Being between leadership roles can feel like free fall. Or worse, like flying, just long enough to forget the ground is coming.

No title. No team. No calendar full of meetings or pings from Slack. Just space. Uncertainty. And a quiet sense that I should be doing something.

When I grew up in a family bakery, that was just what we did. As soon as I could reach the workbench, I threw on an apron and started kneading. Dough under my nails before I hit double digits. Mowing lawns. Shoveling wet snow. Bussing tables. Short-order cook. Waiting tables at my mom's restaurant, badly, while hungry truckers banged spoons on mugs for coffee refills.

Work wasn't something I questioned. It was just what I did.

So here I was. Floating in the bardo.

I hadn't looked for a job in over 30 years. Hadn't had to. I'd been mentored, referred, recruited. Talked my way in. Reinvented myself more than once. Sometimes just damn lucky.

But I'd never had a pause like this.

It hadn't just felt unfamiliar. It made me question everything. Because if I'm not doing, who am I?

The first few days were all scrambling. Conversations. Possibilities. Gripping the club too tight. Reaching out to people, asking for help. Just stay busy enough to keep the voices quiet.

Then the holidays came. The noise died down.

And the questions showed up, with an anxiety chaser. Not enough Propranolol in the world to calm my nervous system.

Am I actually as good at this as I thought I was? Have I just been believing my own hype? Am I effective, or just good at being performative? Respected, or tolerated?

I've watched it happen up close. People retire and fall apart within a year. Founders sell and lose themselves. Someone hits a wall, job loss, divorce, health scare, and then they realize they've tied their identity entirely to what they do.

And I caught myself thinking: Am I one of them? Even though I thought I knew better?

Or maybe I created this space for myself before life forced it on me.

I know the difference between occupation and vocation. But what was open for subversion was something sneakier: grandiosity. If I'm as good at this as I think I am, then where's the job?

I thought I'd done the work. Believed I was immune. Human being, not human doing, right?

But in the stillness, even that felt like something worth reexamining.

So I stopped trying to fill the vacuum. Started sitting in it. Being still and letting it do its work on me.

Since I was a teenager, I'd been obsessed with finding the answer to my life's mission. Why am I here? What's mine to do? The normal existential questions. I wanted someone, anyone, to hand me the task list so I could execute the plan.

One afternoon, lying in bed with my eyes closed, I sensed a presence. Call it intuition, spirit, inner knowing. Doesn't matter what.

It was peaceful. Calm. I asked the question I'd been carrying for decades: What is the purpose of my life?

The answer came simply. "To lead."

I pushed a little. "Lead what?"

"Why don't you start by setting a good example?"

And I laughed. Because it was so obvious.

I'd been leading all along. Building sports clubs, coaching my siblings' teams, class president, organizing volunteer work. I wasn't trying to be impressive. I just wanted something to exist, so I created it. Pulled people together. Made it real.

I didn't know that wasn't normal.

I'd spent decades searching. Trying to think my way to the answer, optimize my way to it, earn my way to it. But it had been there the whole time.

So I'm slowing down. Not out of laziness or lack of self-worth. Out of respect. For myself. For my wife. For the questions that don't answer themselves quickly.

I've binge-watched Dope Thief, Dark Wind, and Eastern Gate. All excellent. It hasn't all been radical self-inquiry.

But I've been looking inward. Not to build a new plan, but to tell the truth. About where I've been in integrity and where I've been performative. About what I've achieved and where it still feels empty.

I've been rereading old notes, performance reviews, emails, texts from people I didn't know I'd helped. Video messages from my teams. Unsolicited thank-yous from moments I forgot I was part of.

Remembering to receive as well as give. That part got me. More than I expected.

I picked up oil paint and canvas for the first time in 35 years. Something opened up. Not productivity. Something quieter.

I'm writing again. Finishing the book. Building something new around leadership.

It's been an inside job. Sometimes messy. But alive.

This time off isn't about what's next. It's about what's true. The conversations I keep having reinforce the same thing. The old playbook doesn't scale. What scales is a leader who knows themselves well enough to stop performing and start showing up.

So yeah. I'm between jobs. But I'm not between purpose. I'm in the middle of it.