Over the past few months, Richard and I have been thinking about the kind of life we want to build as a family, and whether the way we were spending our time matched that. There wasn’t one particular moment that brought us to those questions. It was more that we had a lot happening across different parts of our lives, and it got to a point where we felt we weren’t seeing the big picture anymore.
We’ve had new business experiences to navigate, so many trips away, renovations at home and family life continuing alongside all of it. We’re heading away again in five days, and it feels like there’s a mountain of things here that will be waiting for us when we get back. Life hasn’t paused while we work out what comes next. We’ve been making choices as we go, deciding in the moment what needs our attention and what can wait.
We’ve always talked on Richly Told about knowing when to keep going, when to change direction and when to walk away. But it can be much harder to recognise what you need, and make hard decisions, when you’re the one in the middle of it. When you’ve invested time, energy and hope in something, it’s natural to think about what you’ve put into it and what it might become. But caring about something doesn’t mean you can’t ask whether it still fits the life you’re trying to build.
I understand why people keep pushing. You’ve worked hard to get somewhere, and you may still believe in what you’re building. Changing direction can bring up the fear that all your hard work was wasted. But we don’t believe that. What you’ve learnt, what you’ve made and the experience you carry with you still count, even if you decide to do something different next.
Which brings us to Richly Told, and why we’ve been quieter while we were trying to work all these things out. We paused recording, and the regular communication around the podcast fell away too. We didn’t want to keep producing episodes simply because another one was due. At the same time, we knew the podcast wasn’t finished with us. We needed to think about what it could look like in the future and how it could sit alongside everything else going on in our lives.
The step back gave us room to think about why we started Richly Told in the first place. Richard and I wanted to talk about our experiences because people can go through similar things without knowing how to talk about them, or without hearing anyone else say, “We’ve been there too.” We don’t need perfect answers before we share. Sometimes an honest account of what happened is enough to help someone recognise their own experience and feel less alone in it.
That’s still what we want Richly Told to make room for: conversations about the things we’re living through, the things we understand better when we look back, and the things we’re still figuring out. We don’t need to wait until the renovations are finished or the travel is over. We can record while life is happening and let the conversations reflect it.
So, Richly Told is staying. We’re ready to record again, and there’s plenty we want to catch up on. We’re not returning because everything has settled down. We’re returning because we’ve thought about what matters to us, and these conversations are part of it.
Looking at our lives more closely has changed how we think about the choices in front of us. Sometimes you keep going with something because it still matters. Sometimes you change what you’re doing so it can fit the life you have now. And sometimes you recognise that your attention belongs elsewhere. None of those choices makes the work that came before meaningless. You can value what you’ve built, take what you’ve learnt from it and decide what makes sense for you now.
If this struck a chord, Richard and I explore these sorts of questions every week on the Richly Told podcast. Business, family, travel, leadership and all the complicated bits in between.
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