Dear reader,
I have to admit I’m posting this newsletter because I want to have something to publish. I hope you’ll forgive my self-indulgence at the expense of your time and attention.
It’s been two weeks since I posted anything new and that’s left me feeling anxious. Then again, anxiety is a bit of a constant companion at the moment. You see, six weeks ago I sold the marketing consulting business I co-founded to my partner. The whole journey has been an interesting experience. I have plans to write about it more, but for now I’ll start with a comment on what’s happened to my life since the sale.
When I decided to sell the business and began sharing that news with others, the conversations all more or less went the same way: first, a brief congratulations, and then the inevitable question: “What’s next?”
“Nothing,” was my reply. I sold my business with a plan to have no plan. No, I didn’t make so much money from the sale that I’m done working forever. Rather, my plan of no-plan was carefully crafted to give me time to sit in the tension of not knowing and not doing—to “stare into the void”.
That is, my action is inaction; my doing is non-doing.
So how’s it going? All according to no-plan.
With no structure present, everything has come apart. The words I would use to describe my life condition at this point are “limp” and “flaccid”. Turns out James Clear was right: we do not rise to the level of our aspirations (“goals”, he says); we fall to the level of our systems. This terrible truth has revealed a similarly frightening realization about my life:
I have no systems that do not rely on the presence work for their existence. Put another way, my life revolves around work. Gross.
I was inclined to beat myself up over being in such a state. (Nothing like some good old negative self-talk to get you out of bed in the morning, amirite?) Fortunately, the kind words of my good friend Lyssa brought me comfort. Change is Lyssa’s thing. She’s studies it, she teaches it, she’s built a professional practice on it, and she embodies it in her own life. In short, she’s the perfect person to talk to with my life in disarray.
Here’s what she told me:
“Mike, you’re exactly where you’re supposed to be. You’re having a ‘normal’ experience of change.”
She went on to explain that I shouldn’t be surprised by my so-called “limp and flaccid” life condition. I removed all the structures holding life together, so of course it all came loose.
In my head, I pictured the death of a cell. When its walls collapse, that thin membrane keeping everything inside, it almost vomits out all its innards. Or it somehow disintegrates, losing any cohesive or recognizable shape to identify it as a singular organism. Either way you look at it, what was contained inside is now outside, loose and freely floating in whatever goop or glop it lived in.
It helped to hear Lyssa tell me there was something normal about all this. To me, my experience is abnormal. I’d never started a business before, nor had I sold one. The last time I found myself with a chunk of free time on my hands, I was on the verge of a mental break. Thankfully, this time is quite different, though the idea is the same—hold space, watch, and listen. Hence, the no-plan.
What’s next? It seems like an innocuous question, doesn’t it? But it’s not. Like a barbed hook hiding under a bright lure, swallowing the premise of the question is inviting oneself to accept the assumption that something must always be next. To extend the fishing metaphor, we know what comes next: a painful ride up to a world we cannot survive, where we will end up butchered and battered for the benefit of sating some other creature’s appetite for our flesh.
No thanks.
But neither can I remain limp and flaccid. It’s time to design a new life.
What’s cool about using design as the verb of choice is the invitation to view my life as an iterative process—as a series of prototypes and experiments rather than a linear process that’s supposed to culminate in some sort of finished construction. With this spirit in mind, I am free to experience that which our ancestors felt most keenly: that life is lived in seasons, and all things have their time.
The goal is not to build something that will withstand the winds of change, like some brick house built to keep the wolves at bay, but rather to see beauty in life’s various expressions. It is possible to design a life that moves like this—don’t ask me how, I don’t know yet—but I’m sure I’ll figure it out.
In the words of the immortal Dao De Jing:
“Practice not-doing, and everything will fall into place.”