Did I Say Too Much?
STILL UNTANGLING — ISSUE NO. 2
October 4, 2026
I released an episode this week—and almost immediately wondered whether I should have kept part of it to myself.
In the episode, I shared something I haven’t talked about publicly before.
I spent years as an executive. Then I left that world and built HR Maxim.
For nearly ten years, it worked. I built something real. Something successful. Something I was incredibly proud of.
And then it started struggling.
I said that out loud.
I also admitted that, for a while, the responsible answer seemed obvious: go find another W-2 executive job.
I had the experience. I knew I could do the work.
But I wasn’t excited about it.
I was reaching for something familiar because familiar feels safer when something else isn’t working.
And eventually, I had to admit that I didn’t want to abandon HR Maxim. I wanted to stop forcing myself to operate an old version of it.
I wanted to refocus it.
I wanted to build People Untangled alongside it.
I wanted to believe I was allowed to create a third option.
All of that was true.
I meant every word.
Then the episode went live.
And the part of me that prefers a clean, competent story started asking questions.
Would potential clients hear the word struggling and stop listening there?
Would former colleagues hear that I considered a W-2 job and decide I couldn’t make HR Maxim work?
Had I confused being honest with undermining myself?
That feeling is basically the emotional equivalent of hitting Send and immediately wanting to recall the email—except mine was fifteen minutes long and already on YouTube.
There was no recalling it.
Part of me wanted to follow the episode around with a footnote:
HR Maxim was successful.
I know what I’m doing.
This is an evolution, not a collapse.
Please don’t misunderstand me.
Apparently, recording an entire episode about over-explaining did not cure me.
That’s the difficult thing about telling the truth in public: you don’t get to stand beside it and manage how everyone interprets it.
The polished version of me is easier to control.
She tells you what worked, what she built, and what she’s doing next. She doesn’t linger too long on the part where she didn’t know what came next.
But that isn’t the whole story.
And if I’m going to build something around work, life, and the complicated business of being human, I don’t want to edit every complicated part out of my own life before I let you see it.
That doesn’t mean every true thing belongs in public.
Some things need time. Some involve people who never agreed to become part of the story. Some are still too raw for me to understand what they mean.
But this story was mine.
I wasn’t sharing it because I needed someone to rescue me or tell me what to do. I shared it because I had finally understood what it meant.
I wasn’t choosing between HR Maxim and a W-2 job.
I was deciding whether I believed I was allowed to build a life that didn’t fit neatly into either box.
I can be capable and admit that something struggled.
I can be proud of what I built and acknowledge that its old form no longer fit me.
I can have considered the familiar path and still decide not to take it.
Those truths don’t cancel one another out.
The difficult chapter isn’t the whole story.
But removing it would make the story less true.
Do I still feel a little exposed knowing people can hear that episode and decide whatever they want about me?
Absolutely.
But maybe the question isn’t whether I said too much.
Maybe it’s whether I said something true for a reason I still believe in.
I did.
Here’s the question I’m carrying this week:
What truth have you been editing because you’re afraid someone will mistake one chapter for your whole story?
Still untangling,
Sandy
Let’s untangle this.
P.S. If you haven’t watched or listened to Episode 2, “Did You Choose This Life—or Just Keep Going?” you can find it below.