But somewhere in the last few weeks, the feeling changed. I’m still so glad to be out of it — I don’t miss the job, not really, not the way people warned me I would. What I miss is harder to name. It’s not the work. It’s the wings.

I used to move through my days with momentum. There was a direction to everything — a meeting led to a decision led to a deadline led to the next thing. I didn’t love all of it, but I was going somewhere, every single day, whether I wanted to or not. Now the days don’t have that current in them. I have to generate my own motion, and some days I just don’t.

And then there are the days I don’t even get the chance to drift, because both kids are tantruming at once and I’m standing in the kitchen trying to negotiate a ceasefire like I used to negotiate budgets and board approvals — except nothing I say lands, nobody’s taking notes, and there’s no version of this where I walk out feeling like I ran a good meeting. I used to manage a whole residential program. Crises, parents, a staff of adults. And somehow two small people, both crying about different things at the same volume, can make me feel more incompetent than anything in that job ever did. I don’t know how to end a meltdown I can’t schedule, prep for, or follow up on.

Untethered was supposed to feel like freedom. Mostly it feels like floating — or, some afternoons, like freefalling. Like I got exactly what I asked for — no one pulling on me, no one needing me on their timeline — and instead of soaring I’m just sort of drifting a few feet off the ground, not sure which direction has any wind in it. And then some days I’m not drifting at all. I’m just trying to survive bath time.

I don’t think this means I made the wrong call. I’ve said that to myself before and I still believe it. But I think there’s a version of “untethered” nobody tells you about — the kind where you’re not trapped anymore, but you’re also not flying. You’re just hovering, waiting to remember how your own wings work when nobody else is telling you where to go. And some days, you’re not hovering either. You’re just down in it, doing your best to get through dinner.

Lesson learned, if I can call it that: competence doesn’t transfer. I thought I was bringing twenty years of managing people and crises into this house with me. Turns out toddlers don’t care about my track record. I’m starting over at this one, same as everyone else who’s ever stood in a kitchen with two screaming kids. That’s not failure. It’s just a different skill, and I haven’t built it yet.