70k Is Nothing To The Soul
SOUL CURRENCY
5 / 20 / 2026
The sun shines through the window as we travel down the turnpike toward Ridgewood - and I feel like I’m going to lift right out of my seat.
Higher power. Universe. Maybe even God. These are the only words that come to mind that might explain the experience running through my body.
I’m covered in chills from head to toe. Goosebumps running up and down my arms and legs. Unconditional love pumping through my veins.
I didn’t know I could feel a voice rather than hear it, but that’s what seems to be happening. It feels like the warmest hug and a guaranteed sign to go for it.
Do not be afraid. Follow your dreams.
That’s how it sounded to me.
“I’ll leave my job this week”, I think to myself. Any counterarguments my logic could make right now are non-existent - because nothing feels more powerful than what I just felt. Even the fact that my hospital job would pay for my masters and I could avoid debt had no weight over the support I feel I’ll receive if I have the courage to follow this soul thread.
I barely notice the seven other people riding the 148. No one goes into the city anymore after the peak of COVID. I feel like it’s just me and my world on this big old bus.
Two years later, I find myself staring at 70k of student debt, shame and anger welling up in my chest.
I sit at my desk questioning not whether the experience on the bus was real, but whether I should’ve listened to it. Whether I interpreted it “correctly.” Whether every decision I made afterward was somehow wrong.
Should I have gotten my masters? I shouldn’t have traveled. Should’ve just lived at my parents until I had everything paid off. What if my business some how falls apart this year? Will I have to find a different type of work?
The questions, fears, and anticipations flood in at a mile a minute. Because right now, I feel trapped. And honestly, stupid for believing in anything different than the paths everyone else around me seemed to be taking.
I started to wonder if maybe I really did have to choose between my head and my heart.
Fast forward another 2 years, and I have $12,848.39 of student loans left.
And I don’t regret a thing.
Because I had to become the type of person who could hold my soul’s desires and logic in the same experience. Responsibility and freedom in the same hands. To realize that devotion to our soul may not actually be separate from responsibility, but part of it.
I’ve even come to wonder if logic and soul are ever truly as separate as we think they are.
The truth is, before the reality of my loans hit, part of me hoped they would magically work themselves out while I lived my life. I’ll be honest with you. I had reached a point where so many experiences I had only dreamed about seemed to drop right into my reality, so why wouldn’t this work out too?
But what I realized was that it wasn’t just the fact that I trusted myself and took risks on things that didn’t always make the most logical sense. It was that I did those things while fully dedicating myself to creating my life every single day.
It was no passive act.
So I decided to see my loans as a blessing - an opportunity to learn more about my relationship to money than I ever had - and I would master it. And over those next 2 years, I paid off over 50k of it while still traveling, saving, investing in mentorships, and adding some of my favorite experiences to my soul resume.
There were moments I broke down crying on my bedroom floor unsure if I had bit off more than I could chew. But there were just as many moments where my soul felt like it dropped right back into my body and I knew in my bones, I was exactly where I was meant to be.
For a long time, especially after being introduced to concepts like alignment, higher selves, timelines, and manifestation, I believed there must be one “right” path I was meant to follow. One perfect thread to pull at all times.
Then at some point, even that stopped feeling totally true.
Because life feels far more loving than that.
It feels like all paths lead to Home.