Now What?
Dear Chewey,
Well, I’m in Copenhagen today, writing you from the cobblestone streets at a café table, listening to the noises of a busy European city… which is a little weird to say, but here I am. After a seven-hour flight from Portland to Iceland, a five-hour layover in Reykjavik, and another three-hour flight to Copenhagen, I’ve finally arrived.
This moment is surreal, because I’ve been telling you about this trip for a year now, and now, finally, I’m here.
It is indescribably beautiful, and I know you would be so happy if you could see it.
But Denmark is not what I wanted to write to you about today…
Chewey, after a year of craziness, I wanted to give you the good news: I have finally graduated college!
If this news conjures images of Richard Hayden “congratulating” Tommy Callahan for graduating in “just a shade under a decade”, you can’t be faulted, given that it took me just a shade over three decades.
Nevertheless, I earned my Bachelor of Science in Human Resources Management. I even graduated cum laude, if you can believe that (I’m still struggling to accept that reality). But despite this surreal feeling of accomplishment, something within me lingers—and I’m guessing you already know what that might be about…
In 2016, outgoing U.S. President Barack Obama made his final trip abroad. While speaking at the Young Leaders of the Americas Initiative town hall in Lima, Peru, he was quoted as saying: “There’s nothing that can completely prepare you for the job of being President… You know, that first day after… they walk you into the Oval Office, then everybody leaves, and you’re thinking, ‘Oh man, now what?!’”
I’ve heard the question at least a dozen times from well-intentioned friends and family, since sharing the good news about finishing school. I’ve asked it myself, to countless graduates—from former players who I coached to my own children. It’s the dreaded question everyone seems to hear upon reaching a milestone.
Of course, it’s the most obvious question to ask, and no one should ever feel badly for asking it. Yet it is the hardest one to answer, at least for me. It always has been.
One of the things I most enjoyed about the rehab community I immersed myself within a little over two years ago was the “isms” that all of the veterans of AA seemed able to rattle off on command. One I especially remember from my month-long stay in the mountains of Taos, New Mexico, was: “If you’re standing with one foot in your past while your other foot is standing in the future, then you’re gonna wind up pissing all over your present.”
I suppose no one wants to know my “now what?” more than I do. But it’s been my past pursuit of “now what” that has caused me to really make a mess of my present, which—rather unironically—has then resulted in me getting stuck in my past… wash, rinse, repeat.
Now, this is not to say I intend to live in my parents’ basement for the remainder of my life—not that there’s anything wrong with that, Gen Z—but perhaps this time around I might be better served by keeping my eyes, ears, and mind open to this present moment.
And…that’s a bit of a long way of telling you that I’m not exactly sure what to do next in life, but I have to tell you that it feels good to have seen this process through, and I know you are proud of me.
I want to thank you, and all of our family and friends, who have supported me through this process. I wasn’t always nice, was I? Sometimes the stress of doing things like this can get the better of me. But I now have a much clearer perspective on life and what I want mine to look like.
Perhaps between the two of us, we can stay present enough in the “now” to figure out the next “what.”
Love you buddy. I’ll get you some updates and photos, soon, from this crazy European vacation—“Look kids! Big Ben” (ok, that’s enough Gen X references for the day)
