Lost Futures

On folding, getting out on the water and finding your way back.

Image: Late night paddle return, June 24th 2026

When the “No” comes through, it smarts.

I’ve been playing this game for a long time. A necessity of running a business and consulting means developing a decently thick skin. I have learned to bounce back from rejected pitches and client switches, without too much personal crisis. I do my work, ask for feedback, reflect and adjust. I am a good grown up, emotionally mature and stoic, thoughtful and pragmatic blah, blah, blah…

But every now and again, one gets under the armour…

For me, it’s a piece of work, a project…something I KNOW I would contribute well to. Good people, good business, gnarly circumstances. Something close enough to my skill set and experience that I already have a familiar sense of how it will run, but puzzling and complex enough to set my mental cogs whirling. Something that ignites a sense of my happy place.

All that possibility, gleaming and juicy; ripe for the picking.

Or not as it turns out….

Whenever you pitch for, apply to or propose work, you create a prospective future. It’s a sketch, a thumbnail, an opening window into an alternative reality. You invest a piece of yourself, your energy; you visualise and pull an idea into firmer focus. It takes time and care: here’s what could be created, here’s how things will go. We do This and then This will happen. Work with me and you will get results, insight, good experiences…and probably at least one event featuring Haribo and post-it notes.

Over the years, I’ve had to learn to draw those future pictures less on the feel of the thing, the joy of the thing and focus more - depressingly - on painting outcomes that no-one can reliably promise. And yet, people promise. (I’ve never squared that one fully. Giving assurances and certainties that the Thing will work, whilst truly knowing I am one Tim, Dave, John or digital solution away from everything being undermined.)

Yes, there is a world in which your organisation is more productive, more cost-effective, better to work in, respects your people and brings “the change” into being effectively… and if you REALLY wanted that world you’d be investing in coaching/therapy, taking the leadership team out of the business regularly and getting them to work IN the organisation they are creating, rather than investing your time and money in much of what you do…

And I happily dance with that system. I paint the futures, I take the contracts. I understand the game and the limitations and I do it anyway. I need to eat and more often than not, I genuinely do make a difference… so I construct pictures of possibility and cost up efforts and figure out governance structures and create people-filled solutions and pretend I have answers – sometimes to entirely the wrong questions…and sometimes all that dancing and painting doesn’t land.

I know this…I know this… I really do know this….

So when the No comes in this time and it hurts, I’m surprised at the Ouch of it.

This time, instead of stoically asking for feedback and pulling on my OK boots, I fold. I’m tired. The world feels on fire. It’s a big old hustle out there and I am… worn out and way too small and inadequate to be making a difference.

I sense myself teetering on the edge of a familiar old vortex of self-doubt and boo-hoo me. I’m angry at the time spent imagining a future – a really good, solid, workable one – and putting all that effort in the hands of short-sighted decision makers. I’m cross and sore and sulky and petulant. Rejection hurts. This time, I really feel it.

Obviously, now is the perfect time to open Linkedin and just nail home how well everyone else is doing. Now is the moment to watch the successes and the grateful/honoured/ delighted stories roll. If I can make myself feel even slightly worse, somehow that brings me into contact with the sharp edges of it a little more.

And I don’t hate the sharp edges of it. I understand there is learning here…but what my head knows, my heart doesn’t always love. Reason be damned. I’m pissed off.

I could hang here all day, maybe even longer.

I could blame others, myself, the system.

I could hex money-sucking tech bro’s and the unfair distribution of wealth… then berate myself for not being able to get any of it.

I could have a whole pity party, roaring and bemoaning the demise of this beautiful potential lost future.

Or I could work with myself as I’d work with others.

Step away from the screen.

Go touch some grass.

Feel the wound.

Tend to the wound.

Don’t pick at the wound.

Get some perspective.

Distract yourself kindly.

High tide is imminent in the Forth.

I’m in East Lothian, about 100m away from the water.

It’s 28 degrees in Scotland without a breath of wind.

Conditions are perfect.

My Paddleboard is in the garage.

I close the laptop before I know I’ve made the choice.

30 minutes later and I’m all factor 50, baseball cap and defiance against This Working Life. It feels like an act of rebellion to push the Board into the water. A world of duty and reparation awaits at my desk…all of which feels joyless right now. I don’t want to play.

As I walk little way out from the shore – shin deep, enough to ensure the fins clear the sand and stones- I notice the surface warmth of the water and the underlying cooler current. My skin goosebumps a fraction.

Then I’m up and on, kneeling, pushing the paddle into the water. I don’t rush to stand, happy to get a sense of the flow of water, the movement of the waves, the undulation to be navigated. I clear the shore rocks and am in deeper water before I stretch forward, paddle crossing the board, and slowly rise from downward dog, to upright.

I am standing, but wobbly.

On a Paddleboard, you kind of don’t know how stable you are until you stand.

In theory, my sulk and fury could make me rock solid and stubbornly anchored.

In practice I’m unbalanced, distracted and unsettled.

The board tilts and objects to my poor poise, even in these perfect conditions: lazy, gentle incoming waves, a breezeless midday, the surface of the Forth - uncharacteristically - like glass.

The oscillation here is entirely mine.

I breathe, focus out on the horizon, begin to paddle. Right hand pushing down, left hand guiding, moving the blade in a steady rhythm from left side to right. Paying attention to the waves, the water…

And here, there is no “lost future”.

There is me, the sea, the afternoon sunshine, the un-Scottish heat, on a random weekday in June. I am bare footed, navigating the East Lothian shoreline along the Firth of Forth, with gannets and geese and ducks and cormorants eyeing me suspiciously from the rocks and a few fish moseying under the board.

The expansiveness shifts me. I can’t be cross and churlish out here…it’s too small a state for the beauty and size of the world around me.

I paddle for 20 minutes, heading west toward Cockenzie boatshore, Edinburgh outlined in the distance, the Lomond Hills and Fife shoreline to my right. It’s hot. Every now and again, I sit back down, trailing my feet in the water to cool off and let the board drift. I try to catch the rejection, the failure, the gut-punched sensation, the importance of the Yes. It cannot exist here. I smile at that.

Out here, there is perspective.

I’m not OK.

I’m alright. Drifting. Coping, but not fully and functionally OK.

I need to stop for a while – like today.

I need to take some time away from the socials and the game.

I need security and money, but I cannot be responsive and resilient and rejected if I am running this low.

No one wants to work with a ragged soul.

After an hour, I point myself shoreward, restored, resigned and understanding I might just need a different game….

NB “Lost Futures Phenomena is a state of being where you grieve for or mourn the loss of unfulfilled promises.”

About me:

I’m Julie Drybrough, an Edinburgh based writer, speaker, master coach practitioner, partial to a good cup of tea, cake and conversation. Founder of Write Nights online community and writing retreats ( see more here - come & join us!) and fuchsiablue ltd - an Organisational change consultancy. I work with people to improve conversations, relationships and learning.