In the middle of the journey of our days
I found that I was in a darksome wood—
The right road lost and vanished in the maze. —Dante, The Inferno
I guess I must begin with despair—of almost five years in length.
It began with a global pandemic that mutated into a cancer journey. That evolved into a dark and uncertain recovery, which then segued into a breakdown of my career, industry, and business. All together, my sense of self, purpose, progress, and profession utterly collapsed, and all due to forces way WAY outside my control—COVID, quarantine, cancer as well as those socio-economic and geopolitical things out there; etc & etc.
Eventually, I came to learn that a human being can only really deal with one calamity at a time even if multiple are concurrently happening. And when you prioritize them, it doesn't mean the others recede patiently to the wings. No—they're all ready to rush at you as soon as your attention is freed. The winner gets to pull you under again.
So what did I do?
I followed the advice of this fortune cookie assiduously:
"The greatest achievement in life is to stand up again after falling."
Such that by the time I arrived at 2025, I finally was able to focus on this issue: What was I going to do next?