A year for questions or answers?

“There are years that ask questions and years that answer.” — Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God

This is one of my favorite quotes, because it so simply sums up different years in our lives. Last year was a year of questions. It felt like all I could do was wonder, question, worry, reflect, ask myself and universe what am I supposed to be doing? Because of this, there was a constant tension in place, pushing me to figure out what I’m supposed to be doing with my life. When I first got laid off in the summer of 2022, I thought that exactly one year, I’d have the answers to everything. I thought that twelve months would basically fix all my problems with super satisfactory answers. I was wrong. I completely missed the mark. Twelve months flew by, the another six months and 2023 was over.

This year feels both incredibly fast and slow—fast, because it’s already the end of April, and slow, because not much has changed (at least from an outsider’s perspective). However, things feel different. I feel like a flower that is in the phase of having been pollinated and replanted somewhere else, stuck in the ground as a seed. I’m the same type of flower without being the same exact plant. Even though no one can see the microscopic changes and growth taking place beneath the soil, I can feel something happening. Although today I look like nothing, I know that this process is part of becoming a beautiful flower that will bloom in the spring.

What do I mean by things feel different? There is no longer this frenzied energy of constantly asking myself, “what am I supposed to be doing with my life?” On a tactical level, I made a decision earlier this year to turn down a job opportunity in order to pursue trading and investing full time. So, in some ways I answered the immediate question I spent most of 2023 asking myself of what job am I going to do next. This still doesn’t answer the bigger question of what am I doing with my life, but this question isn’t keeping me up at night the way it used to.

My attitude towards this has shifted quite a bit in that I don’t think we need to know exactly where we’re going. Plans and goals are great but I’ve found that they rarely happen the way we want and even when we do get to whatever goal post we set for ourselves, those things end up being a lot less satisfying and exciting once we have them. I feel okay knowing that I am somewhere in the middle of journey and just enjoying being here—even without knowing where it will all lead me one day. David Wagoner’s poem “Lost” is such a powerful testament to this concept of being present wherever we are.

I’m focusing my time and energy right now on rebuilding good habits so that I can be ready to say yes when the right opportunity comes along. Living diligently in this phase of my life is not about working long hours and making a ton of money (although I am calling in making a ton of money), but about being kind to others and myself, taking care of my physical and mental health, being grateful for all that I have, finding balance, and living in alignment with my values. So, it’s not quite yet a year of answers in the sense that I have the answers to life’s big questions, but it is in the sense that I am countering the distracting quality of asking what’s next by staying present. It’s easy to constantly be unhappy, move the next goal post, focus on what we don’t have, but that life, which used to be mine, no longer suits me. I am a seed full of life, a miracle patiently waiting for the right season to blossom.