Freedom Comes From Having Options

Success doesn’t mean much if you don’t have a way out. Or a way forward.

It’s 10:42 PM on a Sunday in London. I’m sitting in our new home, thinking about how long it took to get here. This place was a dream for years—literally. I’d visualized it, talked about it, worked toward it. Then one day, it wasn’t a dream anymore.

That shift didn’t happen overnight. It took time. And, honestly, I’m glad it did.

Life Has a Queue System

I can’t help but see things through the lens of a developer.

To me, life works like an algorithm. You send a signal—an intention, a goal, something you really want. But before anything happens, life pauses. It waits. It tests you. Then, maybe, it queues your request for processing.

Sometimes it takes years. That used to frustrate me. Now I get it. If all my wishes had come true the moment I had them, I’d be buried in chaos.

The delay? It’s not random. It’s necessary.

The Universe Isn’t Thinking About You

Here’s something that helps me stay grounded: the universe isn’t obsessed with you. Or me.

We’re tiny. Insignificant, really. Floating in a massive, expanding universe. It’s not personal.

For a while, I expected life to respond to effort. Like, “Hey, I’ve worked hard—where’s my reward?” But life doesn’t respond to effort. It responds to repetition. Focus. Action. Again and again.

Wanting something isn’t a signal. Showing up for it is.

Being Great at One Thing Isn’t Enough

I’ve been building email infrastructure for years. Deep work. High stakes. A lot of it invisible to most people.

Email deliverability is its own world. It’s full of edge cases, unspoken rules, and problems that don’t come with documentation. I’ve learned more by debugging in silence than from any course or book.

But even with that mastery, I’ve stalled. I’ve been sitting on a bigger goal for years—postponing it, rationalizing the delay.

Knowing something deeply doesn’t create freedom. Acting on it does.

AI Doesn’t Know What You Know

People love saying AI will replace everything. Not here. Not yet. Maybe never.

Deliverability is messy. Half science, half instinct. You can’t feed it all into a model. The knowledge lives in people—those who’ve made the mistakes, solved the weird bugs, navigated the unwritten rules.

AI can help. But it can’t do what someone with 10+ years in the field can do. Not in this space.

So I’ve got an edge. But an unused edge is just a dull knife.

Options = Freedom

Here’s what I believe now: your freedom is equal to the number of options you’ve built for yourself.

One extra path. One alternative income stream. One side project. It doesn’t have to be big. It just needs to exist.

Because when things change—and they always do—you want to have a door you can walk through. Not a wall you have to break.

This is what I’m working on now. My “next thing.” Quietly.

Stress Is a Signal

Every time I’ve felt real stress, it’s come from feeling cornered. No options. No flexibility.

Comfort is fragile. You can lose it fast. And when you do, the stress hits like a wave.

What keeps me balanced isn’t stability—it’s preparation. I stay calm when I know I’ve got another path. That’s the kind of confidence that’s earned. Not imagined.