What's next?
Embracing new beginnings, grieving losses, and making bold decisions.
Call after coffee after conversation, the same dreaded, soul-deadening question kept coming up over, and over, and over again . . .
What’s next?
What do you want to be when you grow up?
Since shutting down the startup I co-founded, Helm, after 6 years of being relentlessly dedicated to building something out of nothing, I found myself at a loss of words.
Where the number of opportunities seems abundant, yet absent.
Some common themes did arise like a desire for:
Building connections.
Building community.
Building culture.
But figuring out what’s next is difficult after spending the past 6 years immersed in an identity of wearing ALL the hats. A different hat depending on the week, the day, and the hour. So which hat do you want to pursue?
And then a sense of imposter syndrome floods the system that you’re not actually equipped to wear any of the hats at all, so now what?
It feels like Sylvia Plath’s fig tree. Where you’re hungry, starving, eager to get your hands dirty and dive into the deep end. You have dozens of delicious figs dangling in front of you. But, you can’t decide which one to choose, to eat first. Because time is finite you ultimately can’t choose all of them. You must choose to kill and grieve the loss of most of them.
Yet the inability to choose any of the figs leaves you steeping in a poisonous, romantic cocktail of despair. As you watch each fig, each opportunity, rot right before your eyes and fall to the ground. One by one. Until the tree is bare, and there are no figs left.
So what do I want to be when I grow up?
I don’t know, but here’s what I’m doing now.
My friend Jessie was telling me a story about how she’s been pondering what’s next for her. She mentioned that someone gave her advice in the form of a question. A question I can’t stop thinking about. A question I’ve been using as a decision-making framework. A question I want to leave you with.
They asked her:
“What would BOLD Jessie do?”
So I continue to ask myself:
“What would BOLD Austin do?”
And now I want you to ask yourself:
What would BOLD you do?