Hey Creator: What's next?

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“Are you really retiring?” came the delayed reply the other day from my shaman buddy who recently moved to Costa Rica.

“Can I hire Sandy?” was the request of many onlookers, eager to poach the world’s most mysteriously talented woman.

“You can’t retire! You’re too young and attractive.” Okay, no one said this, but they were thinking it.

But more than any other question, I heard this one echoing in my own soul: “What will you do next?”

My brother recently graduated high school (yes, I have a brother who is 19 years younger than me); and at our sibling lunch before his commencement, I asked him, “So what’s next? College? Work? Plans for world domination?”

He chuckled while poking his fried rice at the hibachi restaurant curiously located in northern Alabama (in retrospect, we shouldn’t have ordered the shrimp). It’s such an interesting and appropriate question. When leaving one thing, one must know what he is leaving it for.

What I'm leaving for

As a younger man, I believed that it was better to run toward something than away from something else. That it was best to know what I was heading into. But that’s not always how life works, is it?

Sometimes, the good has to end before the better can begin.

Sometimes, we have to leave what we know to experience the thrill of the unknown.

Sometimes, we must say goodbye to everything we thought we were to become what we might be.

And as my brother eloquently said, “I dunno, man.” I mean, who really does? And what’s so wrong with taking a moment to pause and reflect on the past several years of work or school or whatever? Why do we always have to know what’s next? And do we ever actually know?

Avoiding the inevitable

This, to me, belies a deeper dysfunction in our culture, which is our discomfort with and denial of death. The inevitable is always looming, and we really don’t seem to like it: the idea that we will at some point extinguish.

As I recently experienced at my grandmother’s memorial service, though, there is something beautiful about acknowledging and ritualizing endings. To celebrate what was, to look back with gratitude—and perhaps, even longing—on something you created, something you were part of, is to declare what it meant to you. Even if it is no more.

Personally, I have learned the willingness to let some things end has allowed me to appreciate them even more, to love them for what they were even if they are no longer necessary or even helpful.

This lesson has come up for me more than once recently, as I recognize the one-year “anniversary” of my divorce. It is, at once, a thing to celebrate and to grieve. I celebrate the act itself, a courageous one of self-trust that not everyone will understand, but those who do, will. And at the same time, I grieve what we all lost.

I celebrate the bravery of my children and how much they’ve grown, and I grieve what will never be. And there will always be something that could have been but will not. But for every thing that won’t occur is something that will—because of such a choice.

And so it is with endings: they create space for something else. Maybe something better, maybe something potentially worse; but always something different. They allow us to step back into the mystery of creation, into the void from which all things, including us, emerge. And this is scary. It cannot not be.

And so, I begin again, not knowing exactly what’s next. This is not what I would have preferred, to be honest; but it is the reality in which I live. I keep finding myself in these self-created liminal spaces, caught between where I was and where I want to be.

Where do I want to be?

Well, I don’t know that, either. Not here. At least, not forever. I don’t want to always wander and wonder. I want to know my purpose and what my next move is; and of course, I have ideas—I always have ideas. But I do not know what will be, what new thing wants to emerge. That just might be unknowable until I begin to take my first few steps in a new direction.

All I know is: here I am. And to welcome the new season of creation, I have to fully say goodbye to the past: to celebrate and grieve, opening my heart once again to possibility. New beginnings require endings. I’m learning to be more comfortable with that, and to feel excited about the unknown.

To live an interesting life, we have to break up with boring. Which means we need to learn to live with ambiguity and be willing to buck our own routines on occasion. What else is an adventure but, in the words of Chesterton, an “inconvenience rightly considered”?

Inconvenience is a fact of life. Surprises and mishaps happen. Change, as we should all know by now, is the only constant; so to be unwilling to adapt, to grow, to let go, is insanity. Consistency just might be the most delusional thing to which we aspire.

May we all learn to rightly consider our inconveniences, to dance with the vicissitudes of life and work, and to turn it all into the adventure we deserve and crave.

What next?

If I knew that, I wouldn’t want it. ;)

But surely, there will be a next. There will be another. There will always be more… until there isn’t. Let’s learn to be daring together, to try new things and be willing to say goodbye to the familiar before we know what will follow.

I don’t know what you call that, but I like to think of it as courage. Sure, maybe a little unpredictable at times, but certainly preferable to the alternative.

After all, to quote the inimitable Emerson, a foolish consistency truly is the “hobgoblin of little minds.” And I don’t know about you, but I aspire to be anything but that.

See you on the other side.

Jeff

📖 Did you know that we wouldn’t have hardcover books without...cheese? Fascinating Twitter thread.

🐦 Everything ends before you think it does.​

🎧 Jeff and Chantel are really enjoying The Rise and Fall of Mars Hill, a Christianity Today podcast about the mega church led by the infamous Marc Driscoll. Plot twist: what looks like the end is never really the end.

😬 Ever written something for someone else, only to learn they hated it? Join Breaking Bad and SNL writer Bob Odenkirk’s club.

💰 Are these the best pens for writing and drawing?

🎙️ On the HC podcast this week, Jeff shares about his and Chantel’s recent trip to the Art Institute of Chicago. Guess what—art is not necessarily about the final product. Join us for Day at the Museum.

Jeff, who’s saying goodbye this week to our project manager, Liz (she’s going on maternity leave!), and hello to a team retreat in the foothills of Tennessee.

Chantel, who’s saying goodbye to all the houseplants that died while she was away this summer...and hello to turning the fireplace on in the mornings.

Matt, who’s saying a slow goodbye to all the productivity topics that made him "YouTube popular"... and hello to a new category of videos about the creator's journey.

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