The Only Thing That Makes It Too Late

The window you're afraid you missed was never real.

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There’s a folder on my hard drive I avoided for years.

Songs with my name on them.

My voice.

Written in the cracks between other people’s projects.

Left there to gather dust.

I spent 6 years in LA writing for other artists.

Good work, but always someone else’s name on it.

Somewhere in there, my own songs went silent.

Not in one defining moment.

I just kept choosing the other thing, over and over, until the choosing stopped being a choice.

When I finally opened that folder again, the fear that hit me wasn’t the one you’d expect.

Not, “Am I too old for this?”

But, “Have I been gone too long to find my way back?”

But this fear isn’t mine alone.

And it isn’t really about music.

Almost everyone carries some version of it.

It just looks different depending on the life.

• The degree you never used.

• The novel that stalled at chapter two.

• The instrument that’s lived in its case for ten years.

Different story. Same fear.

And it always says the same thing:

You waited too long. That version of you is gone.

But that’s a story, not a fact.

The fear gets one thing right:

Yes, that version of you is gone. The one who never gave up on the dream.

The one who didn’t spend years chasing someone else’s.

That person is not coming back.

Fine. Let them go.

That part’s true. But it doesn’t matter.

Because the second thing the fear tells you is a lie:

That the window closed when that version of you vanished.

There was never a window.

Nobody appointed a committee to decide whether you’re allowed to start now.

There’s no cutoff stamped on the thing you want to make.

The deadline you’re terrified of missing… you invented it.

We all do.

Then we spend years afraid of a line we drew ourselves.

The only thing that determines whether it’s too late is if you do the thing or not.

That’s the only test.

When I moved to Nashville, I was scared it was too late.

I had already spent 6 years in LA. I felt like my time was running out.

But I went anyway.

It wasn’t courage. It was stubbornness.

I refused to let the story win.

The work doesn’t care about your age.

The blank page doesn’t know how long you’ve been gone.

It only asks one question:

are you going to show up, or not?

Don’t try to make up the time.

You can’t.

Don’t try to get back to where you’d be if you’d never stopped… that person doesn’t exist, and chasing them is just fear in a time machine.

Do the smallest version of the thing today.

• Open the folder.

• Write one bad line.

• Pick up the instrument for ten minutes and don’t worry if you’re any good.

That’s it.

Not a grand return.

Just proof, in your own hands, that the work is still there for you.

You haven’t been gone too long.

You’re still here.

The work is still here.

You’ve just been listening to the wrong voice.

The only thing that ever makes it too late is deciding it already is.

If you enjoyed reading this, the highest compliment I can think of is if you restacked it or shared it with one person who you think it would help.