What is 'What Now'?

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In launching this newsletter, I didn’t know if I’d be writing to anyone. When I decided last week to leave Facebook after 18 years of nurturing a wide web of relationships there, I figured I’d be writing from the proverbial wilderness—out of sight, out of mind.

And I decided that was okay. Thanks to a modest career in business that continues to pay the bills, I don’t currently write to make a living. Instead, I write—every day in some way—to make sense out of living. I write, as Joan Didion famously said, “to find out what I’m thinking.”

What I’m thinking at this moment, mere hours from the inauguration, is the same thing I’ve been thinking since late on November 5th: What now?

For most of last year, I had a clear organizing principle for any stretch of time that didn’t go to my family, friends, or business: Work like hell to keep Donald Trump from returning to the Oval Office.

Well, as my son used to end his big speeches when he was small: “And, um, yeah.”

So, what now? Do I disengage from politics for the next few years, as some of my most exhausted friends are choosing to do? Or do I double down?

If the right answer for me is ‘double down,’ what exactly does that look like?

Now that the company I own is firmly in the capable hands of new leadership, should I run for office myself? ::sudden neck blotches that arguably answer this question::

Or should I just do more of what I’ve done in the past, i.e. work in support of public servants I admire and trust?

Alternatively, should I sidestep the chaos of campaigns and the sausage-making of policy, roll up my sleeves, and just aim to be of service in some small way to the many, many people whom I fear will suffer under the new administration?

Even if the specific paths I’m considering are very different from yours, and even if my color-coded spreadsheet is objectively bonkers, I know I’m not alone in wondering, “What now?” I also know that “What now?” is a question we all experience on multiple levels. Today, I’m thinking of it mainly in the context of this particular political moment, but it crops up all over—in our careers, in our relationships, and in so many of the quiet, unscripted moments of our lives. In fact, if you’re at all like me, it crops up pretty much every time you walk from one room into another. Why am I here? What now?

My tentative plan is to publish every two weeks, and my hope is to continue the conversations—and explorations—we’ve had elsewhere. I hope you’ll chime in whenever you feel like it.

Kate