Committing to writing as a daily exercise is tough but rewarding. Here's a peek at my progress so far.
I resigned from my company and entered into the mysterious space between jobs I call the vastness.
Departure
I left my job almost six weeks ago.
I wasn’t fired. I willfully resigned.
I had nothing lined up. No other job. No consulting opportunity. No internships. No pet projects.
I had some savings in the bank and my wife is working so it’s not like I was jumping off a cliff with absolutely no safety net. But still I did not know where I would land (still don’t). And of course I do have a baby. Risk and uncertainty were fully present.
How did I make the decision to leave? I asked myself if I still wanted to be working at this place by the time it was my birthday, which was about a month away. It was a big question that required a simple yes/no answer. I sat with this question for a while, and what I realized is that any activity that takes me away from my daughter and family for the majority of my waking hours has to be worth it. It has to be fulfilling and engaging at least enough to be satisfying. I can live in an environment of change and I’m willing to work hard. But when it comes down to it, does the opportunity feel worth the sacrifice? The answer came back “no.” That sealed it for me. It was time to make my exit.
In the startup world, which is so data, metrics and logic driven (at least on the surface) similar to the stock market shout out to behavioral economics, making intuitive decisions is often viewed as risky and scary. But this is my life. To satisfy my analytical self I went through the exercise of weighing the pros and cons of staying vs. leaving. But honestly, I never find this practice that satisfying, it is simply something that needs to be done on the way to making an intuitive decision. Trust my gut. I believe research exists that both supports and discredits this approach as a method of valid decision making. Life is funny that way, in that it incorporates a hefty dose of choose your own adventure flavor fundamentally asking each of us to decide what we choose to believe in, which then shifts our reality of what is possible and what is not.
Enter the Vastness
I made the decision to leave. But where did I go?
I arrived smack in the middle of a place I like to call the vastness.
The vastness is a friend… and a foe. It is infinitely exciting and terrifying. It is a paradise and a torture chamber. It is peace and paranoia. It is, like many things in life, what you make of it.
The vastness is the space between jobs. When day to day work responsibility falls away and is replaced by a potentially endless number of possibilities. When one’s purpose is questioned. When EVERYTHING is questioned. Most of all who we are, what we are doing and why? In the vastness, deep existential questions present themselves like long lost relatives looking for an answer, hungry for clarity.
The vastness is the primordial soup of creation. In this state, we can reform ourselves. We can rediscover ourselves. We can change direction. Recalibrate. Reinvent. We can remember simple yet powerful truths we have always believed in but perhaps forgotten in the hectic pace of the day to day. For example, in my case I love to write. That is what I remembered. And that is one major reason why I started this blog.
How many layers of day to day thoughts had to be shed to uncover this old insight anew? Many, and then many more. It takes time to really appreciate the power of the vastness. Perhaps a lifetime and beyond. It is like looking at an anthill, only to realize the anthill is on a hill, only to see the hill is on a mountain, then to view the mountain range, the continent, the planet and so forth. It takes time to take in the zoomed out perspective, if we even choose to appreciate that it exists. For perspective can be terrifying. Simple and powerful truths have a way of both ringing resoundingly true AND also creating a series of tangible, big hairy challenges in our life should we to choose to pursue these truths.
Know Thyself
The vastness is terrifying in that it has a way of removing us from our everyday career purpose to discover something new. Yes we can take care of personal business. We can approach email zero. Go to the dentist and doctor. Get the car fixed. Cook. Sleep in. String up those bulb lights that have been lying in the closet for over a year. Binge on Netflix. And more. Addressing and helping other often neglected areas of our lives get up to speed. Spread the love. But the nagging will begin, perhaps quietly but ever persistent. It can visit when we are taking an afternoon break. Or late at night after the wife and kid are asleep. What do I really want to do with my life? What am I passionate about? Where am I headed with my career?
These questions are not easy to answer. Because to do so we must know or remember who we are. And if we are accustomed to moving at a sprinting pace day in, day out there is little time for self reflection and answering these whoppers.
That’s why I don’t trust the first round of answers that arise. These are the logically valid responses. Based on what I’ve done which presupposes who I am, I should do X next. These are the landmines, for though well intentioned, the elegant logic here would ultimately lead me astray to a career that I can make sense of, but would in all likelihood leave me feeling mysteriously and deeply dissatisfied in the years to come. It’s like being beholden to my resume when in fact I am the true arbiter of my destiny, not some crafted bullet points that formulate a narrative of what I’ve done professionally to fit into a company’s paradigm of being desirable. Sometimes I don’t want to make sense. On the contrary, I intentionally want to break my own narrative to access deeper levels of possibility in my life.
Dig deeper. Remember more. I find inspiration from books like Art of Work and Artist’s Way and podcasts like Unemployable. Take your time. It took me weeks for enough layers to fall off and to start remembering. It will take more yet. How deep does the rabbit hole go?
Week one was about vacation and the joy of staying home and being with my family.
Week two was beginning to dig into the questions of what now and where to, with the obvious results presenting themselves. Anxiety occasionally knocking on my door.
Week three was realizing the obvious results are shiny and attractive in that they make sense, but if I’m honest with myself there has got to be something more. Anxiety hits a high right now. Feeling disoriented like a helium-filled balloon floating aimlessly in the big blue sky.
Week four through six is a lot of remembering, of working on projects like this blog and realizing the old and deeper motivations that fuel me from a personal and career perspective. Anxiety persists, but there’s now more of a context for what I really do want to work on. Anxiety starts to get put in it’s place, but still rages occasionally.
What happens next is to be continued. Uncharted territory. My dwindling bank account says hello.
Remembrance
The truths that have emerged so far from my journey into the vastness are two-fold. One is write. Two is write for a career and leave the 9 to 6 job world behind.
Why? Because then I can pursue freedom. Freedom of schedule and geography. And then I can be with my daughter as she grows up. I can spend quality time with my family without asking for permission. We can travel the world and explore together. And I can be healthy and happier and more engaged with the work that I do for a living. At least that is the dream. The vastness has a way of presenting visions and then leaving it to us to figure out how to build them. Smacks of naivete and optimism I know. But isn’t that the genesis of most great things? I’m willing to get my hands dirty, if not for this then for what?
My perspective would be different if I had a job. If I was still working. My vision would be blurry. And I could justify this vision away with so many valid reasons. I could make the argument to stay in the job. To push through it. I could convince myself of that narrative. But as mentioned earlier, life can be tricky in that what we believe we make our reality, whether true or not. In other words, be careful what you wish for, you just might get it. May we all wish in the right direction.
So here I am in the vastness. Looking up from the abyss to see what I’ve done. And now having a vision of where I’d like to go. A career shift. The honing of a new skill. In a way starting from scratch. Yes it’s intimidating. Yes it’s scary. But the gift of the vastness is that with this newfound personal clarity, I recognize life is short lived and in doing the work I am drawn to, I stand the best chance of creating something that others find helpful, while also creating a sustainable craft for myself that I find fulfilling and engaging. As long as I can then find a way to make ends meet and provide a good quality of life for my family, that sounds like a winning equation.
It’s worth it to pursue this dream. But how do I bridge the gap between my current position and the dream? This is to be explored in a future post.
In the meantime, off I go. To explore more in the vastness. Into the beautiful depths of possibility peppered with crevasses of anxiety. One step, one blog post, one day at a time.