Owning It: Life, Mid-Edit

Both the messy middle and entrepreneurship are a feeling of a rollercoaster AND a feeling of steadying. We are finding that paradox both comforting and discomforting. In this episode, we discuss how to own these waves and explore finding rhythms to manage the rocky parts.

Nicole and Alicia dig into the blurry line between 'work' and 'job', paid and unpaid, and who actually gets to define it. This episode explores what work actually means when you're in the middle of redefining it, who shaped those definitions in the first place, and why unpaid doesn't have to mean unvaluable.

How do I trust myself AND change my mind? Turns out sometimes these might be the same thing. Nicole and Alicia get into what this tension actually feels like in a career, knowing when a pivot is the right call, why the brain and body don't always agree, and learning to listen to what your body is telling you is the next right thing, right now.

Life has a way of lifing and it doesn't wait for a convenient moment. In this episode, we're sitting with all of it: the left turns, the overlapping tensions, the feelings that show up uninvited in the middle of work, ambition, and everything else you're trying to hold together. This one is a reminder that you don't have to resolve it all - sometimes you just need permission to feel it.

Being in a liminal transition phase can be wonderful… until someone says, “So what do you do?” In this episode, Nicole and Alicia share a work-in-progress approach to defining this stage based on what can be, not what has been (or what a “younger me” might have expected).

Acknowledging milestones is important. Expecting things to change dramatically once we reach them is a recipe for disappointment. Here, Alicia and Nicole dive into the fallacy of “it will get better or easier once I finish XYZ,” and the possibility of living life today the way we might imagine living it in the someday that isn’t guaranteed.

The Messy Middle is hard. How do you build a sense of progress when it feels like an endless set of steps with no real goalposts? In this episode, Nicole and Alicia talk about the earliest stages of setting up a new career chapter and the challenges that come with feeling like every step forward comes with a curveball or a step to the side. Whether you’re deep in a career shift or just starting to feel restless, sometimes it takes a different perspective to appreciate exactly where you are.

Closure is often positioned as an important milestone- a conversation, a realization, or a moment where things finally click into place and moving forward becomes easier. But what if that isn’t really how it works? In this episode Alicia and Nicole explore what it looks like to let go of a chapter – a job, a relationship, an identity - without a tidy ending. They discuss the pressure to “have closure” and how it might not always be a reality. Sometimes you close the door. Sometimes the door just slowly fades away.

There's a version of this chapter that looks very put-together from the outside. This episode is not that version. Nicole and Alicia talk honestly about what it's like to be mid-decision and navigating the realities of the process of figuring it out. They share about what drew them to this moment, what surprised them about it, and why building something new can feel aligned even when it’s uncertain.

Do you know that feeling where you’re not where you were, but you’re not yet where you’re going? That in-between space isn’t a mistake or a detour. It might be the whole point. In this episode, Nicole and Alicia dig into what it actually means to be mid-edit: the discomfort of undefined chapters, the temptation to fast-forward past the uncertainty, and why learning to sit in the messy middle might be the most important thing you do. They share how this season of life looks for each of them, and why this podcast exists. 

We're Nicole and Alicia, longtime friends who have found the best way to figure out what comes next is to talk about it out loud. We found it helpful, so we wanted to share our musings with the world. In this intro episode, we thought we’d start with introducing ourselves – who we are, what lights us up, and what we're still working out. 

A few months ago, we (Alicia and Nicole) both left demanding roles around the same time. We began talking more intentionally during the transition and sharing notes about what it was like in the messy middle and time of uncertainty. The conversations were so helpful for us that we started recording, thinking maybe it could be helpful for other people. You may notice that, especially in the first episodes, we are very much figuring it out as we go. The first four episodes have limited structure, though still plenty of meaty discussion. If you want to get straight into the messy middle, start with the first four episodes with “rough cut” in the titles. If you listen better with more structure, start with Episode 5, where we start diving deeper into specific topics with each episode.Choose your listening path and Own It.