I thought satisfaction was the goal. I was wrong.

My daughter asked me why I wasn't worried about the future. The answer that came out of my mouth surprised even me.

I THOUGHT SATISFACTION WAS THE GOAL

A surprising thing happened in a conversation with my daughter this week.

We were talking about the future. More specifically, we were talking about my future. At seventy years old, this seems to be a topic that occasionally concerns my daughters more than it concerns me.

Where will I live? What happens if my health changes? What if I need help? What if...

I finally told my daughter what I genuinely believe.

“Honey, I think I’ll probably live to at least ninety.”

She got very quiet.

Then she asked me why. Not why I thought I’d live to ninety. Why I was so unconcerned about it.

And the answer that came out of my mouth surprised me.

“Because I’m eager to know how much more there is about me that I don’t know yet.”

The moment I said it, I knew it was true.

And then I noticed something else. That eagerness wasn’t just a feeling. It was energy. A particular kind of energy I hadn’t expected to have at 70 — the kind that makes the very idea of a retirement center feel not just premature but genuinely out of step with my whole being. Not because there’s anything wrong with retirement centers. Because I’m not finished yet. Not even close.

* * *

So let me tell you how I actually got here. Because I think the path matters as much as the destination.

It wasn’t dramatic. There was no retreat, no breakthrough moment, no single conversation that changed everything. It was spiritual and it was subtle — a series of small, almost invisible rewires that accumulated over eighteen months into something I can only describe as a different relationship with my own life.

Here is what it actually looked like.

THE FIRST SHIFT: I RETIRED FROM OBLIGATION.

Not from work. From the constant internal measuring. From the voice that asked: shouldn’t you be more social, shouldn’t you go out more, shouldn’t you be doing retirement the way other people do it? I stopped asking what I should want and started asking what I actually wanted. That sounds simple. It was enormous.

THE SECOND SHIFT: I STOPPED TREATING SOLITUDE AS A FLAW.

For years there was an underlying assumption that something must be wrong with me because I preferred being alone. Then slowly, quietly, I realized: I have wanted this since I was eighteen. I stopped treating my preferred way of living as evidence of a problem and started treating it as information about who I am. Being alone is not resignation. It is a skill. And recognizing it as mine changed everything.

THE THIRD SHIFT: I REMEMBERED THE MUSTANG.

This one sounds small. I think it was enormous. I remembered how fascinated I was by my first car when I was young — and then I realized it was never the car. It was the feeling. The aliveness. The anticipation. The fascination itself. That memory led me, almost directly, to everything I now understand about eagerness. I can draw a straight line from that recollection to the conversation I had with my daughter this week.

THE FOURTH SHIFT: I DECIDED I WAS NOT A PROJECT.

This may have been the biggest one. I stopped approaching my own life as a self-improvement assignment. Stopped asking how to become a better version of myself. Started asking: what if I am already enough to begin exploring? That question changed the emotional tone of everything that came after it.

THE FIFTH SHIFT: I UNDERSTOOD WHERE INVISIBILITY ACTUALLY BEGINS.

When I wrote that invisibility happens inside us first — that we erase ourselves before the world gets the chance — something cracked open. I stopped making invisibility something the world was doing to older women and recognized that part of the process was internal. And almost immediately afterward, everything about my visibility changed. I don’t think that was a coincidence.

THE SIXTH SHIFT: I STOPPED WAITING FOR MY NEXT LIFE AND STARTED INHABITING THIS ONE.

The plants. The balcony. The rearranged apartment. The studio. Most people would call these small domestic decisions. I call them the moment I stopped living in a waiting room. That is a much bigger shift than it sounds.

THE SEVENTH SHIFT: I STOPPED TRYING TO WANT SOMEBODY ELSE’S RETIREMENT.

I kept looking at other people’s busy, social, travel-filled retirement lives and thinking: maybe I should want that. Then one day the answer that came back was simply: no. Coffee with Greg. Painting in the morning. Writing. Talking with readers. Time alone. That was the life. Mine. And I stopped apologizing for it.

AND THEN, JUST THIS WEEK, THE EIGHTH SHIFT.

For months I have been talking about peace. Contentment. Enoughness. Satisfaction. Good words. True words. And then my daughter asked me why I wasn’t worried about the future — and what came out of my mouth wasn’t peace.

It was eagerness.

Peace is about acceptance. Eagerness is about possibility. They are not the same thing. And realizing the difference told me something important: I haven’t arrived anywhere. I am still becoming. Still unfolding. Still finding hidden rooms.

For most of my life, I thought satisfaction was the goal. Work hard. Pay the bills. Raise the children. Build a life. Reach retirement. Then finally arrive at that mythical place where everything settles down and you spend your days maintaining what you’ve built.

Isn’t that what we’re sold?

The image is always some version of comfort. A comfortable house. A comfortable routine. And there is absolutely nothing wrong with comfort — I’ve spent enough years worrying about money and obligations to appreciate it when it arrives.

But lately I’ve discovered something. Comfort isn’t what gets me out of bed.

Curiosity does.

I wake up wondering what I might think about today, what idea might arrive while I’m making coffee, what conversation might change the way I see something, what new version of myself I haven’t met yet.

That last one is the surprising part.

I honestly thought that by seventy I’d pretty much know who I was. Instead, I keep finding hidden rooms. I keep discovering interests I didn’t know I had. Questions I never thought to ask. Possibilities that never occurred to me five years ago.

A year ago I wasn’t thinking about sponsorship opportunities for my Substack, I wasn’t thinking about bestseller lists. ( I am a bestseller btw and I’ve been asked to consider sponsors) I wasn’t thinking about the future I’m imagining now. I was simply trying to make enough money to live.

That was the plan. That’s all.

Yet somehow life kept unfolding beyond the edges of my plans.

It occurs to me that many people stop expecting that. Not because they’re old. Because they become convinced they’ve already seen the whole movie. They know who they are. They know what life is. They know what tomorrow will look like. So they stop looking for surprises. They stop looking for themselves. They stop expecting anything new to emerge.

And I wonder if that’s where so much of our energy goes. Not because we lose our future. Because we stop imagining one.

* * *

None of the eight shifts happened overnight. None of them arrived with fanfare. When I look back at the path, what I see is not a transformation. I see an accumulation.

I stopped treating solitude as a flaw. I stopped treating myself as a project. I stopped living by obligation. I stopped waiting for another life to begin. I started paying attention to what fascinated me.

And somehow, almost accidentally, those quiet rewires added up to this:

I love my life. And I’m curious about what’s next.

What if that’s true for you too?

These days, I don’t feel finished. I feel unfinished. And for the first time in a very long time, that feels less like a problem and more like an invitation.

The willingness to admit that the most interesting thing about you may not have happened yet.

That might be the real gift.

In the weeks ahead, I intend to do something I've never quite done before — go back through each of these eight shifts, one at a time, and tell you the real story behind them. Not the tidy version. The actual one. What each shift felt like from the inside, what resisted it, what finally gave way, and what changed when it did. Eight articles. Eight breadcrumbs. One honest account of what it actually looks like to rewire a life from the inside out — not as a program, not as a curriculum, but as a woman telling the truth about what happened to her and trusting that somewhere in that truth, you'll find something that belongs to you.

Before I go, I want to name something I left out of the eight shifts. Not because it isn’t important. Because it is the most important thing of all.

None of these shifts were possible until I began building trust with myself.

Not confidence. Not certainty. Not a polished sense of self-assurance. Trust. The quiet, unglamorous, one-decision-at-a-time practice of believing that my own perception was worth listening to. That what I noticed mattered. That what I felt was real. That I could make a choice, survive it, and learn from it.

Trust was the foundation. The eight shifts were what became possible once that foundation was there.

Which is why I wrote what I wrote next.

I put together a small booklet called Building Trust with Yourself — and I want to give it to every woman who becomes a paid member of The Daily RE-WIRE.

Not as an automated download. Not as part of a funnel. Personally, from me to you.

Become a paid member and then send me your email address — either by DM here on Substack or directly at monica@monirosesoul.com — and I will reply with the booklet attached.

This is the work that makes everything else possible. I’d love for you to have it.

And if something in this piece made you pause, nod, or feel a little less alone — please give it a heart before you go. That one small tap tells the algorithm this conversation matters. It puts these words in front of another woman who needs to hear them today. She's out there. Help me find her.