But who am I, really?

I am not a social butterfly.

I have a small social network, and that suits me just fine.

The other day I was at a backyard barbecue event where the only person I knew was my husband. These were the guys from his hockey team, but this was a relatively new team for him, and this was the first social thing we’d been to that involved spouses.

I knew I’d have to introduce myself to a bunch of people (who all happened to know each other really well). And I was nervous because I suddenly realized I wasn’t entirely sure how to introduce myself.

Ridiculous.

This shouldn’t be hard. I've been introducing myself for over 5 decades.

But when I rehearsed this in my mind, I realized most of my answers were roles.

I'm an executive coach. I'm Howard’s wife. I'm a mum to 3 adult kids. I'm a loyal friend. I'm an avid reader. I'm a writer. I’m a blogger.

True enough.

But are they me?

A lot of my friends are retired now, and I've watched them awkwardly struggle with the question, too.

It feels odd to say, "I worked in banking for 35 years”. It feels odd to define yourself by children who are now fully grown with lives of their own. It feels strange to realize that many of the labels we've worn for decades are temporary. Our very identity feels temporary. It's a bit unmooring.

That’s the thing about roles. They change. We move in and out of them constantly.

Daughter.

Student.

Employee.

Partner.

Parent.

Manager.

Volunteer.

Caregiver.

Empty nester.

Retiree.

Some disappear gradually. Others vanish overnight. Poof.

And, if we’re not careful, in all that role-changing, we might lose track of ourselves.

I feel like I did.

When my nest started emptying, it felt like a transition time.

The problem was, I wasn't entirely sure what I was transitioning to.

I didn’t know what I wanted. I didn’t know what I liked. I had a vague feeling of boredom and discontent. But it was certainly not a crisis, in my mind.

When my firstborn was little, I stumbled into a job that I happened to be good at. It challenged me and gave me flexibility and fit perfectly around family life. I could be the kind of mum I imagined being.

It made sense at the time. But I didn’t mean to make a career out of it. 

Then, as my youngest got closer to launching into his life, I started realizing that my heart wasn’t in the job anymore. 

I wasn’t challenged, I wasn’t passionate, I didn’t care enough.

I didn’t hate it. But I didn’t love it either.

That was scary.

And the scary thing was not that I was worried about changing careers. The scary thing was that I had absolutely no idea what I wanted to do.

No idea what I liked. No idea what I hated. No idea what I was passionate about. 

I went for lunch with some neighbourhood friends who were a couple of years ahead of me in the parenting journey.

Their advice was to take the grown-up equivalent of a gap year… if I could afford it.

Well, I couldn’t afford it. But on many levels I also thought I couldn’t not afford it.

The idea felt ridiculously indulgent. Like, who do I think I am to spend 6 or 12 months “finding myself”? And besides, who does that?

But I also had a feeling that if I didn't stop doing what I'd always done, I would never create enough space to think about what might come next.

So I did it.

Around the same time, I discovered Morning Pages. 

Three pages of longhand writing every morning. I suspect I'll write about Morning Pages a lot. They've had an almost absurd impact on my life.

I tried doing nothing for a while. And it turns out I'm not very good at that.

I still wanted to contribute financially. I still wanted to feel useful.

And so my daughter suggested getting the kind of job I’ve always wanted. A passion job. I figured it was either going to be working in a chocolate factory or working in a bookstore.

So, with much encouragement from my daughter, I thought, maybe I'll work in a bookstore while I figure out what I want to do with the rest of my life.

And then COVID arrived. Like, the next day, pretty much.

The nest filled back up. The bookstore dream disappeared.

But it did lead to the next question, “Okay then, while we’re at it… what ELSE have I always wanted to do?”

Teaching. I always wanted to be a teacher.

This was always a no-go for me, though. My dad had such a poor opinion of teachers, and I had such a need to please him, that I wouldn’t even entertain the idea.

And ummm…. the fact that he'd been dead for twenty years didn't seem particularly relevant. We're funny creatures.

So, what better time to get qualified to teach English online than during a 15-month lockdown during a global pandemic? Perfect.

I got myself sorted out. Got qualified. Got a job. Got trained.

I loved it.

For a while.

And somewhere in there I realized that doing the thing wasn't actually the scary part.

Working in a bookstore didn't scare me. Teaching didn't scare me. Starting an online business didn't scare me. Becoming a coach didn't scare me. Having no skills or no experience in something didn’t scare me.

There’s so much info… even before AI there was a ton. I figured everything out with my brain and my best friend, Google.

But no, the doing of the things wasn’t the hard part. 

The hard part was knowing what those things were. 

What did I want to do? What did I want to explore? What possibilities made sense for me to take a chance on?

It was an embarrassment of riches in terms of choice. It was too much choice. 

I could choose. I could try things. I could change my mind. I could start over. I could learn something new. I could become someone slightly different than I had been before.

Which meant...

Write? Sure.

Work in a bookstore? Sure.

Teach English online? Sure.

Start a business? Sure.

Become an executive coach? Sure.

And then the question started feeling less like “Who am I?” and more like “Who do I want to be next?”

Maybe that's the actual question. 

Maybe we’re not lost. Or trying to find ourselves. 

Maybe we’re still becoming. And just evolving.

Maybe there’s nothing to fix.

Maybe we’re just works in progress.

I don’t think I’m all that unusual, and so I created something that I would have found helpful when I was playing around with the idea of my gap year (that never was).

I created the Who Am I Journal as a place to start asking yourself some of the questions that might help you figure out who you want to be next.