“I just need to get back on track.”

I hear people say this all the time. Patients say it. Friends say it. Coaching clients say it. I have probably said some version of it myself. Usually it comes after a stressful season, a move, an injury, a breakup, a job change, a few months of eating whatever was easiest, or one of those stretches where life quietly rearranges itself while you are busy trying to keep up.

But lately I have started wanting to interrupt that sentence.

Back to what track?

The one you were on in college? The one you had when you were playing sports? The one you followed before you had children? Before the divorce? Before the injury? Before the demanding job? Before the burnout? Before your body changed? Before you moved? Before you learned something about yourself that made the old life impossible to return to?

Sometimes you are not off track.

Sometimes the old track is gone.

And that is not necessarily a tragedy. It might be an invitation.

I think we waste an incredible amount of energy trying to return to versions of our lives that already did what they came here to do. We romanticize the routine, the body, the energy, the relationship, the city, the season, or the identity we had before something changed, and then we treat the distance between who we were and who we are now as evidence that something has gone wrong.

But change is not an interruption to life.

Change is life.

I may be unusually comfortable with this idea because I have always liked change. Apparently I came out of the womb with a mild intolerance for things staying exactly where they were. As a kid, I rearranged the furniture in my bedroom every couple of months simply because I wanted the room to feel different. Same bed. Same dresser. Same four walls. Completely new universe.

At nineteen, I moved to Colorado with a one-way plane ticket and two suitcases. I have sold nearly everything I owned more than once, most recently before leaving to work as an acupuncturist on a cruise ship. Since finishing my master’s degree in 2014, I have moved at least once or twice most years. I have changed careers, cities, countries, homes, routines, relationships, and ideas about what I thought my life was supposed to look like.

I realize this may put me slightly outside the normal range of human attachment to stability. Most people do not rearrange their entire existence because they got curious on a Tuesday.

And there is nothing wrong with wanting continuity. There is something beautiful about roots, familiarity, traditions, homes, friendships, and the things we return to year after year. Wanting to preserve what we love is deeply human.

Northern Michigan makes this particularly obvious. Summer arrives and the whole place comes alive: the water, the boats, the festivals, the cherries, the beaches, the long evenings, everyone outside trying to absorb approximately fourteen months of joy before October. Then the temperature drops and somebody inevitably says, “I wish summer would last forever.”

I understand.

But it cannot.

And honestly, I am not sure we would love it quite as much if it did. Part of the beauty of a season is that it ends. Autumn matters because summer releases it. Winter makes spring feel miraculous. A chapter becomes precious partly because eventually you have to turn the page.

Human beings are no different.

You are seasonal too.

You Cannot Get Back on a Track That No Longer Exists

This is why “getting back on track” can become such a cruel goal. It assumes there is a correct version of your life sitting somewhere behind you and your job is to reverse-engineer your way back to it.

Back to your college weight. Back to the old workout routine. Back to how motivated you used to be. Back to who you were before the kids, the injury, the move, the divorce, the demanding job, the grief, the burnout, the aging body, or whatever else changed the landscape.

But what if the work is not going backward?

What if the work is understanding what changed and deliberately building what comes next?

Transitions are particularly disorienting because they often remove structure before new structure has formed. You may no longer have the team, school schedule, spouse, job, city, community, physical ability, or daily rhythm that once organized your life. The old support disappears, but the new support has not been built yet.

That space can feel like failure.

Often, it is simply transition.

You are not wandering because you suddenly became incapable. You may be wandering because the rails that used to guide you ended several miles ago and nobody mentioned that you were now responsible for laying the next section yourself.

And that takes more than motivation.

It takes support.

Maybe You Are Not Off Track. Maybe You Are Unsupported.

When someone keeps saying, “I keep falling off track,” the assumption is usually that something is wrong with them. They lack discipline. They cannot follow through. They are inconsistent.

But I think a better question is: What is actually supporting this person?

Does their environment make the life they want easier or harder? Do they have time and space for movement, food, sleep, friendship, learning, and recovery? Are there people around them who reinforce what they are trying to build? Is there anything meaningful pulling them forward? Does the routine they keep trying to resurrect even belong to the person they are now?

Sometimes there is no track to fall off. There is just a collection of good intentions floating around inside an already overcrowded life.

We expect ourselves to exercise regularly, eat well, sleep enough, maintain relationships, manage stress, work, keep the house functioning, care for other people, develop personally, and somehow remain interesting human beings without intentionally creating support for any of it. Then when something drops, we blame character.

That is a strange conclusion.

If a train repeatedly derailed because there were no rails underneath it, you would not stand beside the wreckage shaking your head and say, “This train really needs more discipline.”

You would build the rails.

And the rails do not have to be dramatic. They might be a climbing partner, a meal you prepare ahead of time, a class on the calendar, a therapist, a coach, a community, a bedtime boundary, a kitchen stocked with food you actually want to eat, or a friend who knows what you are trying to build.

Support is not a consolation prize for people who lack discipline.

Support is often what makes discipline sustainable.

Athletes have coaches. Writers have editors. Musicians have teachers. Ships have crews. Entire cities are built around infrastructure because apparently even roads understand that functioning alone is an unreasonable expectation.

Humans are not the exception.

Bring the Past With You. Do Not Move Back Into It.

I am not suggesting we throw away the past. Quite the opposite. I think the past deserves reverence.

There are versions of myself I am deeply grateful for. The volleyball player taught me discipline, teamwork, effort, and how much the body can do. The massage therapist taught me touch and listening. Acupuncture gave me an entirely different framework for understanding people. Medical sales showed me another side of healthcare. The cruise ships gave me the world. Japan gave me new questions. Every city, relationship, mistake, job, trip, home, and strange little detour added something.

I do not need to become those versions of myself again.

I get to bring them with me.

That distinction matters. The past is a teacher. It is not an address.

You can look backward with fondness, wisdom, gratitude, even longing, without deciding that the future should be an attempt to recreate what was. Sometimes the reason the present feels wrong is simply that we are still judging it by the rules of an old season.

And change does not require our permission anyway.

Bodies age. Children grow. Careers shift. Parents age. Relationships evolve. Friendships move. Interests change. People arrive. People leave. Something that once energized you can eventually exhaust you, while something that once terrified you can someday become ordinary.

Trying to prevent all of that is an extraordinary amount of energy to invest in a project with a zero-percent success rate.

I would rather participate in change.

Not manufacture chaos for entertainment. Not throw away good things simply because they are familiar. But stay awake enough to notice when one season is ending and ask how I want to enter the next one.

That is where agency lives.

You may not choose the injury, breakup, layoff, grief, aging body, unexpected move, or difficult season. But you still get choices inside the transition. What will I carry forward? What can I release? What needs rebuilding? What no longer belongs to me? Who am I becoming now?

Those questions are much more interesting than, “How do I get back?”

There Is No Endless Summer

I think we sometimes treat life as though the goal is to locate the perfect season and somehow freeze ourselves inside it. Find the perfect body, relationship, city, career, routine, and then — nobody move.

Maybe if we are very careful, life will stop changing.

But I do not think a good life is static.

I think a good life is responsive.

There are seasons when you build and seasons when you recover. Seasons when career takes more of your attention and seasons when family does. Seasons when you travel and seasons when you plant yourself somewhere. Seasons when your body feels powerful and seasons when it asks you to listen more carefully.

The habits, structure, identity, and priorities that fit one season may be completely wrong for another.

That does not mean you lost your way.

It means the way changed.

This is why I care so much more about helping people build self-trust than simply giving them instructions. Instructions expire. Self-knowledge travels.

I can tell someone exactly what to eat, exactly how to exercise, exactly when to sleep, and exactly what routine to follow, and it may work beautifully until life changes.

Then what?

I would rather help someone become capable of recognizing the change, understanding what they need now, and adapting without treating every transition like a personal failure.

That, to me, is freedom.

Not finding one perfect track.

Learning how to build the next one.

Choose the Next Track

I do not think you need to force change. Life is perfectly capable of providing that without your assistance.

What you can do is stay present enough to participate in it.

Look back at the season behind you. Respect it. Learn from it. Miss it if you need to. Then turn around and look at the life that is actually here.

What season are you in now?

Not the one you wish you were in. Not the one you think you should still be in.

This one.

What does this version of your life require? What kind of movement fits this body? What kind of food supports this energy? Which relationships belong here? What structure would make the person you are becoming easier to sustain? What are you curious about now? What deserves your time now? Where are the rails missing?

Those questions are practical, but they are also profoundly existential because eventually this becomes about more than habits.

It becomes about whether you are actually participating in your own life.

I do not want to spend mine endlessly trying to return to some previous version of myself. I am grateful for her. Every version.

But I want to meet the next one too.

I want to see who I become in Traverse City. I want to see what happens as I deepen my practice, build this coaching work, create community, sail farther, climb harder, read more, travel again, and continue putting myself in situations where I have something new to learn.

Ten years from now, I hope my life looks different.

I hope I do too.

That is not losing the track.

That is traveling.

That is living.

So if you keep saying, “I just need to get back on track,” stop for a moment.

Maybe you do not need to go back. Maybe there is nothing behind you that needs rescuing. Maybe your old structure did exactly what it was supposed to do, carried you exactly as far as it could, and ended exactly where it needed to end.

Now you get to build again.

You cannot get back on a track that no longer exists.

So ask a better question:

What does the next track need to look like for the life I am living now?

Then start laying the rails.

Keep moving, eat something green, and question anything that sounds like a quick fix.

Chow! Chow!