What I’ve Been Doing While You Weren’t Looking

If I’ve seemed a little preoccupied lately, there’s a reason.

I’ve been building something.

And by “building,” I mean spending an astonishing number of hours staring at my computer, recording and rerecording myself, moving things around on slides, changing my mind, changing it back, learning new technology, talking to myself, and occasionally wondering why I thought this was such a good idea in the first place.

In other words, I’ve been creating a course.

The Bloom Again Method.

Those of you who have been reading me for a while know that Bloom Again began as something deeply personal.

It came out of my own experience of reaching a point in life when the identity I had carried for years no longer quite fit.

I had spent decades in the corporate world. Then I became a chocolatier and built another life entirely. Then that chapter ended too.

And eventually I found myself facing that deceptively simple question:

Now what?

It turns out that question is not simple at all.

Because when a career ends, a relationship changes, the children leave, retirement arrives, caregiving ends, our bodies change, or life simply doesn’t look the way we thought it would, we’re not only deciding what to do next.

Sometimes we’re trying to figure out who we are now.

That became the heart of my book Bloom Again: A Memoir of Reinvention. It continued through Now What? And it is showing up again in the book I’m working on now, Enough: Unlearning the Need to Prove Yourself.

But somewhere along the way, I realized there was another step I wanted to take.

I didn’t just want to write about reinvention.

I wanted to help women actually do it.

So for the past several months, I’ve been developing the Bloom Again Method—a 14-lesson course designed especially for women navigating the second half of life.

And lately, I’ve been deep in production.

Very deep.

I’ve written the lessons. I’ve recorded the audio. I’ve created slides. I’ve learned more about video editing than I ever expected to know. I’ve searched for images that actually look like women we recognize instead of 32-year-old models pretending to contemplate retirement.

I’ve discarded things that felt too polished.

Too inspirational.

Too “just believe in yourself and everything will magically work out.”

Because I don’t believe that.

Life is messier than that.

Reinvention is messier than that.

Sometimes blooming again begins with excitement.

Sometimes it begins with grief.

Sometimes it begins because life has opened a wonderful new door.

And sometimes it begins because life slammed the old one shut.

I’ve experienced both.

That’s why I wanted this course to be practical as well as hopeful.

The framework I’ve developed moves through five stages:

Awaken. Notice. Release. Reclaim. Bloom.

Not because life follows five tidy steps—it most certainly does not—but because sometimes we need a way to understand where we are before we can imagine where we might go.

And here’s something I’ve realized while creating all of this:

I’m still doing it too.

I’m 73 years old, and I’m sitting here learning video production.

I’m building a course.

I’m writing another book.

I’m experimenting with artificial intelligence.

I’m creating things I didn’t even know how to create a year ago.

Some days I feel incredibly capable.

Other days I can’t figure out why something moved three inches to the left on a Canva slide.

Apparently, personal growth includes both.

But perhaps that’s the point.

I’ve come to believe that we have been sold a strange idea about adulthood—that eventually we’re supposed to arrive.

We choose a career.

Build a family.

Establish a life.

Retire.

And somehow the story is supposed to become smaller from there.

I don’t believe that anymore.

I don’t think there is one reinvention.

I think there are many.

Again and again, life asks us to notice what has changed, imagine what could come next, and have enough courage to move toward it.

That’s really what Bloom Again has become for me.

Not a book.

Not even a course.

A philosophy for living.

Notice. Imagine. Bloom.

And then someday, when life changes again?

Do it again.

I’m hoping to have the Bloom Again Method ready to share very soon. I’ll tell you much more about it when it is.

But today I simply wanted to bring you behind the scenes and tell you what I’ve been doing over here.

I’m learning.

I’m creating.

I’m getting frustrated.

I’m figuring things out.

I’m changing my mind.

I’m trying again.

And at 73, I find myself unexpectedly excited about what might still be ahead.

Maybe that’s the message I wanted to leave you with today.

Whatever your age, don’t assume the person you are today is the final version of you.

There may be another interest you haven’t discovered.

Another skill you haven’t learned.

Another person you haven’t met.

Another place you haven’t gone.

Another idea you haven’t had.

Another version of your life you haven’t imagined yet.

You don’t have to know what it is.

You only have to remain curious enough to find out.

And if you’re somewhere in your own “Now what?” season right now, stay with me.

That’s exactly who I’ve been building this for.

Thank you, as always, for reading, sharing my work, and subscribing to Julie’s Journal. It means more to me than you probably realize—especially during these stretches when I’m tucked away at my computer trying to turn an idea into something real.

I’ll keep you posted.

And I have a feeling we’re going to have a lot to talk about.

With love,

Julie Bolejack, MBA

Julies-journal.ghost.io

The Mindful Activist