So, what's next?

I am writing to you from a Marriott Courtyard somewhere in the Los Angeles area, the kind of hotel room I find perfectly acceptable because it’s perfectly acceptable: there is nothing remarkable about it in any way, nothing I will remember once I walk out of this room. If I can’t have a luxury experience, I simply want a consistent one.

We arrived here in the dead of night¹ after briefly stopping at an AirBNB that had catfished my naive, innocent husband into thinking it was a decent place for a family to spend a few nights together, and not a sticky venue for a coke-fueled orgy² inaccurately described as a “luxury getaway.”

But who cares about that!³

We are here in a Marriott Courtyard filled with other parents who are here in a Marriott Courtyard for the same reason we are: it’s graduation season, baby!

This is the month the world welcomes a new crop of freshly minted adults in plastic gowns and caps, so eager to be off to whatever is next.

It’s been 20 years since I sat in a folding chair in a basketball arena, booze and Red Bull and Camel Lights oozing from my clogged pores, trying to suppress my dread and the bile that was rising in my throat.

Hours later, when all of the guest speakers had spoken and all of our names had been mispronounced so we could walk across a temporary stage to shake the hand of a University President who didn’t know a single one of us, when we were tapping a keg and getting ready for one more blacked out night together, all anyone seemed to be saying were the same few words.

So, what’s next?

I had no idea what was next. I had changed my major so many times that the only thing I could finish within my four year time limit was an English degree. I had volunteered in a grade school, bought (and fell asleep reading) several LSAT prep books, joined the Copywriting Club (????), written for the student newspaper, and still had zero idea what I would be doing with my very expensive degree.

“What’s next?” didn’t feel like a question, it felt like an accusation from a person who saw right through my 3.85 cumulative GPA⁴ and knew that I was not a person in possession of a Five Year Plan.

This girl is still trying to grow back her eyebrows.

“What’s next?” is a perfectly normal and socially acceptable question, I know, but I still hate it!

I hate it for young adults and old adults and honestly for people of all ages. Because while I am a person who has always metabolized any accomplishment before I’ve even tasted it, even people who want to savor the flavor of their life are pushed to predict their own uncertain futures.

All of these new graduates, crossing the stage to accept their advanced degrees, looked so…young, and still so certain. They were taking oaths as a group, promising to uphold the ethics of their chosen professions. They were at the finish line of a path they’d taken intentionally, and I’m sure that most of them could tell you exactly what’s next on their life plan.

I love the idea of a plan, but plans are not always accurate, and it’s hard to enjoy what is when you’re constantly looking for what could be. What did I miss out on over the past few decades while I was obsessing over a future that never actually materialized? I’ll never know, and I bet at least 40% of it was pretty decent and 100% of it was more real than my future-trips.

I’m still being asked what’s next, all these years later. Will there be another book? Another podcast? Another career entirely? The question still puts me on my heels, still triggers the feeling that whatever I’m doing is not enough, that I better have something better on the way.

But all I really want is to want what I have and to enjoy where I am, to let the future come to me instead of chasing it like a boy who was never interested in me but made eye contact with me once.⁵

So whether or not you are a new graduate, my hope for you is this: that you don’t spend so much time on what’s next that you miss what is here, now.

Yours in earnestness and imperfection,

Nora

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1. 9PM

2. You know when you’re in a place that has been tidied but never, ever cleaned and you don’t even want to take off your shoes? It was worse than that.

3. Me! I had been driving for 7 hours and had stopped approximately 8 times because I let the kids drink gatorade and they were *too* hydrated.

4. If I worked that hard, I reserve the right to announce my GPA to anyone at any time, even 20 years later. I didn’t even work that hard, honestly. My degree was not a challenging one.

5. STORY OF MY LIFE!