The Fog is The Point

About this Video:

What if the fog you’re trying to escape is actually where the real work happens?

In this honest and reflective video, Josh explores the messy middle of life transitions — that space between an old life ending and a new one taking shape. He shares how he spent most of his life believing action was always better than reflection, and how that mindset led to decisions he later regretted.

Drawing from his experience with retirement, cancer, and the creation of The Long Strange Trip, Josh explains the difference between sitting in reflection and getting stuck. He shares why small experiments can be more useful than big decisions when you’re uncertain about what comes next.

The fog may not be something to fight. It may be something to learn from.

Transcript:
Let me start with a confession. For most of my life, I couldn’t see the fog at all. I don’t mean I saw it and pushed through anyway. I mean it was invisible to me. I’d gotten so good at not seeing it that it disappeared. That’s most of a lifetime with a blind spot the size of a truck.

So let me tell you what I mean by the fog. It’s that disoriented in between when the change is happening. The old life is gone, the new one hasn’t shown up yet. You feel stuck, foggy, unsure what to do next.

An anthropologist named Victor Turner had a word for it. He called it the liminal space, and he argued something strange. “The fog isn’t the detour,” he said. “The fog is where the real part happens.”

I’ll be honest, I’m not sure I believed him yet, but every time I’ve rushed out of the fog, I’ve regretted it.

Here’s how blind I really was. My whole life, I believed action beat reflection. A problem showed up and I solved it. Fast, no pausing. I thought I could power through anything, and mostly I did. I bulldozed straight ahead and called it strength.

Let me give you my clearest example.

Years ago, I ran a food service business. We did catering, and catering dies in the winter. So one summer I had a problem: what do I do with my staff in the slow months?

And I did what I always did. I attacked it. I opened a restaurant called Maggie’s.

It was one of the worst decisions I ever made.

So here’s the part that matters. There was no rush. We had three good months of catering work ahead of us. The fog was right there trying to slow me down, but I couldn’t see it, so I gunned the engine.

Now you’d think the fix is simple. Just sit in the fog. Wait it out. I wish it were that easy because I’ve watched people fail the other direction.

Back in my thirties, I knew folks chaking... I knew folks chasing new age seminars. They’d walk into the fog and never walk out. They got stuck there. They called it waiting for clarity, but the answer never came. The fog became a place to hide from their real problems.

So there’s a fine line here, a razor-thin one. On one side is reflection, on the other is being stuck, and from the outside, they look almost identical.

So how do you tell them apart?

For years, I couldn’t.

Now I think I can.

After I retired, I landed in that fog myself, wandering in the wilderness, deep in the messy middle.

But here’s the difference between me and the New Age crowd. I didn’t do nothing. I ran small experiments, not big swings, small ones.

That was a trick I missed my whole life.

It started with my health. Two years ago, I was diagnosed with two types of cancer. And I’ll tell you the truth, before that, I had only thought about death in the abstract. Not once, or it crowded everything else out. Then cancer put it on the table, and I couldn’t look away.

So I started writing on CaringBridge just about what was happening to my health, then slowly widened to bigger themes. That was experiment one.

So I took another small swing. I wrote a single Substack article, just one to see what happened. And you know, I loved it, and it made me reflect.

Then I did a short video. Then I restarted my podcast, and the guests started shaping my writing.

One small swing led to the next.

That’s the whole thing that became The Long Strange Trip. It was born in the fog. One small experiment at a time.

That’s the tell.

Are you running small experiments, or are you just waiting?

The New Age folks waited. I experimented.

Here’s what I’ve learned late. I used to think action beat reflection. Now I think it’s the reverse.

Reflection comes first, and it makes the action freer because when the real choice comes, you’ve already walked the road in your head.

Let me get honest about right now. I’ve got two cancers at the mouth. Both are behaving. There’s no fog today. But if either one turns, I’ll be right back in it.

I’ve already made some early decisions about what I do. You could ask me a fair question, “Isn’t that just Maggie’s again?”

You know, I don’t think it is because I know those decisions might not hold when reality hits.

I’m not locking in an answer. I’m just reflecting early.

And there’s one big difference. In that past, I decided alone, just me, what I wanted, full stop.

I don’t wanna do that anymore.

This time I’ll ask how it lands on the people I love.

That’s the real growth, not just seeing the fog, learning to sit in it with other people in mind.

So here’s what I’ve come out. I used to think the fog was a problem. Now I think it might be a good thing. The jury’s out on that. Something to respect, maybe even celebrate.

It keeps you going fast and breaking things, but you still have to handle it. You can’t sit there forever.

Reflect, but don’t hide.

Slow down, but don’t stop.

Small swings, not big ones, and not no swings.

So let me leave you with a question.

The last time your life got foggy, what did you do?

Did you gun the engine? Did you crawl in and wait forever? Or did you take a few small swings and feel your way through?

I’m still in it, learning as I go, but I’ve stopped fighting the fog.

And for the first time, that feels like wisdom instead of weakness.

Hey, thanks for watching this video, and I hope to see you here next week for our next Long Strange Trip video.