There’s a particular kind of birthday that makes you pause, not because you feel old, but because you finally have enough runway behind you to look back and see the shape of things. The choices that felt small at the time, but turned out to be everything. Turning 45 is one of those birthdays for me.
I’ve been sitting with that more than I expected this week. So instead of my usual post, I want to slow down and take stock, not in a “here’s my resume” kind of way, but the way you’d talk to an old friend once the small talk runs out: here’s what I built, here’s what it cost me, here’s who I’m still standing because of.
Where It Started
Back in 2016, I started this blog with no real plan other than wanting a place to put my words. I remember how small that first post felt, how unsure I was that anyone would read it, or that it would matter if they did. I had no idea Hello Leslie Creative would end up carrying me through a decade of change: new ideas, new seasons of life, new versions of myself I couldn’t have predicted from where I was standing. The thing I started almost as an afterthought became the foundation for everything else on this list.
Turning Words Into Something You Could Hold
A few years in, I took a leap I wasn’t sure would land: I launched my own line of self-care journals on Amazon. There’s something humbling about putting a physical object into the world with your name on it. I remember the fear more than the excitement, what if no one wants this, what if I’ve misjudged the whole thing. It taught me more about patience and simply sticking with something uncomfortable than almost anything else I’ve done. It’s still one of the things I’m quietly proudest of.
If you’ve never picked one up, both are still very much alive and out there in the world:
- The Mindful Journey Journal: daily inspiration and prompts for the mornings you want to begin again.
- Nurturing Your Soul: a workbook for actually looking after yourself, not someday, this week.
Finding My Voice, Out Loud
Then came the podcast. Writing had always been my comfort zone, I could edit a sentence a dozen times before anyone saw it. A podcast asked something harder of me: to show up as myself, unscripted, week after week, and let people hear me think in real time. It was uncomfortable before it was rewarding. Looking back, it’s one of the risks I’m most glad I took, even though I nearly talked myself out of it more than once.
The Year Everything Shifted: 2020
In 2020, while the whole world was pausing, I decided to build something new: my consulting business. Starting a company in the middle of that much uncertainty wasn’t the “smart” time to do it by any conventional measure, I remember wondering if I’d lost my mind. But it turned out to be exactly the right time for me. That business became a way to take everything I’d learned building this blog and hand it forward to other people trying to figure out the same thing I once was.
The App I Launched
And now, most recently, and still fresh enough that I catch myself checking it more than I probably should, I launched a web app for the Hello Leslie Creative blog.
It’s hard to describe what it feels like to hold this one in my hands, literally. Ten years ago I was hitting publish on a blog post, hoping someone would find it. Now there’s a web app, something people can save to their Home Screen, built entirely around this world I’ve spent a decade shaping. It’s the accumulation of everything, the writing, the journals, the podcast, the consulting, the years of learning what this community actually needs from me. Launching it didn’t feel like a single moment of triumph so much as a slow exhale, like finally building the home I’d been sketching blueprints for all along. I’m still figuring out what it will become. But I wanted to mark it here, in this space where all of it started, because it feels like the truest full-circle moment of this whole chapter.
Chasing the Horizon
Somewhere along the way, without ever fully planning it, I became a travel content creator too. What began as sharing a few photos from trips turned into a genuine love of documenting the world as I actually experience it, the food, the people, the wrong turns that became the best part of the story. It’s taught me to notice things more slowly, which feels fitting for exactly where I am right now.
The People Who Made It Possible
None of this happened in a vacuum. To the people who talked me off the ledge during launches, who celebrated wins that felt small to everyone but me, who believed in this before it was anything at all, thank you. You know who you are. Every late night, every “you’ve got this,” every time you showed up without my having to ask, it mattered more than I’ve probably ever said out loud, and I don’t want to let another birthday pass without saying it plainly. This milestone is as much yours as it is mine.
Here’s to 45
If my twenties were about starting and my thirties were about surviving, 45 feels like something steadier, building with intention, slower to say yes, more honest about what actually matters. I don’t know exactly what the next chapter holds. But if the last decade has taught me anything, it’s that the things I’m proudest of all started as small, uncertain leaps that scared me a little before they became mine.
So here’s what I want to leave you with, on this birthday and every day after it: keep going anyway. Build the thing. Say yes to the leap. The right people are already out there, cheering louder than you know.
Here’s to the next decade.
