Courting Uncertainty

Photo by Georgie Morley

I am courting uncertainty again.

I sit here, looking out at the finally gray day after a long stretch of sun, at my desk after a long stretch away. Everything in me exhales - the familiarity of my pens, the blanket on my lap, the piles of halfway finished artwork in front of me. I have been here before. And yet, now, nothing is the same.

I am returning home after three weeks away on Nantucket and Martha’s Vineyard, for my wedding and honeymoon, respectively. A time of immense high, full-fledged relaxation and socialization. The culmination of months of planning and collaboration. All the people I love in one place, at one time, just for us.

And now, the rose petals have fallen, and I sit here in the aftermath, with the familiar face of the Great Abyss before me. Not only do I have a beautiful new life ahead with my now husband - but I also do not have my old one. About a month before getting married, I made the choice to leave my job as an events manager so that I could fully give myself to the final push of the wedding planning process - one that required my full energy, time, and heart. This change allowed me to show up to last minute meetings, to travel to Nantucket on a whim to meet with vendors and hash things out, and to hand paint all of the place cards for the rehearsal dinner. It also allowed me the space to write my vows and deeply meditate on this threshold that I was about to cross. In some ways, I don’t know if the show of our wedding would have gone on, had I not made this decision. And yet, now I sit in what I knew would be waiting for me on the other side - uncertainty.

Uncertainty. It’s a scary thing - something we often try to avoid. We create order and routine and structure to stave it off. We make social plans and take career steps to keep it at bay. But at the end of the day, it’s always there, even if briefly, even if just in that quiet voice in the morning while your coffee is brewing, whispering “I have no idea what I’m doing.”

If you know anything about me, you know that I, oddly enough, am quite familiar with the unfamiliar territory known as uncertainty. I have walked many paths in life, have changed careers and moved to new places without knowing a soul. And for many years, despite its constancy in my life, I have faced the friend of uncertainty with a kind of despair, like it was a curse that I just had to succumb to. But the truth is, uncertainty is only a curse if you see it that way. It is also fertile soil, open opportunity, possibility beyond your wildest dreams. It is also the road to certainty. And I don’t know about you, but I am going to choose to see it that way instead.

I have a lot of exciting projects ahead that I look forward to sharing with you. But the truth is? I don’t know exactly where they’ll go.

Welcome, uncertainty. Cheers to the unknown.