Am I Living for Today?
Are you?
If you know me, you know my somewhat innate ability to listen to the same song over and over and over again if I need to keep feeling it. I don’t rush the emotion. I let it stay as long as it needs to. And sometimes music is the only thing that makes space for that.
Lately, that song has been “Cloudy Day” by Tones and I.
It opens with a question that hit me straight in the chest:
“Am I really living for today?”
It made me pause. Reflect. And run.
I found myself in the very spot I used to escape to for years — the trail where my very first blog was born.
I didn’t plan it. I just ended up there. And this time, I ran.
For the first time — for real — since I’ve been on my own. Since the divorce.
It wasn’t just a jog. It was movement with meaning. It was a release. It was emotional. And it was heavy in the most healing kind of way.
If you’ve read my book Is It An Open Bar?, you might remember the story of my first-ever run — on a borrowed treadmill in a cluttered basement surrounded by toddler toys, trying to hold my mental health together with emotional duct tape. I cried during that run (and probably during most that followed), but I remember that one vividly. It marked the beginning of me choosing to move forward, even when it hurt.
This run felt just like that.
Because in so many ways, I’m still running through the hard things.
I’m still working through what it means to let go of everything I thought I had to be.
A few years ago, when I left my full-time job, I wasn’t allowed to exit with dignity. No goodbye email. No final walk through the halls. No closure. I showed up for people every single day — and then one day, I was just… gone.
The loneliness that followed was unbearable.
And in the depths of that silence, I had a terrifying thought:
Maybe no one would notice if I were gone.
Even my kids.
That’s the funny — and brutal — thing about your mindset:
If you don’t actively train it, it will run wild.
And when it does, it will run you.
I’ve written a lot of blogs on a Thursday night. This one is no different. Thursdays are when the kids go to their dad’s house. The house gets quiet, and the ache settles in. But that ache has served a purpose — again and again. It’s given me room to explore the deeper stuff beneath the surface.
And there’s always one thread that keeps coming back.
Worthiness.
Not the Pinterest version. Not the “say affirmations in the mirror” version.
The kind that only shows up when you ask yourself the hard questions — over and over and over again.
You don’t fix this kind of pain with a shake or a pill or a new planner.
You fix it by getting curious.
By asking:
- Am I living for today?
- Or am I still running from something?
- Still proving something?
- Still waiting for a version of myself I once lost?
I’m not trying to go back.
I’m not looking to become a previous version of myself.
I’m here to keep growing — to keep stepping into the potential I used to doubt was mine.
I’ve always known I was made for more.
I just didn’t know what “more” would look like.
I used to think “more” meant proving myself — surviving hard things, doing it all on my own, being the strong one in every room.
And yes — I am strong. I am independent.
But I’ve also realized… I need support, too. I need softness. I need people I don’t have to be “on” for.
Learning to love myself has been one of the greatest gifts I’ve ever given myself.
It’s cracked me open in ways I didn’t expect.
It’s opened doors I didn’t even know existed — in my life, in my heart, in the way I see the world.
And as I’ve built that love within me, I’ve started to believe I deserve it from others, too.
I deserve another chance at love — the real kind.
Not just the kind I pour out, but the kind that meets me where I am.
The kind that sees me clearly. The kind that stays.
As I traversed my way through the woods, I felt it —
the becoming of me.
Strong.
Emotional.
Ready.
Not perfect.
Not all figured out.
But rooted in something real.
There have been so many different versions of Laura since 2012 — since I took that very first step toward myself. The scared version. The lost one. The angry one. The trying-too-hard-to-be-fine one. The hopeful one. The broken one. The version who didn’t know what was next but kept going anyway.
All of them led me here.
Tones and I opens “Cloudy Day” by asking a question that echoes so deeply right now:
Am I really living for today?
It’s a simple question — but it’s everything.
Because when you’re standing in the fog of grief, transition, burnout, or fear, the easiest thing to do is future-trip or replay the past on loop.
But living for today?
That’s brave.
That’s real.
And that’s where the healing begins.
That sentiment runs deep in my own journey too: learning to ground myself in what’s real — not what I fear, or regret, or wish I could control.
Listen to the song here
Let it move something in you.
And maybe ask yourself the question, too.
Xo,
Laura
