My Hipsy Roller Coaster: A Journey of Change

Where do I even begin with all the things that have been happening in life right now? It’s been an absolute roller coaster. The year 2025 was definitely my soft life. I enjoyed it, but with the start of 2026, I hit the ground running with trying to find a new job/career.

I was looking for something that aligned with everything I wanted, but also gave me the time and opportunity to continue building my personal brand. I wanted something that I could do that would allow me to still do what I loved: networking, meeting new people, and meaningful work that helped a company move forward. I wanted autonomy to build something from scratch, and the freedom to continue doing great work without someone hovering over me. I wanted something that would allow me to work from anywhere with a hybrid schedule and, of course, pays well. Business development, but in a new industry where I could learn something new. After almost 12 years in finance, I felt like it was time for a change.

As I’m sure many of you know, this job market is brutal. With the AI disruption and so many people being unemployed, the job search is difficult. I’ve always been someone who could get online and find a job, but after about a month of searching and hearing nothing back, I knew this time I would have to get creative. I also wanted to test out a theory that I had learned through Dr Joe Dispenza’s work about manifesting your dream life and finding my dream job became an active part of my meditation sessions. I started building this perfect job and life consciously and continually every time I closed my eyes. I have this belief that if I can see it in my mind, I know that it will have to come to pass, and if it’s meant for me, the perfect job would find me, and I would just know. Everything would work out perfectly and align beautifully. That’s what I believed and told myself over and over again as the rejections and ghostings from companies continued to roll in.

One day, I showed up at an open house hosted by a friend I had made through networking. As I toured the house with her, I mentioned that I was looking for my next opportunity in business development and gave her the short version of my background. I didn’t think much of it, just a passing conversation with a friend. But a week or so later, she texted me to ask if I wanted to interview with her husband’s IT company. They were looking to hire a business developer, and she thought my skill set would be a perfect fit for the job.

So off I went to the first interview. I had met her husband a couple of times at previous networking events and knew a little about what he did, but I didn’t know much about IT or what his company did overall.

After the initial interview, I knew this was something I wanted to do and would thrive in. With the help of my trusty assistant, Claudette, we set to work on a business development plan I could pitch in my second interview. Four rounds of interviews later, I got a job offer.

The power of manifesting and networking! I’ve always been one to say that your network is your net worth, and imagining it in your mind could make it your reality, and now I had living proof that this stuff worked, which felt even better. In an incredibly competitive job market, I got the job I had envisioned and knew was meant for me.

Except……….

Life always has its yin and yang. While all this was building, something else was unraveling. It can never be simple, can it?

A month before this job offer, and I was deep in the job search, interviewing but not getting anything to move forward, our landlord let us know that he would not be renewing our lease. He wanted to renovate the property, so we had to move out when our lease was up. We had planned to stay one more year, as our last child had one more year of high school, and then we would officially be empty nesters. Moving again right after we’d just settled in felt like getting knocked over right when we’d found our footing.

Or maybe it didn’t have to feel that way. We already planned to leave Houston once our son graduated. Was this the universe nudging us to go sooner? I didn’t have a job demanding long hours yet. If there was ever a time to move, this was it.

While researching where we would move if we did move out of state, I came across a job in the exact same industry that I had been in before, and they were hiring with a start date around the same time that we would have to move. It seemed perfectly aligned. If I could get this job in Florida and my partner could transfer his hair-styling license he just got over there, we could restart our lives. Yes, a year earlier than we expected, but sometimes that’s just the way life works.

We told the kids, and while my son was a little disappointed, the saying “you’ll make new friends” was not a foreign one in our Hipsy household. We move houses every couple of years, and they have moved schools throughout their childhood. This wasn’t something out of the ordinary for him. Plus, my daughter was already attending college in Florida, so it made sense for us to move a little closer to her, especially since my son was considering attending the same college.

I got to work. I applied for the job and reached out to contacts who could provide a good referral. I knew I could get it; my credentials made me overqualified for the job itself. Meanwhile, my partner applied to have his license transferred to Florida. I started looking for places that we could move to with a move date that aligned with when our lease would be up. I was so excited. I knew that everything would work out perfectly. This was the reason that nothing was working out for us in Houston, I told everyone, because we were supposed to be moving to Florida.

I was counting down the days to when we moved. It has always been my dream to live by the beach and go there every weekend. To know it was finally becoming my reality left me elated. Yes, I was leaving my friends behind, but…I’d make new friends. Moving to somewhere new is in my DNA; it’s part of me. This move was everything I didn’t even know I needed in this moment.

And then one Monday, I came home to the news that the landlord had called and said that he might not renovate the place. He needed to fix some things with the deed, but if he couldn’t, he would renew the lease with us. He wouldn’t know until Wednesday or Friday; he’d have to get back to us. It felt like someone had ripped my dreams away from me and left me there, dangling in nothing. We waited for Wednesday, for Friday, for the weekend. We checked in. He wasn’t sure yet. This went on for 3 weeks. We were left in this limbo; would we be staying or would we be going?

Financially, it made more sense for us to stay another year. For my son’s sake, it would make more sense to stay, but gods, I didn’t want to. I was so close to moving to the beach. So close to breaking out of this cage I had felt I was in for the last 11 years.

We stayed in the limbo. The job in Florida interviewed me and wanted to move forward with the background check. And then the job offer for my dream job in Houston came through. And while I should have been so happy to get an offer on a job that was everything I had previously been wanting and manifesting so badly, I was crushed that we wouldn’t be moving to Florida. I had to tell them whether I’d accept the job, but we still didn’t know if we would be staying in the house.

I knew in my heart what would happen, but fuck I didn’t want to admit it, I didn’t want to acknowledge that maybe the universe had other plans, and that this was just some sort of cruel blip that was played on me. My hopes and dreams were at their peak, only to be immediately crushed.

I talked it over with my partner, and we decided that I should accept that job and that if we had to move, we would just find something else in Houston and wait out the year, allowing my son to finish his last year of high school in Houston and giving us time to catch up on our financial plan. I sent the response that crushed my own dream and quietly accepted we’d be staying in Houston.  

I cried that day, I had everything I wanted, but at the same time, I had everything I dreamed pushed aside. Here I was holding gratitude and grief in the same breath, and I was not okay. I couldn’t even talk about it; I didn’t want to talk about it. There was nothing to talk about; I needed a moment to let my heart and brain align.

The next day, a long-awaited Friday, the landlord reached out to let us know he would renew the lease with us and wouldn’t raise the rent. Everything worked out perfectly, and we got everything we wanted. But my soul was still mourning the dream life I had already started living.

That weekend, I gave myself the space and time to truly feel all my feelings. I didn’t even understand them. I was grateful, genuinely, for the job, for not having to move, for the financial runway. And underneath that, I was crushed. I’d been so close to the life I’d been dreaming about for years, and I didn’t want to wait for it anymore.

I decided that the best way forward was just not to speak of it at all. As the saying goes, “if you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all”. So I kept quiet. I didn’t tell my friends about my new career opportunity or that the house worked out for over a week. I didn’t want to talk. I didn’t want anyone to tell me the long list of reasons why this was all for the better; I knew the list, I knew the reasons, I didn’t want to hear it. So, I shut down.

It was such a weird experience for me to be in this moment. To hold two polar opposite feelings at the exact same time. Gratitude because it all worked out and grief for the dream I had lost and wouldn’t be living. The curse of the Gemini was fully upon me, and I completely shut down.

Eventually, I told my clients from my previous job about the move; it was easier that way to ease into it. Then, I told one friend, and after my first week at work, I finally told the rest of my friends.

By week two I was finally able to feel the gratitude without the weight underneath it. The grief didn’t disappear. I just did what I always do with feelings I don’t want to sit with: boxed it up, put it on a shelf, and moved on.

I am now three weeks into my job, and my 39^th birthday is coming up this Friday. This year feels different. I normally have plans, things that I want to do, and a list of everything I will be doing. But I just feel like I’ve gotten off a roller coaster of emotions, and I’m still trying to find my footing in this same-but-different life I am now living. Yes, everything worked out for my highest good, and I’m so grateful for that. I know that eventually I’ll live my hipsy free life, but today isn’t that day. And I’m trying to be okay with that.

Right now, I’m focusing on protecting my peace and zeroing in on all the financial goals I said I would accomplish when I finally got a job that paid better than the last. I’ve been doing that, for which I’m proud. 12 years in finance, and I can actually say I got a lot out of it. I learned about how to manage my money, bought a house, made it a cash-flowing rental property, learned how to invest in the stock market and grow my retirement accounts, and how to save and grow the wealth that we have.

Life has been so good to me, I see it. I acknowledge it. I am grateful for it. And I now have proof that consciously manifesting my life works, like really fast.

I don’t know all that this year will bring, but I can tell you that in a year from now, it won’t be sitting here at this café, and it won’t be in Texas. That I am certain. I have one more year in this beautiful cage, and then I will finally be free.

Until then, my fellow dreamers and doers, life will keep happening for me, and I will do my best to keep you updated on this wild journey that is my life.

I’ll just be here, intentionally dreaming and building.

A.A.