Identifying What’s Next
Sunday from the Porch
Most of my life has been spent wondering what comes next. I’d like to say the question is typically framed as a hope practice but, truthfully, sometimes it comes more from a place of desperation. But, no matter how I look at it, it’s long been the only question that has carried me through life and gotten me through moments I knew I could no longer live inside. “What’s next” has helped me accept the inevitable ends of things, identify opportunities, find the necessary exits, and imagine future versions of myself I’ve wanted to become. It’s given me a reason for my ambition, language for my dissatisfactions, and the momentum I’ve needed to chase change and shake myself awake in moments that have come to feel unbearable in their stillness.
Sometimes the question comes from a place of generosity. What’s next? I’m ready to make the space and time and commit the resources to obtaining it. Sometimes it’s almost been a prayer for possibility. What’s next? Please find me. It’s even been a humbling act of rage. What’s next? Hit me with your best shot. (Don’t taunt the Universe.) Either way, it always reminds me that where I am isn’t necessarily permanent or who I am (or how I am) is never the end state.
I wish the question didn’t sometimes provoke a sense of lack; the belief or feeling that who we are or where we are or what we have is in any way not enough. Sometimes what’s next will put me into a paradoxical freeze state. Like the one I am in right now. I love when I get the chance to finally stop moving (even for a month or a week or a weekend) and feel how fragile everything really is. Always wondering what’s next can prevent me from living in the present. Especially when the promise of the next thing feels safer than leaning into the present.
For people like me who have constructed our lives through vigilance, “what’s next?” doesn’t just disappear with improvement. Serenity doesn’t come at the flip of a switch. I’ve always thought of serenity as a sort of dimmer and everyone has different technology. For me, even when my dimmer is on its lowest setting and serenity feels real, I can still see the room I’m in and the surrounding property. The idling remains. What I mean is, even in periods of “rest,” some part of me is always anticipating, evaluating, scanning, or wondering what is gathering along the edge of the moment—just outside the emotional horizon. I liken it to a soft electrical current beneath the surface of a day. A low internal hum that asks, constantly, whether I should be doing more or preparing better or responding quicker or thinking, looking, or living further ahead.
Until recently, I have only ever felt safe in motion. Planning helped me avoid uncertainty, work gave me a necessary structure, ambition always lifted me out of circumstances that came to feel too small, too painful, or too unstable. Holding space for what’s next was not an act of avoidance but agency.
TO BE CONTINUED…