Be Where Your Feet Are

“I need to be where my feet are.”

That’s what I told my former boss about a year ago when I made the decision to leave my position as operations manager and go out on my own. It was an uncomfortable conversation. I understood what I was walking away from.

Three years prior, I had been scouted on LinkedIn and brought into the company as a part-time admin assistant to help with client reporting. At the time, the company was small—just a few people—and it had been run by its founder for years before being purchased with the intention to grow and scale. Not even two months into that role, I was offered the position of operations manager, and I accepted without hesitation. I remember how charged I felt by that opportunity, like someone had finally seen my capacity and understood what I was capable of. It felt like a moment I had been waiting for.

Up until then, I had worked a lot of different jobs across different industries, and this felt like something was finally aligning. I stepped into that role fully, and over the next three years, I learned more than I could have anticipated. I made mistakes—some of them significant—and I had the opportunity to work alongside people who challenged me, taught me, and trusted me to lead. It was a period of growth, both professionally and personally, and from the outside, it looked like exactly where I should be.

But about eight months before I left, something began to shift.

There wasn’t a clear reason for it, and that was what made it difficult to understand. There was no single event or logical explanation I could point to. It was just a feeling that started to sit in my gut, quiet at first, but persistent. A sense of unease that I couldn’t ignore, even though I couldn’t fully articulate it.

At the same time, life was unfolding in ways that forced me to pay attention.

I had been part of a difficult rescue that left me with PTSD. It’s not something that announces itself loudly all the time, but it changes you. It shifts the way you process things, the way you move through the world. I was grateful to get the help I needed afterward, but it marked a turning point.

Not long after that, someone I had worked with on that rescue passed away.

Levi.

I remember talking with him that night on the trail. He kept me grounded in a moment that could have easily felt overwhelming. He talked about his new baby, laughed about not getting much sleep, and there was something about his presence that felt steady and reassuring. In a situation that carried a lot of weight, he was an anchor.

And then he was gone.

A month later, our community lost Chris Huyler.

Chris was someone I had crossed paths with a handful of times—on group bike rides, out on the trails, doing maintenance work. He was quirky, in a way that made you notice him, and he had these two little dogs that he clearly adored. They were part of him. But again, I didn’t really know him.

And then he was gone too.

Those two losses, so close together, shifted something in me in a way that I couldn’t ignore. I realized how much I had been operating under the assumption that there would always be more time. More time to get to know people, more time to deepen relationships, more time to be present.

And the truth is, that assumption isn't guaranteed.

We don’t actually have control over that.

So I started asking myself a different kind of question. Not a big, abstract question about life in general, but something much more immediate and grounded.

What am I doing with today?

What am I doing with the people around me? How am I showing up in the place that I live? Am I actually part of this community, or am I just existing alongside it?

Because when I looked honestly at my life, I realized that I was spending most of my time on Zoom calls, in meetings, managing operations for a company that existed entirely online. And while that work mattered, and I cared about it, there was a growing disconnect between how I was spending my time and what I was starting to feel mattered most.

I began to crave something different.

I wanted to be here—not just physically, but fully. I wanted real conversations, face to face. I wanted to know the people around me in a way that went beyond recognition or brief interaction. I wanted to feel connected to this place, not just live in it.

Around that same time, a friend shared a phrase with me: be where your feet are.

It felt simple when I first heard it, but the more I sat with it, the more I realized how much it applied to my life. Because the truth was, I wasn’t fully where my feet were. I was present physically, but my energy, my attention, my sense of purpose—it was spread somewhere else.

So when I had that conversation with my boss, and I told him I was leaving, that was the only explanation that felt honest.

I need to be where my feet are.

I didn’t have a business plan. I didn’t have six months of savings set aside. My brain had plenty of reasons why it didn’t make sense. It told me I wasn’t prepared, that I didn’t know what I was doing, that I should wait until things were more certain.

But my heart didn’t need certainty in that moment. It just needed alignment.

So I left.

And the months that followed were not easy. There were unexpected challenges, moments of conflict, and a level of fear and doubt that I hadn’t experienced before. There were times when I questioned whether I had made the right decision, when the lack of structure and predictability felt overwhelming.

But underneath all of that, there was something steady.

A sense that even in the uncertainty, I was moving in the right direction.

Now, a year later, I find myself sitting across from Bill Latulip on my radio show. Bill has lived in this community his entire life and has been part of the Littleton Fire Service for forty-seven years. Forty-seven years of showing up for people, of serving, of committing himself to something bigger than himself.

And as I listened to him talk, I realized that what I am just beginning to practice, Bill has been living for decades.

He didn’t commit himself to a title or a specific path. He committed himself to a place. And because of that, his life took many forms—different roles, different businesses, different seasons—but all of it rooted in the same decision to stay, to serve, and to be present.

When I think about my first year of being where my feet are, my instinct is still to focus on the hard parts—the mistakes, the uncertainty, the fear that comes with not having a guaranteed paycheck, the practical concerns about things like how much longer my car is going to last.

But when I step back, I can also see something else.

I can see growth. I can see resilience beginning to take shape. I can see a deeper connection to the people around me and a stronger sense of ownership over the life I am building.

Bill’s life wasn’t built in a year. It was built over decades of showing up, of navigating challenges, of continuing forward even when things were uncertain or difficult. That kind of resilience doesn’t come from avoiding hard things—it comes from moving through them.

And that gives me a lot of hope.

Because it reminds me that I don’t need to have everything figured out right now. I don’t need to know exactly what the next five or ten years will look like. What matters is how I continue from here.

There is a lot of noise in the world right now, and it’s easy to get pulled into it. It’s easy to focus on what’s going wrong, to get distracted by opinions and negativity that ultimately pull us away from what’s right in front of us.

But when I think about Bill, I don’t picture him spending time there. I picture him focused on what matters, on the people and the place he has committed himself to, on the work that is right in front of him.

And as I move into my second year of this practice, I find myself coming back to something simple.

It’s not about becoming someone different. It’s about continuing.

Continuing to show up. Continuing to choose what matters. Continuing to say yes to the things that align and no to the things that don’t. Continuing to invest my time and energy into the life I am building, one day at a time.

There is something deeply grounding in that. Something hopeful.

Because it reminds me that a meaningful life is not built all at once. It is built through practice, through repetition, through the quiet and consistent decision to stay present.

To be where your feet are.

-Amanda