Learning to live between chapters

Introducing The In-Between — a new weekly column on change, transition, and new beginnings on Phuket.

Phuket is full of people in the middle of something.

Some are here for the obvious reasons — holidays, health and wellness, business, a change of pace. Others arrive because they are somewhere in between: between careers, between countries, between relationships, between the person they were at home and the person they might become here. The reason someone actually chose this island is often more honest than the reason they give.

The In-Between is a weekly column about those periods when something is shifting but the next chapter is not yet clear. Not a self-help series. Not a set of tips. Reflections drawn from lived experience and years of practice around transition, identity, and what happens when the old map stops working.

Behind the beaches and the restaurants and the holiday energy, Phuket is also full of people reassessing, rebuilding, recovering, experimenting, and quietly asking themselves where to from here. That is the space this column speaks to.

Here is the first one.

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Have you ever known that one chapter of your life was over before you had any idea what came next?

There is a stage of change I have become very familiar with over the years. You know something has finished before you know what is replacing it.

It can happen with work, a relationship, a business, a place you have lived, or simply a version of yourself that no longer feels quite right. The temptation is to fill the gap quickly. Make a plan. Start something. Move somewhere. Find the answer. I have done plenty of that myself.

Thirty years around entrepreneurship has taught me that uncertainty can feel remarkably similar whether you are starting a business, ending one, changing countries, or asking yourself what you actually want now. The practical thing I have learned is not to demand a five-year answer from a five-minute feeling.

When I am between chapters, I reduce the problem to what feels finished and what the next honest step is. Sometimes the next step is a conversation. Sometimes it is making one decision you have avoided. Sometimes it is doing nothing for a few days and noticing what becomes clearer when you stop forcing an answer.

For anyone who has landed on Phuket carrying a decision they have not made yet, the island has a particular gift for holding you while you work it out. The pace helps. The distance helps. The chance to be somewhere no one knew you before helps most of all.

An in-between period is uncomfortable because it does not give us much certainty. But that does not necessarily mean something has gone wrong. It may simply mean the old map is no longer useful.

The next chapter often begins quietly. Well before we have a name for it.

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Reflection for the week:

What in your life feels finished, even if you have not quite admitted it yet?

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Johnny Carter is Phuket Community’s first regular contributor. He runs a private consulting practice supporting people through transition and new beginnings. Read more at About Johnny Carter →.