Dine's Ethos

I used to live years ahead.
Now I’m just trying to make it through today.

When you’ve spent your whole life planning—school, career, moves—how do you suddenly let it all go? How do you take things one day at a time when you’ve trained your brain to stay ten steps ahead? How do you unlearn? 

It feels like a weight pressing down in the center of my chest and the more I think about it, the heavier it gets. Sometimes I have to remind myself to breathe. Other days, time slips by without me noticing. Most days, I just want it to go faster. Like maybe if I close my eyes long enough, I’ll wake up on the other side of all this.

People say, “Take it one day at a time.”
But how? How do you slow down when your identity has always been tied to motion? To achievement? To knowing what’s next?

I’ve spent years outrunning fear and uncertainty. Trying to move constantly so that my thoughts weren’t so loud. 

Now, with ESRD, I’m being told I can’t outrun this. I can’t plan. I can’t even pretend to know what the next month looks like. I’ve been told to pause. To rest. To “be present.” But what does that even mean when everything I’ve built was designed to avoid this very situation?

It’s ironic, isn’t it? The mindset that helped me survive is now the thing unraveling me. What once felt like control now feels like suffocation.

My therapist told me this might be the only time in my life when I get to slow down. To do the things I always said I’d get to “when I had time.” To find joy. Whatever that means now. But joy feels so far away.

I break my heart over and over again each time I watch videos of my time in Samoa. The sound of the waves. The sky. The laughter. The sunsets. My friends. Each memory feels like a life I lost too soon. It might’ve been easier if I had never left Utah in the first place.

Lately, it’s a never-ending cycle of memory and “what ifs.” I would’ve already flown back to Samoa. Probably spent money buying things I def didn’t need. Planning beach days and boat rides. More drunken weekends. It’s always the FOMO, isn’t it?

A few weeks before the ER visit, I remember feeling so homesick. Wanting to return. Now I’m here, in Utah… and almost everything in me is still back across the ocean.

I moved to Samoa because I felt stuck.
I had finished grad school, was working full time, and life just felt… meh. I wanted more. Working at the PD’s office gave me that more. It gave me meaning. But it also gave me burnout. So I left. I joined a private firm. I told myself: You’ll grow in uncomfortable places.

Now here I am. Back in Utah. Unfulfilled. Lost.
And honestly? I want to give up. So badly.

And to think…In the grand scheme of things, I’ve only just begun living. I’m not even 30 yet.

It’s all about perspective, right? 

But I can’t help but question everything.

Was I in the wrong place?

Is that why this happened?

Was I not supposed to move back in the first place?

Was I heading down a path I was never meant to take?

God. It felt like the right path but maybe I was wrong. This is the most lost I’ve ever felt. 

My mind is an ever-moving seesaw at this point. Oscillating between this is just a moment in time and this is the rest of my life. 

I am trying so hard to accept that I can belong to more than one place. That I can adapt my dreams without abandoning them.

There’s still so much more I want to become. I feel like I was just beginning.

So now, I’m working on my “300 list”—300 things I want to do in my lifetime. I’ve only made it to #13 so far.

Who knew it’d be so difficult to list 300 things I want to do in my life?

Hoping for easier days.