No problems to solve.
No fires to extinguish.
No one needed me. No emails or meetings. No irate clients.
Nothing.
A few years ago I sold the social media agency I had owned for a decade. Post-exit life was confusing as hell.
I thought I'd be basking for years. Travelling and training. Having lunches out that didn't end.
Instead, I felt lost.
When the sale completed my accountant asked if that was the biggest transaction I'd ever do in my life. I said, "I hope not. I'm only 32!"
I didn't want to peak at 32.
After much journaling and staring out the window I realised what I was afraid of. It wasn't blank space in my calendar or having to make investment decisions.
It was irrelevance.
I still had something to prove. Places I wanted to be. Milestones I wanted to reach. An idea of who I wanted to be in the world. If I didn't have a company, if no one needed me, who even was I?
I didn't have the courage to not exist.
But you don't need a big exit to have this feeling. We all get it.
We can't leave WhatsApp groups because we might miss something. We have to weigh in on current affairs so people know our opinion. We comment, we post, we share about our lives. People have to know what we think and what we are doing.
But when was the last time you turned your phone off for the whole day, or didn't get back to someone straight away?
Or didn't care what the outside world thought of what you were doing?
What I since realised: the blank space isn't the enemy. It's where the answers are.
While I was scrambling to find new business ideas and figuring out how to show up online when I had nothing to sell: the trees were whispering, the sea was hinting, the silence was calling.
You don't always need to be somebody.
Sometimes, you can be nobody.