At the age of 43, I have found myself with a blank canvas. I am newly single. I can live and work anywhere. I have time and energy to commit to professional and personal pursuits beyond my role as a venture capitalist at MergeLane. I have the financial resources to support myself and invest in other opportunities. This is an opportunity granted to an extremely small subset of the human race. It’s an opportunity I want to relish, yet I find myself constantly asking and constantly being asked “What’s Next?” After some deep reflection, I’ve decided that the answer to “Where Am I Going Next?” is: I’M ALREADY THERE.
I feel most creatively inspired by communicating the lessons I’ve learned from my personal experiences through writing, public speaking, and one-on-one conversations. Perhaps my greatest gift is that I am able to see life lessons in even the most trivial everyday interaction. Simply sharing a swim lane with a stranger at a public pool inspired one of the best chapters of my upcoming book. I am able to articulate my life lessons in a way that strikes a chord. This feels easy and natural for me. Even when I share a seemingly insignificant story when I am tired, exhausted, and feel as if I have nothing more to give, I am routinely told that the message I delivered was remembered years afterward. Often without even trying, I’ve inspired people to write books, start businesses, make career changes, and do seemingly impossible or too-terrifying-to-even-try things by simply showing up in a conversation as my true, authentic self.
If I can do this while simply moving through my everyday life, imagine what I can do while recovering from a large cancerous tumor that curved my spine, leaving a picture-perfect 16-year marriage, transitioning out of a career which I deeply loved and has been my sense of purpose for 15 years, moving to a place where I do not know a soul, and embarking on the adventure of dating for the first time since I was 21 years old.
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