

Here's what I think most of us are actually doing when we tell ourselves, "Now is not the right time."

You want something. You've envisioned it in detail. You've daydreamed about that future reality for months—maybe years. And yet, you won't move a finger.

You keep postponing. You set a date, and the moment your calendar notification goes off, suddenly something else takes priority. You're disappointed but secretly, you're relieved.

You tell yourself maybe it's bad timing, and that's why starting feels so hard.

You tell yourself it's too complicated, that maybe you're not cut out for this kind of change. That this is a sign you weren't supposed to take this path in the first place. Or better yet, that you're simply not qualified. What were you even thinking?

But the dream never actually goes away; the pull toward that new reality never subsides.

Why? Because everything you've been telling yourself is a fearful excuse presenting as a logical reason.

Your brain is doing exactly what it's built to do: looking for evidence to support the belief that you can't, because you’re telling it you can’t. 

Knowing what to do and actually going for it are two vastly separate processes. More often than not, it's not the circumstances. Not the people. Not the schedule. It's you.

Specifically, it's fear of what dipping your toes into a new pool is going to feel like.

Your current pool might be murky, boring, too hot. But you know you've survived in it. In fact, you've built an entire skill set around staying alive in that exact water.

So the fear beneath the hesitation is this: how will you handle the unfamiliar temperature? The excitement you're not used to feeling? The freshness that has no proven survival strategy attached to it yet?

And what if you can't handle it?

What would that mean about you?

That question, the one you're avoiding—not the calendar, not the timing, not the complexity—is the actual thing standing in your way.

The bravest choice available to you was never leaping into a new reality. It's been facing the person who's kept you out of the water this long: you.

Aline.