Hi, just checking in, seeing how you're doing today,

and seeing if you might want to take a little break.

Step away from the noise of the world for just a moment and connect back with you.

If so, let's take a deep breath in, and then breathe out, and let it all settle.

I'm your host, Michael Gallion, and this is letting it settle.

Now, before we begin, I just want to give you a nice little gentle reminder, that it's

okay to feel uneasy when you don't know what's coming next.

That tightness in your chest, the way your thoughts start to spin, the urge to fix or figure

everything out, it's not weakness.

It's your body doing its best to find safety in something

that feels uncertain. You're not failing for feeling afraid. You're responding to something

real, not having the answers. And that can feel scary, especially when life doesn't give us timelines

or clarity. But just because the path ahead isn't clear doesn't mean that you're lost. And just

because fear is present, it doesn't mean that you're alone. Because fear of the unknown isn't a personal flaw.

It's a universal human response to living in a world that we can't always control. And you are

not alone in it. In 2020 during the pandemic, I lost my job.

And this was a job that I loved, and I cared a lot about this job.

And I wasn't planning on leaving.

But the world had different plans, and a global pandemic shook the early childhood education space in a way that my company couldn't recover from.

So after dealing with the uncertainty of what the world would look like during the pandemic,

I was suddenly faced with the uncertainty of what was I going to do for work.

And while there was an excitement about the possibility of creating something new,

...