I ran into a former student in the subway.
Five minutes.
A few words.
And it changed the way I measure my life.
In this episode, I step into a question that started while rewriting my resume:
What actually counts?
We’re taught to measure our lives by visible scale — titles, impact, recognition, how far we’ve gone.
But what if the real measure isn’t altitude?
What if it’s depth?
This is a reflection on:
living what I now call an extraordinarily ordinary life
the tension between belonging and becoming
The quiet influence we rarely get to witness
why the moments that never make it onto a resume might matter most
redefining success as proximity, contribution, and fully inhabiting the life in front of us
Along the way, I trace the thread from a Grade 4 dream of being an explorer…
through classrooms, scuba diving, small towns, public service, and the systems we move through…
to a single unexpected encounter that recalibrated everything.
This isn’t about having it all figured out.
It’s a set of field notes on:
How we measure a life.
Why many of us carry a quiet sense of deficit — even in the presence of evidence.
And what changes when we ask a gentler question:
Where have I already mattered?
What if the scale of your life isn’t measured by how far you’ve gone… but by how deeply you’ve shown up?