It was when my professional life took a jolting upswing that I started questioning whether I wanted to go through with the wedding I’d been planning to the longtime love of my life. And that’s no coincidence. I’d spent most of the decade that i’d been dating my fiancé pining for his proposal: I would write vows in my head, pick songs for our first dance—and because I am, at heart, an overachiever, I plowed through the wedding plans with determination once he finally popped the question.

Then I landed my dream job at Entertainment Weekly magazine—and, worse, I started to find my groove there, landed cover story assignments, got promoted. Worse still, I began making friends in the media and literary world of New York City, which put me in regular company with powerful editors and agents and authors who seemed to take my writing ambitions seriously. It occurred to me that I could do even more than be a staff writer at a national magazine. It occurred to me that I could be exactly the kind of person i’d barely dared to dream I could be—the kind of person who would’ve both fascinated and terrified the girl I was back in college. The girl I was when I met my fiancé. The girl I had absolutely no interest in even remembering anymore, much less being.

So I postponed the wedding I’d wanted for my entire adult life. And, eventually, I canceled it.

Since then, I have watched (on  …