“Some seasons don’t announce themselves. They just settle in — and stay longer than expected.“
Two years ago, my professional life came to an unexpected halt. Unemployment wasn’t just a gap on my CV — it was a disorienting pause that touched everything. Days blurred. Every application felt like sending a message into a void. Friends and colleagues moved forward while I wrestled with self-doubt and uncertainty. Some mornings, I woke hoping for an email or a call — a small sign that the pause might be ending.
I remember one morning in particular: sitting at my desk, coffee in hand, staring at the same application for an hour — not knowing whether to send it or delete it. It was frustrating, humbling, and strangely quiet. And yet, underneath the uncertainty, something else was present too. The simple act of showing up each day — again, without certainty — was its own kind of answer.
Lessons from the In-Between
Waiting is active, not passive.
Holding yourself together, noticing what surfaces when the noise falls away — there is labour in that, even when there is nothing to show for it.
Identity shifts in the silence.
When the structure of a role falls away, quieter things come forward. Questions you’d been too busy to hear. A clearer sense of what you actually want, and what you had simply gotten used to.
Clarity comes in fragments.
Not every day offers insight. Some days, surviving the fog is enough. But the fragments accumulate — and over time, you begin to trust that they are forming something.
You learn to listen differently.
In the in-between, clarity comes in whispers, not announcements. You stop waiting for the roar and start paying attention to the quiet signals your life has been sending all along.
Reflection
Living in the in-between is disorienting — but disorientation isn’t a void. It is, if you let it be, a kind of opening. An opening to questions you hadn’t thought to ask. To a version of yourself that the busy seasons never had room for.
Two years in, I learned to live with the pause rather than against it. Not because it stopped being hard, but because I stopped needing it to be over before I could be present within it.
Even in the pause, we are still becoming — slowly, quietly, and steadily.
If something in theses words stayed with you, dont rush away from it. Sit wit it for a moment, then continue when you’re ready.