The Morning After

Until it occurs to you that for now, you are free—free from tasks and responsibilities. It feels something like phantom pain.

I was glad my friend Claudia called that morning. We took the children for breakfast and walked for a while, and somewhere along the way the day became something warmer and more manageable than it had started out. Then the first interview invitation arrived, and a day later a second one, and the world which had briefly looked grey rearranged itself into something I could work with again.

I am building a magazine on my own, with nothing but the belief that the work will eventually find its audience. Until then, I still need a reliable income, and there are real obligations and open questions that have no simple answer yet. But since The EcoLeader began, something in me found its footing in a way it had not before, and I am not willing to lose that. For me, freedom means doing what I believe in without having to justify it to anyone. It means being allowed to get things wrong and learn from them without the kind of fear that used to make every mistake feel unsurvivable. It means knowing that the longer, harder road is still a road, and that every step on it counts.

What the World Is Building

Outside, the world is going through something large and unresolved. A war in the Middle East has pushed Brent crude above $113 a barrel, up 60% since fighting began on February 28, when U.S. and Israeli forces launched strikes on Iran and the Strait of Hormuz, through which roughly 20% of the world's oil supply normally passes, effectively closed. IEA Executive Director Fatih Birol has called it the greatest threat to global energy security in history, and warned that April will be considerably worse than March, as the last cargo ships that transited the strait before the war finally reach their destinations and nothing follows. European natural gas prices have risen more than 70% since the conflict began. Goldman Sachs has raised its recession odds to 25%. Geopolitical alliances are being redrawn, supply chains are being rerouted, and the structures that used to feel permanent are proving to be considerably more temporary than anyone imagined. Most people are waiting to see what shape things take before they decide what to do next. But history suggests that waiting is rarely the answer.

Where I stand

This issue is about what you are building while everything around you changes; not what you are waiting for, or managing, or simply enduring, but what you are actively and intentionally putting together with what you have right now. I started The EcoLeader because I wanted a place that reflected the way I actually think about living well. It is built on the values I hold most closely. Truth, self-belief, the conviction that we are always in control of our own lives, and the courage to live more fully regardless of what others think. I am building a magazine for people who understand that a life of quality does not require a particular price tag and that luxury should be enjoyed without going to extremes. A beautiful object is exactly that, and nothing beyond it, and you should never have to feel the weight of not having one. What I care about, and what I write for, is the kind of life where you know what actually matters to you and build from there, whatever the world outside happens to be doing.

The first morning is just that, and what comes after is entirely up to you.