THE “WHY” BEHIND ALL THIS…—#9
September 6th, 2026
A couple of months in now, and the feedback, from those that have taken the time to share it, has been genuinely encouraging. But one question keeps surfacing—- why is this something you’ve chosen to do at this stage of your life?
It’s a fair question. Many of my friends and colleagues are thoroughly enjoying what this season offers — travel, exercise, volunteering, more time with family and friends. I’ve jumped into all of those things too, with real enthusiasm. They have been terrific. And yet something kept pulling at me that none of those things quite addressed.
It started in the last two years of my working life. As a Partner in an executive search firm, I had spent well over thirty years interviewing and assessing senior candidates for significant roles. The work itself hadn’t changed. But something in my experience of it did.
The process was standard enough. Our research team would identify six to eight candidates for a given role. I would conduct one-on-one assessments, produce a shortlist of three or four, and the client would make their selection. My job then included debriefing the unsuccessful candidates — offering constructive feedback, wishing them well, moving on to the next engagement. For most of my career those conversations were professionally handled on both sides. People understood the competitive nature of the process and carried on.
But in my final years something shifted. The follow-up from unsuccessful candidates became more pitched, more anxious. Comments I hadn’t heard with the same frequency before started appearing regularly. “That’s helpful — but what do I do now? I thought I had this locked in and now I face going back to a role I’ve completely plateaued in.” Or: “I’m not sure what my next step is. Candidly, I don’t know what to do next.” Or — the one that stayed with me longest — “I have two kids heading to university and a mortgage to pay off. What if my career has run its course? What now?”
I tried to address their concerns as best I could. But the demands of a project-driven business moved relentlessly forward. The conversations ended. The comments didn’t leave me.
When my own full-time work came to a gradual stop, I started paying closer attention to what was being reported around isolation, depression, anxiety and addiction in middle-aged men. The cohort most impacted, according to multiple reports, was men in the 50 to 65 age bracket. It was a light bulb moment. It brought those conversations flooding back. And then the suicides started happening closer to home. Friends of friends. Shocking and incomprehensible — until details began to emerge about struggles with purpose, identity and direction. Men who, from the outside, appeared to have built good lives. Men who, on the inside, had quietly run out of answers.
I also took honest stock of my own state of mind in a post-work setting. Work had provided an enormous sense of purpose and daily direction. In its absence, I found myself genuinely struggling — not in a crisis, but in the quieter, more disorienting way that happens when the walls that made up your day start coming down and you realize you were carrying on without realizing what might be next. If I could feel that, with every advantage I had — a strong marriage, close family, financial stability, faith — how might it be playing out for others with fewer of those anchors?
So why am I doing this?
Because I think there is a cohort of men out there in quiet, largely silent struggle — and I believe that giving that struggle a name, a space, and some honest company might matter. I am not a therapist or a psychologist. I’m not offering a program or a solution. What I hope Still Waters Life can be is a place where some of that struggle gets named honestly, where the questions get asked without pretense, and where men who are navigating this terrain realize they are not alone in it.
That feels like enough of a reason.
(NB- The feedback received and the corresponding reflection from it have prompted me to edit my Home and About pages. For those of you who have “tagged along” please take note as you will see those changes now incorporated.)