Wait and see

Red oak? White oak? Ash? By spring, it will be much easier to tell. (Image by Albrecht Fietz)

It's ironic that, as I work with adolescents to prepare them for future education and their eventual career, they may well be headed for a field or profession that doesn't even exist right now.

Most of what I do for a living was beyond my imagination when I was thirteen, whether because technology had not yet made it possible or simply because of my own ignorance of the existing possibilities.

Much of what we offer students by way of education, even at the university level, is a guess about what they might need. Sometimes, it's more tradition than anything else.

It's well beyond me to be able to see decades into the future. I can't even figure out what's happening a few months from now.

In May, The Little Middle School closes after a decade. In June, I'll have a break between sessions of The Akimbo Workshops, which I've been more or less continuously involved in for three years.

So the question is: Then what?

The answer brings me a deep satisfaction and joy: I don't know.

I have gotten better at planning over the past few years. If I wanted to, I could set a goal, map out a strategy, and then get going on the tactics. By June, I could have a new project well underway.

That isn't what I want. At least, I don't know for sure that it's what I will want. I can try to anticipate what I will want, but another option is to wait and see. And that's what I'm going to do this time.

I'll still have a roster of clients, but I'll also have a lot of free time compared to the amount I have at the moment. I'll be able to reflect on what's next without rushing into it. That reflection process, as of now, is the only thing that I know for sure that I want to commit to.

In some entrepreneurial communities that I'm part of, there's a lot of talk of "don't leave money on the table," "move fast and break things," and the everlasting hustle. I crave a respite from all of that.

I trust that whatever I choose to do will happen at the pace that is right. I don't need to be in a rush. Time doesn't have to be viewed as a scarce resource, precious though it may be. I will have what I have, and that will be enough.

Already, I have grown and changed over the past month. I've questioned things that I've long believed. I've adjusted my priorities to make more room for the work at hand.

Instead of looking ahead, as I so often do, I've surprised myself in recent weeks by shifting my focus from the future to the present. I realized that so much of the noise in my head about what could be was a way to distract myself from reality, and now I'm dealing with reality in its fullness. It is difficult at times, but profoundly satisfying, too.

If I've ended up in a different place than I was expecting last month, who knows where I'll be by June or September? There are too many variables and interesting paths to go down to know ahead of time what I will choose.

So I'll keep picking up clues and ideas along my way, but I won't do anything drastic with them. I'll leave space to ponder and explore. I won't make any grand plans just yet — I'm going to wait and see. The future will be here before we know it, but that's the only thing I know about it.