Sat night, 10pm, and instead of working on the project I should have stopped talking to my mum about it months ago. She asked if I was 'getting close' to quitting my job. I've been making decent money on the side project for about 18 months now — enough that some months feel real, other months I realize the runway is shorter than I thought. I told her: "Mum, I don't know." That's the honest version. Not "I'm this close" or "just need a few more months." Just: I genuinely don't know if this is the dumb persistence that pays off or the stubborn thing that wastes another year while I'm 35. The relief of saying it out loud — to her, to myself — was weird. I think I've been performing confidence about this for so long that I forgot what actual uncertainty sounds like. Not "I'm scared" (that part they know) but "I might be making the wrong call and I'm paying attention to that now instead of pretending I'm not." She did the parent thing where she offered to help financially and I had to explain that's not actually the gap. The gap is: does this thing have legs, or am I just good at talking about it? Anyone else stuck in this limbo with family? How do you stop performing the dream and start being honest about not knowing if it's real?