Back again to James Clear’s latest mailer:

_“There are years that ask questions, and years that answer.”__~ Zora Neale Hurston on the lessons of life

Source:_ Their Eyes Were Watching God

This got me thinking back on my decade. I definitely see some patterns that aligns to that phrase. There were years—seasons—that ask questions. Years where I’m more unsure with my direction; don’t read as much; trying out different things or going on varied adventures; more thinking, less doing; experience some sort of existential hardship. 

Then, after that season of asking lots of questions and working through a cloud of uncertainty, I then respond and answer in life, to life. These are seasons where I’m acting on immense conviction and a sense of personal mission; learning a lot, reading even more, picking up new skills, meeting new people, hustling hard to build a new brand/vocation; working more and putting plans into action; less thinking, more doing.

Looking back, these cycles of asking questions and answering seem to loop in 7-10 years…just look at my resume:

• 2000 - started university then graduation, experienced quarter-life crisis and went seeking for direction (questioning a lot)
• 2007 - started new career mission in social impact work, wanting to “change the world” (answering through my work)
• 2014 - left the public service wanting to run my own business and make my own social good products, but ended up started my own consultancy business doing pretty much what I did in government, straddling social impact and private profit (questioning what’s next in my career, straddling both worlds)
• 2020 - going fulltime on indie making, no longer focused on social impact (answering through making products)

Granted, it’s just n=4 sampling. But that’s spans two decades of lived experience and cycles of asking questions and answering, so that’s quite sufficient for me to go with. 

So it seems, I’m starting off 2020 as a year of answering; 2020 as the start of a new season of where I have to learn a lot, grow into a new pair of shoes (as an indie maker), connect with other makers and entrepreneurs, and hustle hard all over again. 

It’s a strange comfort to see my own past and the future as virtuous (hopefully virtuous, not vicious!) cycles of questions and answers. Just like how the seasons go from winter to summer and back again, each time looping back to itself, yet no one winter (or summer) is ever identical. 

We come full circle, coming back to where we started, yet completely changed.