Hey, Creator: Am I really retiring?

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Hi, friend.

Quick heads up (in case you missed it): I am retiring all my online courses and if you want to get one—or all—of them before they go away for good, the deadline is midnight tonight. Click here to read about it.

The week I announced my retirement was the week in which I also boarded a plane and flew to Chicago for my grandmother’s funeral. It was a goodbye on many fronts, one that I am still processing.

On the flight from Nashville to northern Illinois, I forgot to re-apply my face covering after drinking my early morning coffee and hurriedly wheeled my girlfriend’s roller bag to the front of the plane for a gate check when the flight attendant told me to put my mask back on. I told her I was sorry, and she replied, “I don’t think you are.”

It was a weekend like that, in which we sat in Catholic mass and listened to a young priest, a self-proclaimed newbie at this priest business, tell me about my ninety-one-year-old maternal grandma and her eternal destiny. As he did so, the two women at the front of the church sang in harmony and played the piano, while I gazed at the images of Jesus and Mary and who-knows-what-other-saints present.

We stayed at a hotel right off the highway, which was less than stellar, but they had free coffee and a bagel in the morning, and that was enough for me. And right across the parking lot was the comic book store where my dad took me when I was young.

I was at once home—and not.

I came back from that trip to answer questions yesterday during a two-hour live video in which I shared why I was retiring from online courses and, yes, I really am. It’s an interesting word, though, isn’t it? This idea of getting so tired of something that you have to let it go.

One reader told me he intends to never retire. He was seventy-something, as I recall. Another elder in my community—Bethany was her name, I believe—told me from experience that the retired life is busier than the working one. And I believed her.

I have heard from so many of you in so many ways, and I am so grateful. I am grateful for the work that we have done together. I am grateful for the transformation we have experienced and facilitated. 30,000 students. Hundreds of coaching clients and live event attendees. Millions of readers and listeners galore.

And, yes. It’s all going away.

At least, in a way. Of course, nothing is ever really gone; we are always transitioning from one thing to the next, allowing the matter of what we were to alchemize into what will be.

At my grandmother’s memorial service, my aunt urged me to take a picture frame, some small token of who Grandma was. And I loved that sentiment: that even when a person’s life is extinguished and her body is reduced to ash, we carry her with us wherever we go.

I hope the same is true of the work I’ve done these past ten years. I hope you take something with you, something significant or meaningful to you. And I hope we all carry that into the next season of creation, whatever it might bring.

That said, I’ve heard from a number of you who have all kinds of questions, so here are a few answers:

What I have learned from Grandma, and something I have said for a while but never fully understood until now is this: You’re not done until you’re dead. There’s always more to do, always some new thing to make, and there’s always someone who probably needs it. But often, we don’t get to create that new thing until we have fully and wholly said goodbye to the old.

I am so thankful for the work we’ve done these past ten years, so grateful for the support of so many friends and readers, listeners, and fans. It means the world to me. And I couldn’t honor my calling if I were to camp out on this particular hill forever. There is something new coming, something more beautiful—and, if nothing else, something different.

I can’t wait to share it with you as soon as I know what it is.

All the best,

Jeff

P.S. So, this is a farewell and hello at the very same time. To watch the nearly-two-hour “retirement party” I did with my colleague Sandy yesterday, join our Circle community and catch the replay here.

And don’t forget to get every course I’ve ever created for the price of one by grabbing the legacy bundle before it’s gone for good.

P.P.S. And for now, I leave you with this poem I wrote for my grandmother, which is a way of saying goodbye to her and to a version of myself, which I think is always a part of the grieving process. We don’t just let go of the person we lost; we also grieve who we were with them—and, perhaps, begin to welcome who we might become.

For Terry

I am saying goodbye to my mother’s mother

Today.

But I am not just saying goodbye to Grandma;

I am saying goodbye to yellow house

And porch swing

And wallpapered bedroom

Covered in teenage dreams of a life

That never was.

I am saying goodbye to the quarry

Where we swam,

outside which

We picked blackberries in summer.

Which, I am sure,

is no longer legal.

But they didn’t make laws like that

Then.

I am saying goodbye to childhood confusion

And why

Some things never make sense

Except in your grandma’s backyard jungle of magic

And mystery

Where

They don’t need to.

I am bidding farewell to innocence

And Matlock reruns

Where stacks of newspapers went unread

And piano songbooks were never played.

I am severing any remaining connection to the Great War

and even greater Depression:

To a whole history of experience that I will never be able to access

Again.

And in a way—

I suppose—

I am saying goodbye to my

Self

And welcoming a lineage

That is yet

To come.

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