“The will to win is nothing without the will to prepare.”
― Juma Ikangaa

It is three days until my departure. I held an estate sale last weekend to try and sell as much of my stuff as possible. I’ll be holding it again this weekend. When everything is cleaned out I’ll be ready to leave.

Ready to leave. The thought is alien to me. I picture myself at my front door with my bag packed, taking one final look over my first apartment before I abandon it forever. I picture myself taking my first steps toward my hero’s journey with my head held high. The truth is that I’m a scared little child.

This whole decision was reactionary from the beginning. I’ve been cornered and this is all I’ve got. I have a glaring history of being unprepared. It has gotten me into a lot of embarrassing jams from which I should have learned my lesson. On this occasion, I lost my job and had almost no savings to speak of after 4 years of living with a surplus in my personal budget. My reaction was to start my own business.

I wasn’t entirely confident in my ability to run my own business, and as such was barely willing to put in the effort to get it up and running. It didn’t help that small business ownership was a knee-jerk reaction to being fired. I have no formal business plan or accounting strategy. The whole time I was planning the business, I was daydreaming about running away and drifting from place to place but I dismissed the idea as absurd.

I’ve realized something. Everything in life must be approached with strategy. If you want to be successful, you must imagine your potential failures and make backup plans for every scenario you can fathom.

Prepared or not, I’ve kicked down my ladder. I have no option of staying now.