I was reading an article called “I’m rich and I don’t know what to do about it” by Vinay Hiremath, Loom’s cofounder, back in January 2025 when a thought hit me. Really a few.
After every high, there’s an inevitable stretch of trying to chase that high again or trying to figure out what’s next. You feel unmoored. At first there’s freedom, excitement, expansion; an open horizon. But sooner or later, whether it takes days or years, you need to either find the next chase or stop chasing altogether. It’s a reorientation, a kind of rebirth, but one that requires a small death too: letting go of the past version of yourself.
As David Whyte reminds us, we are only ever the present versions of ourselves.
It’s a useful exercise then: if you actually achieved the success you wanted, what would you search for after? What’s the why behind the next why? Authors always imagine the next book. Musicians think about the next album. Athletes know this feeling best: the high of a championship is almost immediately followed by the hunger to repeat it. Disney captured this perfectly in 1987 when Phil Simms of the New York Giants, fresh off a Super Bowl win, declared on live television, “I’m going to Disneyland!” It became a ritual that outlasted generations of players, a marketing slogan, yes, but also a symbol of the endless cycle of winning, celebrating, and then needing to win again. Michael Jordan’s first retirement in 1993, followed by his comeback, and Tom Brady’s refusal to stay retired are proof that the chase is rarely optional.
Yet some do stop. There are people who gave up in their prime voluntarily like Grigori Perelman, the Russian mathematician who solved the Poincaré Conjecture and then disappeared from public life. We don’t remember them, and that’s okay.
Being alone, in our own bodies, is the only constant of existence. Nature is another. So the question becomes: what would I enjoy beyond the money, beyond the recognition? For me, it would be new experiences, travel, stillness, routines that make me feel good, time with friends, acts of service, and systems for feedback like writing, conversations, and playing sports outside. I’d set buffers. After a breakup most people naturally pause before dating again. With work, that pause is harder. We don’t have the same biological off switch. The Germans probably do have a word for this kind of necessary pause, that Zwischenzeit between endings and beginnings.
Plenty of people would retire tomorrow if they could. They’d get healthy, spend more time with family, read. But if you don’t already have some grounding, that transition can feel disorienting, because it’s not what you were chasing. Would spending time with people who’ve already stepped away help? But really, how many people have?
These explorations always lead to more questions than answers.
I know I’m still in a place where I do things for external metrics, always feeling like there’s something next on the list. That’s part of having a job, part of being always on. But reading Vinay’s piece made me pause and wonder: when the chase slows down, who do I want to be in that Zwischenzeit?
unpublished alpha 