Twice in a week. This might form a habit…

I’ve been a Star Wars fan for as long as I can remember. It was one of the first pieces of media I remember my parents introducing me to, it (along with Lord of the Rings) was my introduction to fantasy (SIDE NOTE: Star Wars is NOT science fiction, Star Wars is fantasy. This is an statement of objective truth and I will die on this hill, but that’s another post), and in may ways it was the first time I felt deeply connected to a story and its heroes and villains and the deeper questions of how and why beyond the specifics of the story.

As Star Wars and “nerd culture” (eye roll, another post) have become more ubiquitous (read: fodder for revenue and extraction) I find myself reflecting more and more on the lessons to be taken and learned from these stories. I thought I would share a few with you. I believe these lessons apply to and are drawn from all of the series, especially the nine core films and certainly across the various media within the larger universe.

“Rebellions are built on hope”

Rebellions of any scale and size are about change. More specifically, change for realizing a better future and world and universe for everyone around us. Rebellions require work and effort and sacrifice and struggle. Rebellions, like any other sort of change, require that we begin a process we may not see the end of, that we challenge those with power to change with us and change what power and their relationship to it mean. This requires hope, which we (read: anyone endeavoring to practice leadership) need to marshall this hope in ourselves and in others. We also need to seperate ourselves from the sources of or the causes of that hope; rebellions that only sit on the charisma of one person will only last as long as that person. Generations-long change mean people need to keep the work going long past any one of us, and for that they also need to be able to marshall hope from within themselves as well as inspire it in a generation of rebels we will likely never meet.

Where and who you come from does not define or determine you

We see this theme over and over in Star Wars: someone comes from nothing to realize a role and future for themselves beyond their wildest imagination given their circumstances. This also works in the other direction, we see characters who come from richness prestige and reject it for the purpose of serving or disrupting the systems they benefit from. I think this, perhaps more than anything across these stories, tell us about the potential for leadership within everyone. Just as important, all of us have choices to make about who we want to be in the world, whether or not it aligns with the paths our families have set for us through action, inaction, or their own choices. Our parents and our communities are as imperfect as anyone. Whatever their best intentions, each of us still has choices to make and work to do with what we have inherited from them. Parents who did evil things, for whatever motivations, do not mean children have to continue down that path. There will, of course, be temptations and incentives to follow. And while the choices of our families and communities are not things for which we bare responsibilities, we are responsible for taking what we learn from them and using it to make this world better than it was when we came into it.

Do or do not, there is no try

I, at one point in my life, thought this meant that effort does not matter. I (and Chuck Klosterman, from whom I probably got this bit of insight) was wrong. What I believe Master Yoda was telling all of us with this dictum is that whatever the outcome of our efforts is exactly that of which we were capable. What we were trying to do, our intentions, may not align with our outcomes or our impact. Spending too long focusing on our intentions will distract us from the capacity building and incremental work of accomplishing those goals, especially when those goals may ultimately be things we will not full realize within our lifetime (see first point). This point, in addition to having ample evidence throughout the text, works on a metatextual level as well. The production choices, the retroactive continuity and changes made across various re-cuts and re-edits of the films as they have been re-released, the various opinions different people have about where to take the stories in the sequels (see the various arguments between people who hate and love Episode 8) and so on. Everyone, within the film and across the development of this media franchise, is doing the best they can with what they have and what matters to them. Those of us consuming and engaging with it also have the job of taking from it what we can and doing with it the best we can. We try, we learn, we try again to implement our learning, onward.

All of this matters for our efforts to practice leadership, whether in our own homes or across a galactic level. Whatever any of us think leadership means, we can see examples and role models, beautifully imperfect ones, in stories and media. We have the opportunity to learn from those imperfections, to make our own choices, and to build hope to keep the work going. The longer I live and the longer I stay a fan of things like Star Wars I find myself thinking that, for me, this is some piece of what Ron Heifetz means when he says “find a sanctuary”. Star Wars is, and always has, given me a space to reflect on the world around me and find lessons for my world in the experiences that took place a long time ago in a galaxy far far away. However flawed, however much a product of their time and limitations and potential, they still give me hope for what is possible in the work ahead.

The practice is on going

I’ve been thinking for a while about AI. This is not shocking. It is all anyone seems to want to talk about lately. So even when don’t want to talk about it or think about it I end up talking or thinking about it because the world seems to want it to feel like is now and will always be. I’m skeptical of that conclusion and the sort of thinking that creates it.

I was talking to someone about this skepticism recently (which might just mean some time in the last six months or so); they said, regarding my skepticism, “look I hate it too but the toothpaste is pretty much out of the tube on this one.” I haven’t been able to stop thinking about that metaphor since then. Not because it made AI make sense or unlocked some new insight into the utility of it, rather because it so wonderfully emphasized what lays ahead for us all.

I was having lunch yesterday with some people at a campus buffet, from which I grabbed a lemon bar for dessert. Someone asked how it was, and I said it was both very lemon-y and VERY sweet. They asked me another question about the level of sweetness and flavor, and after thinking for a moment I said “it tastes like a packet of lemonade mix.” A few people around the room lit up. They too had eated a lemon bar, they too were trying to figure out how to calibrate their description of the flavors and the ratios. They too were looking for something to which they could connect their experiences to help someone make sense of whether or not they wanted a lemon bar.

One of the many leadership lessons I have learned from Sr. Dr. Terry Monroe was the importance of metpahor and similie. Because the work of leadership often involves exploring and making sense of an unknown world together, a world we haven’t even yet realized or seen, we need to be able to relate it to others using shared images and ideas. Sometimes the work involves needing to better understand the language someoen speeks, the experiences they have had, the cultures they carry as a way to find the right metaphor or symbol upon which to build. Rarely do we all share the same language, or all use the same dialect. So we build relationships and get to know people and build bridges and connections so we can find the things we share, even if what we share is still only the experiences we have together.

Which brings me back to toothpaste. Anyone with children, or with a clumsy roommate, or who has had something weird happen with their toiletry case while traveling, has experienced first hand the disappointment and frustration of toothpaste being anywhere other than in the tube, on the brush, or in your mouth. I’d also be willing to bet that very few of us abandoned our homes or refused to ever travel again simply because the toothpaste got somewhere. Toothpaste being out of the tube doesn’t mean it is a permenant fixture of your bathroom, it means there is a new mess to clean.

I am not sure how you, whoever reads this, feel about AI and its impact on your world or the world we share. I would imagine that whatever you think leadership is, this metaphor about toothpaste might have something to offer. When someone makes a mess who cleans it up? When the mess gets bigger, who asks for help and how do we help? If we don’t know how to get it right the first time how do we learn to do it better the next time? The only thing that the toothpaste being out of the tube shows us is what work is ahead of us. Whatever you think leadership is probably tells you plenty about what job you have in that work.

The practice is on going.

I’ve been involved in a variety of niche subcultures and hobbies for as long as I can remember. Also, for as long as I can remember, people have been telling me (or telling other people about me) that I’m a snob. At some points in my life I’m positive they were right. The longer I reflect on it, and the longer I continue to think about and learn about leadership, the more useful I find that as a way of further reflecting on putting purpose into action.

As best as I can figure it out, the difference between being a snob and being an enthusiast is how one directs the energy and excitement they feel around their hobby. While an enthusiast will be excited to tell you about the thing they like, a snob will judge you for not agreeing with them. As I said, I’ve certainly been guilty of this (in part because I do, in fact, believe that the things I like are, in deed, great and deserve more admiration and appreciation than they get). I think Star Wars is better than Star Trek. I think obscure boardgames are way more fun than most of the biggest and most popular ones. I like strange and unconventional movies and music. Punk and hardcore are the best kinds of music. And so on.

Most of what I just described above are, I know, matters of taste and interest. There are few, if any, objective measures for those things. And with things like movies, music, food, taste is also so much about the person and what matters to them that it is almost entirely an individual thing. Plenty of people like the coffee at Starbucks, for example. Even I am willing to enjoy it sometimes, because it is very difficult to avoid. I also know that my biggest and most pronounced objections to Starbucks actually have very little to do with their coffee. They have botched a host of opportunities to use their visibility and platform to address evil in the world and in their company culture. They are notably resistant to unionizing and organized labor. They have a long history of exploiting the farmers who grow their coffee. While I have those examples at the ready, I also don’t always have the time or energy to go into that lecture, but then it opens the door for someone to say “oh, well Conor is a coffee snob.”

So I’ve come to be ready to respond, either with WHY I have a dislike for a specific thing that might put my dislike into context, or by reframing my experience with the thing as one of enthusiasm rather than snobbery. It doesn’t always work, but one of the things I’ve found is it makes it easier to have the conversation about what the other people like and what they are interested in rather than only subjecting them to what I like and why I judge them for not being as into it as me.

I tie this to leadership in that leadership, like taste and culture and enjoyment, is fantastically low consensus. That disagreement, or lack of total agreement, is one of its greatest opportunities and one of its greatest pitfalls. Lots of valid and valuable opinions and perspectives, especially when they are informed by scholarship and experience, can make identifying a direction forward tricky and fraught. This will also be made much worse by assuming “everyone who sees this differently is the WORST. SCHOLAR/LEADER. EVER.”

I’m reminded of a quote from Ron Heifetz that was shared with me by a good colleague during a workshop I attended. “People do not learn by staring in the mirror. They learn by engaging differences with others and with themselves.” We can learn quite a lot, even if it is just about what matters to someone and what they care about if we are willing to listen and listen for what connects us to them instead of what makes us better than them.

Because leaders who already know it all and get it all right will not save us.

Leadership that can learn with all of us into a new and not yet realized world is how we save ourselves and one another.

The practice is on going.

It has been a moment.

I wish I could say my absence was some sort of intentional sebatical, but in truth the combination of busy-ness, depression, burn out, and the world as we know it rendered it hard to have anything worthwhile to say. I wrote, often, but trashed it for one reason or another. Still some lesson to be learned from all of that, though what it is might reveal itself later.

Over the last few weeks I went back to making a playlist of music that I had been listening to, music that makes me think of the impending fall and the new school year, nostalgic for the past, hopeful and sad for the future, sometimes all in the same song. You can find it HERE. I used to send a message like this once a week to students, friends, and some other folks; it felt like a way to take stock of a period of time and the experiences we had together. I miss it, which prompted me to revisit.

Maybe that can say whatever it is I can’t find the words to say otherwise. Or maybe “these are things I like” is all that needs to be said.

The practice is on going.

At the end of May the office in which I work went on retreat for a day. Part of that retreat involved taking an assessment that provded insights into the dimensions of our personalities and approaches to work that might make setting healthy boundaries difficult. My top two results, separated only by one point, were HARMONIZER and PROVER. I found myself very resistant to both results. After some time a realization hit me like a punch in the stomach: Most of what I have been able to accomplish in my like, professionally, personally, anything, has been in some direct or indirect way because someone told me I couldn’t do it.

Even as I typed that last part out I feel my throught clinching up and like I might cry. Getting this feedback brought to me the realization that I’ve been so scared that someone (a lot of someones) who told me at some point as way or am or will be a failure might be right if I ever stop or ask for help . So I’ve pushed myself; get into and graduate college, to get into and finish graduate school, get a Ph.D., publish scholarship, get hired at a top school in a top program, discuss my work publicly, out perform and outwork everyone around me, blow past year-long goals in a few months, and so on. And I’ve done all of those things, and in some ways been rewarded for doing them. Sometimes those rewards meant more work, other times it was communicated to me that this was the level at which I was expected to be working anyway, either of which presented me with a new challenge through which I could prove myself.

This is not to say I never ask for help, though I certainly ask for different sorts of help than perhaps what people might expect of me. And I can admit when I don’t know something. And I like to think that I put the work into learning from the help I need and not staying complacent in what I do not know. All of this has made me a somewhat thoughtful person with a number of capacities important for practicing leadership. These things have also helped me shift some parts of my locus of control inward. I can prove things to myself, that I am capable and smart and that I do not have to believe what other people think about me. I’d venture to say a decent amount of good has come from needing to prove something to someone.

The deeper problem, which is also the thing that perhaps makes this essay a useful case-in-point for the larger practice of leadership, is that leadership is often the thing needed to move us, any of us, from where we are to where we want to be. I’ve come to believe that where we want to be, individually and also collectively, is a world we can’t create with the same thinking that made the world we have now. Which presents me, and all of us, with the question of whether the things that made us successful so far are what we need to keep in order to realize whatever it is the next and new world is.

It brings me to questions about whether people are willing to accept being disappointed by me, and whether I’m willing to disappoint them. Am I willing to walk into the scary possibility of that making me feel more alone, or walking away from the successes I’ve been able to achieve? (NOTE: to anyone with whom I work that might read this, no there won’t be a resignation letter in your inbox). Am I willing to fail, and can I be okay with other people think I’m a failure, am I willing to let them be right? And, perhaps as part of giving the work back, are you? Part of what makes this realization so scary, for anyone, is that if they fail someone might then take the opportunity to fire them, to redicule them, the make an example of them. And that I and you might still have to take a leap into a new future together. And we might have to fail together on the way down, or across the bridge we have to build, or in the plane we have to fly.

Because leaders who just expect more without the opportunity to fail and rest and learn won’t save us.

Because leadership that makes space to be honored and valued for whoever we are, wherever we are, without having to move we can be better or perfect, is how we save ourselves and each other.

The practice is ongoing.

START WITH LISTENING PART TWO: WHAT ARE THEY RIGHT ABOUT?

(originally written in an old blog on 14 December 2015)

It seems to be so easy to point out what is wrong about just about anything. Some of this is the nature of people, and the world we have created, curated to our tastes and our perspectives. Another dimension of this, I’m sure, is my heavily developed critical lens and approach to the world. Being trained to see the cracks, the problems, the pain, the oppression, all happening all around can make seeing anything else very, very difficult. Especially in dealing with other people, who may or may not approach the world in the same way I do, it can be in the blink of an eye that I spot the flaw in their argument, or the position of privilege from where their argument stems, or even the assumptions on which their approach is founded. Many people even generate praise and make substantial career advancement based on this cultivated skill.

And still, there can be more. Over the past few years I have been introduced to and spent a great deal of time with Ken Wilber’s Integral Theory. One of his core points, and usually the tag line he uses when describing the formation of Integral Theory, is that no one is smart enough to be wrong all of the time. Integral theory itself is situated on a foundation that all disciplines have something to offer, and so the work of integrating them is to first find what they get right and what they get wrong, and then find the connection points between what each gets right. Sounds simple enough, right?

The difficulty of this comes when we have to do this with ideas we genuinely do not like being expressed by people who really do believe them. Ken Wilber himself has been the target of a number of people’s ire (justifiably), because they have experienced him, either in person or through his writing, as having a major blind spot around sexism and gender dynamics among other things. I myself had an experience with a very prominent theorist in my field of study that involved being unable to continue reading their work and struggling to continue teaching it, all because they made a slightly inaccurate reference to Star Wars in said book. I met this person a few months later, and told them about my experience. They were incredibly gracious and kind, taking my feedback and understanding why that was so important to me, while also showing me, through their actions, how wonderfully human they were.

For me, this is at the core of finding what someone is right about when I want to hate them for the things about which they are wrong. It can be so easy to reduce a person to their essence as wrong, a living embodiment of the –isms they are expressing, even evil. And working to understand the things about which that person is right does not excuse them from being accountable for the things they get wrong. Certainly the pain caused by some people being wrong can take years, even generations to heal, and it is not my intention here to dismiss or diminish the need for accountability in these spaces. In fact, I think the approach on which I am reflecting here can be an effective how in this context.

Day after day, I find myself seeing clip after clip of Donald Trump spouting hateful things about a number of people’s identities and his perspective on their place (or lack of place) in the United States. Most days, I simply dismiss it as racist, xenophobic garbage, and feel a sense of sadness for the people who support this as a way to exist in a larger world context. On my more reflective days, when a thought catches me just right, however, I spent a few moments wondering about what Mr. Trump is right. We can move past much of what he is actually saying, because his comments on Mexican and Mexican American people, Muslim people, and many others, to the best of my knowledge, are just wrong. One thing he offers, however, is some insight into the changing nature of the world and how we, as humans, fear change. One piece of our evolution is the development of a capacity to discern differences between things. Some mushrooms are poison and others are edible. There was a time in the world where it was very important to differentiate who were members of one group and another, in fact it was at the essence of survival; mistaking a lion for ones friend would mean a very short existence for many groups.

People have had these instincts for thousands of years, and we have created structures in the world that have attempted to maintain the utility of these instincts, even though their function has a very different place in the world today than it did 10,000 years ago. Yet we want to hold them, use them in the same or similar ways we (as individuals) think that we always have and always should. Mr. Trump gives voice to that fear that we all face on some level. The fear that the changing world will be so different we wont know how best to function in it. That everything we have come to know will be left behind, and so will we. I experience this fear too, worrying that the field of Student Affairs and Higher Education is changing so rapidly that my skills, my perspective, the abilities I have cultivated will not have a place in what it is becoming. And it would be very easy for me, in that fear, to start supporting people and ideas that keep my view of how things should be in places of influence and power. Then, however, I would stop learning, I would not be continuing to learn to adapt and grow. I would no longer be in service of my own mission to continue to grow and learn along with others.

So perhaps this is the thing about which Donald Trump is right. We all are afraid of some aspect of change. He seems happy to take that up, to capitalize on that fear and gain power in the process. In many ways many of us are happy to let him, and have let many who represent the same thing in other contexts take exactly the same approach. So for as much as it pains me to publish anything in which I speak to Donald Trump being right about anything, in a way he has taught me a lesson about some of what I need to hold if I want to keep working on and participating in change. I need to be able to hold the people who fear that change, and fear what that change will mean for their participation in a new world, with love and compassion because I am them, as afraid of change and the unknown as anyone. Not to hate them, but to allow them to be just as human as I am. It is easy to see what is good and right in the people that make me feel good, but the real work is finding what is right in the people that represent the parts of myself that I don’t like, and don’t want to see amplified. That is where the real listening needs to happen.

As I revisit this, I’m left to reflect on the notion of accountability and commitment.

Accountability, to many, means having to account for their transgressions. And for many of us this involves punitive punishment. Those things have their place, I suppose, but other possibilities exist as well. Possibilities focused on reconciliation and care for those impacted (everyone, in one way or another). The former is, I suspect, what scares so many in authority of it (because they will lose their authority) and the latter even more so because it is so beyond their imagination that it might be the only thing scarier.

In moments like the current one, just like the one I was writing about 10 years ago, is one in which accountability for the impact of what we do and say is not incentivized. And it is for that reason it becomes so important. We can listen for that about which someone is right and hold them accountable for the harm they cause not because one cancels out the other but because we all deserve both. It is in deserving and receiving both that we can actually evolve and improve our relationships and work together instead of in effort to win over one another.

Which brings us to commitment. I can’t speak to the commitments of others beyond what they show and tell me. But I’m clear on my own commitments, to people and to change and to leaving the places I am better than when they found me and I them. Even when I am the only one to which I need to feel accountable these commitments give me a way to hold myself to them. It is this same thinking that makes me think about how hard it is practice leadership and be a good person. It also helps me continue to reflect on what those with whom I disagree and those who bring challenges to me are right about. Not because I feel a need to uplift or excuse the harm they do, but because even at its worst it does not make them irredimable or worth disposing of.

Because in moments like the current one or the next one, leaders who are afraid to be accountable will not save use.

In moments like this one and the next one, leadership that is committed being accountable is how we save ourselves and each other.

The practice is on going.

I watched the below clip and after a few moments I had to stop what I was doing to rewind it to watch again because it became so cleary and profound it started to feel like the volume was increasing as it played. As perhaps you might be used to at this point, give it a watch for the next few minutes. If you need context for why they are having the conversation feel free to read about the Aberfan disaster.

A few things that stand out:

“We can’t be everything to everyone and still be true to ourselves” I find myself reflecting on the ways that holding authority does require we find some balance between bringing our authentic selves and being what people need from us. What often makes this hard is that it is rare that people are so clear and direct in what they want from us. We don’t often get an entire government and a town telling us “the people need to their queen to comfort them”. And, as we see in the clip, even when the ask is so clear we might get in our own way with what we think that means instead of what we have to offer as we meet them at their need. Holding authority and meeting peoples’ needs from it asks us to reflect on the most needed functions of authority at the moment, finding our capacity to meet them (which many times involves getting things and people moving to do the work as often as it requires showing up and being with people). It also asks us to really examine what parts of who we are matter to the moment and what parts of the moment need what people want and expect. It is a deep challenge, one that will play on a variety of our own insecurities and temptations. We often see so many people seeking authority promising to be everything to us and to everyone. It often tells us exactly who they truly are if we are willing to listen.

“Makes me more approachable” I remember a moment, almost seven or eitght years ago, where a student in a class asked me if I even owned a pair of jeans. All they saw during our interactions was a white man looking like he just stepped out of a J. Crew window, which illicited a reaction from them that involved a desire to challenge. So I told them I did and they asked me to prove it by showing up to class wearing jeans for our next meeting. The next week, toward the end of the class, the student commented on my clothes and I asked them if it offered them a different view of me or made what I had to say land in a different way. I don’t actually remember their response, but I was told a bit later in the semester that it was a really meaningful exchange for this student in examining their own relationship to authority; they felt empowered by the idea that authority might listen to them and approach them differently without bending to them, which seemed a new experience. And the next week I was back to khakis and a navy blazer. I still think often about the discursive nature of clothing and what it is I intend to say with what I wear when I go to work or enter into spaces; I take the good (that people are differently receptive to me) with the bad (that people project whatever they think this means about me and my values onto me). And I try to be thoughtful about how I meet people in the conversation they want to have, which sometimes does not need me to wear a tie.

“We calm more crisis than we create” While in the clip they talk about “being leaders” this is the most clear articulation of the challenge of authority. In times of crisis, even ones that are entirely in one’s own head, people look to someone in charge for help to navigate it. And while there are, in fact, lists of things one can and should do (protect, direct, orient, control conflict, and sustain and evolve culture) which ones are needed and what those look like for the crisis in front of anyone is part of the hard work of being an authority. I’d like to think in this moment the ask to hold space by the person who, culturally, is the embodiment of an entire nation and people is an ask to orient (helping people find what the things they need) and to sustain and evolve culture (what parts of who we are help us meet this moment, what parts hold us back).

Outside of what I take away from the content of the clip I also recognize how I came to these realizations. I realize that I find myself having better ideas about work when I’m not thinking about work. It reminds me of a time, years and years ago, when I first realized that reflecting on leadership didn’t just require me to work and read academic books and be in lectures, I needed to live a lift and understand the work in which leadership needed to be practiced.

The practice is on going.

One of my previous supervisors is a Communication and Cultural Studies scholar. It was through him that I learned about Stuart Hall, who some consider one of thinkers at the core of the development of multicultural education and much of what became critical theory.

Most central to my point today, and probably most central to my appreciate of Stuart Hall in general, is his thinking expressed through what was first a conference speech and then a written transcript published in a variety of collections titled “For a Marxism without Guarantees”. As I have before, I’d encourage any of you who might feel a sense of unease or resistence to reading the piece or reading the rest of this post to consider and explore the place from which that unease or resistance comes. And, again as I have before, I’d encourage you to read that piece and then return here.

As you’ve now read, Hall doesn’t spend his time and the time of his audience extolling the glory of Marxism or Marx. He is, to put it mildly, bitingly critical of Marx and of his devoted adherents. Most importantly, he reminds all of us, no matter our relationship to Marx and Marxism, that there is no magic and long-lost page of Marx’s writings where he gives everyone the secret answers for navigating a socialist future or how we sustain ourselves beyond the collapse of the current (or the previous, or the next) state of things.

Instead, Hall discusses the necessity of understanding our world as one in which socialism, the end of empire, the throwing off oppressive systems, is not inevitable or a guaranteed outcome (despite or even if we have a particular belief about the moral arc of history and it’s eventual direction). He also discusses the ways in which Marx likely knew this and that many who intone his name and their own “understanding” of his ideas are responsible for making promises on Marx’s behalf without his insights or input (a convenient thing we like to do to dead thinkers who were decried and villified during their lives).

When I first read “For a Marxism Without Guarantees” (probably in 2013-ish, 30+ years after it was first delivered), I was deep into learning about leadership and saw a multitude of parallels. We probably ought to avoid hero worship and not critically examine the short-comings of even our favorite theorists (one specific one forthcoming in another post). Leadership as a concept has experienced a boom in academic spaces, driven largely by studies that suggest employers wan’t their new recruits to exhibit leadership skills (though very few define what that means or agree on what those are). Lots of people, including me, have both gone into considerable debt and experienced an economic upswing in our lives in order to and by being able to speak thoughtfully about what leadership is or could be. The rewards for being able to wrap things up in a pretty bow for folks so they are happy with what they are doing and never challenged by the uncertainty of an unknown future is handsomely rewarded, as our currently geopolitical space tells us daily. The unknown is scary, and as I’ve discussed before, when people are afraid they look to people with authority to make them feel less scared.

It is for this reason that I find Hall’s words so inspiring in 2025 and in the 12-13 years since I first read them. First, it excites me to continue to think about Marxism and Marx, even as someone who does not strictly identify my polictics as Marxist or idealizes Marxism as the be all and end all. For those curious, I probably most closely align with a philosophy of anarcho-syndicalism (basically, the only organizing necessary is labor organization in which the people who do the work control their collective means of production and derive individual and collective benefit, thus rendering state, war, and such redundant). He outlines some very important thinking about what leadership looks like and calls to action those of us who continue to shape the thinking of what this could and will look like for the next generation; he makes clear how we can all do the work of what we say we care about. Which also reminds me of a song I’ve come to appreciate more and more as the years continue on. He encourages imagining what it looks like to get from here to somewhere rather than only focusing on the steps to arrive there from here (wherever there might be).

What Billy Bragg lays out over the course of a few minutes is all the different ways people are, in fact, doing the work those of us in the role of teaching about leadership often describe in the abstract. And, perhaps more importantly, he describes those who are “waiting for the great leap forward” as those working to make it happen, not those who passively wait for things to fall apart or for those in power to realize the error of their ways. Not because they have all the answers, but because they know the world won’t change until we start to change it.

Hall and Bragg, each in their own ways, present us with the role we can play in an uncertain but necessary new world. For as much as the current world is “the devil we know”, one we at least know how to navigate our way through, the future presents us infinite possibility. Or, as bell hooks said in some of the writing that first made me realize that there are a host of books written about leadership that never use the word leadership, that we have the opportunity and possibility of dismantling oppressive systems rather than just remaking them to better serve us or our small group.

All of this exists in a time and a world where leadership becomes more and more necessary by the day. All of us are, in our own way, waiting for the great leap forward. If, however, we wait until it looks exactly like the magical guaranteed future someone who couldn’t see the future might have inaccurately articulated, or the future someone interested in capitalizing on offering people assurance and certainty in exchange for authority, we will be amazed at how swiftly that future never comes. And we are not alone in this. We have our friends, we have our records, we have our libraries. What they tell us might be challenging and difficult to understand, we might not agree with all of it, we might have to think hard about what it shows us about ourselves and our own shortcomings. It also might show us what else is possible and where to find more of it.

As we continue to imagine what else might be possible for our futures, leaders who can guarantee the future will not save us.

As we continue to imagine what else might be possible for our futures, leadership into and through the uncertainty and possibility is how we save ourselves and each other.

The practice is on going.

Post Script Note: After I wrote this piece I got an email from Dean Spade, a legal scholar and activist whose work I find continually inspiring. It linked a talk he gave recently that discusses many of these same ideas in the context of law, legal systems, police, and state/government systems. It is a ~50 minute watch but one that I think gives yet another way of examining these kinds of leadership, the uncertaintly that prevents many from investing in imagining more and/or working towards it, and some of what might be possible as the process and goal of said work. I’d encourage a watch.

I’ve moved around the country a lot, to places I’d never been and where I knew almost no one at least 5 times in my life. But because I know enough about the internet to always find a punk show, I’ve always been able to at least find music I like and in turn meet people who like it.

As I’ve gotten older I’ve continued to develop into a more nuanced adult person. Being straight edge is still a part of who I am but it isn’t the entirety of my identity or personality. The same goes for being part of the hardcore scene. And even as we become more developed versions of ourselves it can still feel very good to spend an evening or two around friends and strangers doing a thing that still means a lot to me. It felt good to catch what my friend Rob calls “The Hardcore Holy Ghost”, being so taken by the song that you just throw your whole self into it without care for anything other than singing along as loud and as hard as possible. So hard that I blew out my voice and didn’t have my full voice back for a week.

Most importantly, hardcore and straight edge were the first communities that challenged me to think differently about authority and power and leadership. It showed me how imperfect communities and people could be and it taught me how to hold people accountable without treating them as disposable, it exposed me to feminism and veganism and animal rights and radical politics. It gave me role models and aspirational figures as well as showed me exactly who I do not want to be in the world. It’s been one of my longest friends and helped me meet and stay friends with some of my best friends from across the world. It gives me a lot of what I need and a lot on which to reflect in every stage of my life. It showed me, as the man said, “the only crowded rooms where I’m not all alone.”

Another one told me “don’t forget the struggle, don’t forget the streets, don’t forget your roots, and don’t sell out.”

The practice is on going.

The following week, on a Tuesday, April 18th, I got a phone call from my mother while I was eating dinner. We usually didn’t talk during the week, mostly because of the time differences, but I answered without much concern. It was on this phone call that she told me that she had been given a stage 4 cancer diagnosis and that her doctors predicted she had, at most, 9-12 months left. It kicked off another kind of transition, one that for the next few months took a great deal of priority in my life.

Those coming months were a blur. I needed to edit my dissertation and get it ready to publish. I needed to find a post-graduation job, and so on. It seemed a lot easier to make sense of this transition. In many ways the structure of a Ph.D. program prepared me for this and put a lot of scaffolding around me to guide the process. I had a lot of people I could ask for help and many had already completed the process.

I also needed and wanted to spend time with my mother in whatever way I could from the other side of the country. Navigating all of this was a lot harder, fewer people could guide or even advise. She and my father flew to California for my graduation and a vacation at the end of May. A few weeks later she entered hospice care. A week later I flew out when I got the call to get on a plane, about a week later I woke up in my parents house at 4:45am, seemingly for no reason at all. A few moments later my dad called from the hospice center, and an hour later my mom passed away, just after I arrived.

In the week across which I have been writing this post, that it was the anniversary of my dissertation and also the beginning of the end of my mother’s life, I am also preparing to give a talk on practicing leadership in teams at work. I’m thinking in this moment about the stage of Tuckman’s work on teams called “adjourning”, the part where teams conclude and the work necessary to bring a team to a healthy conclusion. There are of course the summary evaluations, the feedback, the recognition, the transition of final reports. Sometimes there is the returning of keys and resources, setting the autorespond on the email address, and moving out of the office space. In one way or another, we all “…put the chairs on the tables, turn out the lights and lack the universe behind [us] when [we] leave.”

In many ways the lead up to my mother’s death was also a process of bringing our relationship to a close. There were conflicts to address, tensions and issues and grudges and thank yous and reflections and so on. Most of the grudges and the conflicts fell away, the ones that didn’t we had some time and some energy to dedicate to them. We had a few days to ourselves when I stayed with her in hospice. We did what we could with the time we had, and when she left it felt like we left it where it needed to be. Which I suppose made the experience of her dying feel less, abrupt or jarring, because it felt like we more or less finished what we needed to. Or maybe it was an opportunity to experience the stages of grief with her instead of afterward. Perhaps both.

Still, after she passed I spent a lot of time around a lot of people who were themselves wrestling with their own issues about death and projecting some of those things onto others, me included, which is another part of what makes so much of this a difficult time for many people. In those moments I remember sitting in the kitchen of my parent’s house in Florida, I think I was washing dishes, when a thought crossed my mind: the last lesson a teacher teaches is how to continue the work when they are gone.

8 years on I still reflect on that thought regularly. I don’t feel capable of commenting on the degree to which I am or have continued to make progress on whatever lessons my mother may have been trying to teach me across her life. Unfortunately, death doesn’t come on anyone else’s schedule and we often have to make sense of the end and what to do after it as it all happens. What I often think about is how well I work to make sure the people around me have access to a good, caring, loving life; how much do (or can) I invest in making the lives of those around me meaningful. And perhaps, even more crucially, how equipped am I to do that for myself. However imperfect an example I got (which is only to say it was as human and as imperfect as anyone can be), the lessons were there. Now the question is, for me as much as for anyone, what to do with them.

The practice is ongoing.

Thanks mom.

I’ve written before about my appreciation for Ron Heifetz’ perspective on adaptive leadership. I keep a drawing of his “timeline of adaptive change” on my office white board under the heading “key things to remember”

You may also notice a note in the upper right-hand corner, which is not a part of Heifetz’ work (at least not anywhere I’ve seen).

For those who may not be able to read my poor handwriting, the note I left myself is “who is being brought out of their comfort zone?”

To the best of my understanding, when adaptive change is taking place EVERYONE is uncomfortable, no matter their position or the degree to which they are or are not practicing leadership. And, as I am sure many of you who read this can imagine, often during times of difficulty or crisis, even perceived, the discomfort and disappointment is often asymmetrically and inequitably distributed. I remember, early in my career in higher education, an executive-level administrator once told me “shit rolls downhill” and I find myself remember that as a valuable leadership lesson (about what not to do, which is still a worthwhile lesson).

Often when we amass power (or privilege, or authority) one of the temptations is to pass along the challenges, to delegate the tasks that might prompt us to have to relearn how we do what we do. Gaining authority (whether formal or informal) is often a reward for being really good at something. And yet so often we find ourselves deciding that because we have gained this authority that it must mean that how we decide to do things is correct and the best way to have done it. I don’t actually think most people consciously decide this, in fact that this remains largely unspoken or unexamined is, itself, a hidden or competing commitment.

So it is probably worth examining, as we decide to disappoint and frustrate people’s expecations, whose expectations we feel comfortable frustrating. Are they the people beneath us in the organizational chart, those to whom we have a responsibility of protection, direction, orientation, conflict management, and cultural sustainability and evolution? Are we disappointing the people who “just have to deal with it?” Are the people we are disappointing the people who can’t challenge us? Are the people we are disappointing going to have to make their own paths and resources toward having their needs pet?

It can, of course, be just as dangerous and problematic to only direct our disappointment and failure to meet expectations to those who hold power and auhtority over us. It is at least worth considering if the desire to disappoint is a reflection of how own scars and resistance to authority. Are we hoping to disappoint rather than join, because we are more comfortable being pushed to the outside? Do we tell ourselves a story that those in power deserve to shoulder this disappointment or that they don’t deserve the support we all need (whether we admit it or not)?

Ultimately, while disappointment can be powerful, it also carries with it a lot of responsibility. If we make it into a weapon it will cause the same harm as the weapons we use it to fight against. If we are only willing to disappoint others for the sake of our own comfort we won’t do our part of “the work.” If we use disappointment to replicate the distribution of resources we see now, the ones so desperately in need of leadership and change, we will, as bell hooks put it, just recreate power in our own benefit. And while we certainly see a number of people who can’t wait to be in charge so they can get theirs we also can see a world of much greater possibility where we all are working for and with each other to make something better. Even, and maybe especially, when it is hard to do together.

Because leaders who only look to disappoint other people aren’t going to save us.

But when we are willing both disappoint and be disappointed as a way to understand where and when and how leadership is needed we can save ourselves and other another.

The practice is on going.

This, among many other things, got me thinking about disappointment and failing to meet expectations. It sent me to my bookshelves for my copy of “Provocation as Leadership”, which I couldn’t find and am now feeling frustrated about not knowing to whom I lent it. The gist is that part of practicing leadership is thoughtfully dissappointing people, failing to meet their expectations, as one strategy for presenting them with the flaws of their expectations, how those expectations are often about displacing responsibility and avoiding the necessary work, or how those expectations can be in service of a maintaining status quo misaligned with stated values and goals. We’ve certainly seen examples of these sorts of expectations in higher education lately.

I’m reminded of a time I was on a job interview; a final round campus visit for a faculty job I really wanted at a well regarded institution in a well respected program. The job was to teaching in graduate programs on higher education administration and working to build out and teach in an undergraduate minor in leadership studies. So, understandably, the question “so what makes you believe yourself to be a leader” came up (this isn’t an exact quote, but the general sentiment of what was asked).

In the moment it felt like time slowed and I could hear my heart beat go from ~90 to 110 right away, my palms froze, and my mouth entirely dried out. I knew in this moment that I was being presented with an opportunity to be honest with myself and the committee, to really speak to what I believe leadership to be, or I could give them a very fluffy answer that would make me sound like a smart grad student who would make lots of students feel good about taking on this minor and be good leaders in the world (or at least somewhere closer to that on the grand spectrum of possibilities). I took what felt like the hardest swallow of my life, followed by a slow breath and said “I don’t”.

I then took what felt like the second hardest swallow of my life as I prepared to talk about why, and watched this person’s eyes role and heard them let out an exasperated sigh as they asked “or a change agent.” My stomach sank, and somehow I mustered up enough of something to explain what I think leadership is and is not, why I think that distinction is important, and how I believe I do that in my teaching and advising. I can only imagine it came from that same place that helps people life a car to save someone’s life or whatever gets injured runners across a finish line.

I think about this example because it is, by any measure, a minor one. Sure, I needed a job, and I really wanted this one, and the cost to me in placating a person who really wanted me to just meet their expectations in order to get something I want (well, need, unless the federal government doesn’t expect me to pay them back for my education any more) is relatively small on almost any moral scale. Most of us are presented with a version of this sort of compromise most days.

It is because we are presented with these compromises each day, these encounters are often the sites on which our commitments are tested. We aren’t all presented with an actual trolley problem. We are, instead, asked how far we are willing to bend and flex for the sake of meeting the wants and needs of people around us, people who employ us, people on whom we depend. Perhaps it is less like crossing the rubicon and more like the ship of Theseus. At what point are we no longer doing what we say we believe leadership to be, or at what point are we no longer the leaders we claimed to be (or marketed ourselves to be either as a public persona or as an institution hoping to generate revenue, or both)?

NOTE: if you have watched the avengers films, yes I know that there is also a both/and to this worth considering. At which point I might ask you to consider whether the actions and impacts in service of said marketing and public persona are also consistent with both/and thinking or if both/and is working as a convenient escape from accountability for inconsistency (which is sometimes a nice way of saying hypocrisy or opportunism).

Why I think this is important is there are also other options in these situations than simply choosing whether or not to make small moral compromising in the name of a little bit of security or benefit. We also have the opportunity to ask questions that seek to better define expectations. We have the opportunity to explore together the potentials for growth and development in our expectations, we have an opportunity to practice what we say we believe more so than just talk about it. We might not make everyone happy right away, but we might build our collective capacity to be and do better together. Which, especially right now, is going to make a lot of difference in the world.

The leaders trying to make everyone happy aren’t going to save us.

Practicing leadership that holds us all accountable to our commitments and to each other is how we save ourselves and each other.

The practice is on going.

I have thought about this video almost every day since I first saw it about 35 days ago. Sometimes most of the day, sometimes for a moment.

Ira Chaleff, in his work on followership, writes about the ways that people not in positions of authority or power can still practice leadership from their roles. While I might dislike talking about people as “followers” in the same way I dislike calling people “leaders” I can also appreciate using familiar language to describe the ways people in different roles or positions still have a part to play in doing good in the world. In early versions of his book he discussed one aspect of following as “the decision to leave.” It might be to leave the organization, or the relationship, or the space in which we find ourselves, but at some point the only thing to do is walk away, according to Chaleff (at the time).

When I met Ira Chaleff, 11 or 12 years ago, I had a few minutes to talk with him 1 to 1 and we talked about this idea. I don’t specifically remember what I wanted to ask him, but he mentioned that someone had recently contacted him and shared their research on followership. In this research, he told me, they identified a different grouping for the patterns originally called “the decision to walk away” which they called “the decision to make a principled stand.” This, too, makes a lot of sense. Sometimes we don’t leave; sometimes we refuse to participate, sometimes we disobey; sometimes we work to counteract. But, in one way or another, we do what we know to be the right thing even when someone in charge tells us not to.

This struck a chord with me as I began to really dig into the ethical nature of leadership and was deciding who I wanted to be in the world as a leadership scholar and educator (whether or not that is how I think about myself anymore might be another post, but certainly then).

I’ve been thinking, for a while now, about the questions we have to ask ourselves in order to understand leadership. It was this thinking that prompted my previous post on being good and ethical. It is the same thinking that inspired a talk I will be giving at work in a few weeks about how we work in teams and what it means to practice leadership in teams. It is thinking that, at least as best as I can remember the order of events, started with putting together a chapter in a book that I will write and promote here when it comes out. I have to resist the urge to post the chapter here or to recreate a version of it here. I suppose I feel a sense of obligation to the editors (who I consider friends). But one of the ones I’ve been sitting with for a while, one not in the chapter, that I’ll share here is “are the ways you act when you think you are being a leader consistent with what you think a leader is?” In this moment, I hope each of you might take a moment to answer this question for yourself. Especially right now.

(NOTE: I don’t use the word leader to talk about myself, ever, for reasons I’ve already written about. But I ask this to other people often, because I know that is a word they use and a way many think about leadership, and I do sometimes reflect on how I might answer the questions I pose to others).

I know that is a complicated question to answer. None of us are perfect. We are all always becoming a newer version of ourselves. And I know working in leadership is to work is a space of low-consensus. For as much as I know I work to make space for a plurality of ways to understand leadership, right now I find myself at an inflection point.

At the time of writing this, four days ago Mahmoud Khalil was kidnapped by ICE because he participated in protests on a campus at which he was a student. Mahmoud’s green card has been revoked by the State Department (at least according to their tweets and public statements, whether that is even possible is being disputed). His family and legal representation is working to find him and he has not been released.

(NOTE: I have no interest in arguing the validity of his participation or debating his political positions with anyone over email or in a comments section. If you read this and want to have that conversation with me we are going to have to find a different venue. If you don’t know how to get ahold of me, find someone else with whom to discuss).

These circumstances have brought the above video back to the fore of my mind, in as much as I can’t help but think about Mahmoud and his family each day. I can’t help but ask myself a version of the question posed by the narrator of the video, a question I implore each of you who reads this to ask yourself as well. If not this, what? If not now, when? If not him, who? Because you either won’t have an answer or you will, and either way your work will, I hope, be in focus.

As we cross the rubicon leaders are not going to save us.

As we cross the rubicon leadership is how we save ourselves and each other.

The practice is on going.

I really like the show The Good Place. It is, broadly, a show about people learning to be “good” as part of understanding the nature of making choices about who they hope to be in the world and in community. I’ll spare you any spoilers. It is a show I enjoy and one I find myself revisiting and thinking about often. I may do a re-watch soon.

I also really enjoy the work at the core of the show, a book also referenced throughout, which is “What We Owe to Eachother” by T. M. Scanlon. I’ll spoil this book for you since it is 400+ pages of very dense, graduate-level philosophy; “what we owe to eachother” is to engage other people, those impacted by our actions, to be key participants in determining our actions’ goodness. SIDE NOTE: Yes, people who read this with graduate and terminal degrees in philosophy, I know I am being reductive about it. This isn’t really the point.

As I am sure you could imagine just based on my short description and what we know about the broad impact of our actions in the world, being a “good person” is very hard, by this metric and most others. When I used to teach leadership ethics courses this was a core struggle of the class. We need to be accountable for the inevitable impact of our actions without falling into despair or being so afraid that we can’t act. The same is true about leadership and the difficulty in practicing it. Revisiting these thoughts within the current world has brought me to some observations about the parallels of leadership and ethics.

1. Practicing leadership consistently, like being ethically principled, is really hard. They both require a constant effort. They also require near constant reflection (and reflection-in-action); being almost always ready to “hit the dance floor” instead of just staying “on the balcony.” Both of these points of view will give us a number of opportunities to observe…

2. Practicing leadership, like being ethical, should probably point out to each of us our shortcomings more often than put us on a pedestal. A principled approach to leadership isn’t, as far as I can tell, one that most of us can just do well without making sometimes huge mistakes. Even using the “great men” framework (one that is general called outdated in leadership circles but also one whose roots still prop up more of our institutions and ways of practicing leadership in the world that anyone would like to admit. More on that in a later post as well as in a book I’ll promote here in some when when it comes out), we can still see hosts of ways in which each of these “leaders” were flawed, failed to live up to their own ideals, and offer insight into the shortcomings inherent in their (and all of our) humanity. And (here comes the really tricky part) that doesn’t make them all bad, at least not inherently. Either/or thinking about ethics, and about leadership, will recreate a lot of problems. Which will also bring into focus …

3. Practicing leadership, like being an ethical person, will often mean we have to sit in tension and discomfort for a good long while. Very few of the problems presented to us by leadership or ethics are easy to solve. Many of the solutions we come up with with be incremental steps forward at best. Anyone who tells you otherwise is probably selling you something. And these things will bring us to the boundaries of our capacity and comptence most of the time, which is often where the real work happens. And…

4. Practicing leadership, like being and doing good in the world, requires pretty constant learning. I’m told in some spiritual practices this is called “beginner’s mind” or “child’s mind” and I suppose that would be a very helpful perspective to take on the matter. Because when we are practicing leadership and trying to do good in the world we are changing all that is around us. We have to be prepared to learn from the new world being created around us, and often without giving in to the hubris of ascribing causality or engaging in the assumption of our own omnipotence. We play a part, and there are 7.5 Billion other parts with which we are in a constant dance. If we start to think of ourselves as having the power to “make it all better”, or to be the direct cause of all that is good right now, we might forget…

5. Practicing leadership, like being ethical, means being willing to reject the temptations to our ego that both will bring to the surface. If our practices of leadership, like our approaches to making sense of what is the right thing to do in the world, always point us to the status quo, tell us what we are already doing is as good as anything could possibly be, forever tell us how right we are without ever having to account for any failures or continue to learn, we are treading very dangerous ground. This is when ethics simply becomes justification or convenient; in leadership it often creates a cult of personality or demagoguery, and those are often the best possible outcomes. We have, and will continue to, see(n) what this connection in particular will mean for the world we will be living in for the foreseeable future.

I suppose this could make both of these things, practicing leadership and trying to be a good person, sound pretty unattractive. As I’ve said, we see plenty of examples of people not doing some or any of this doing quite well in the world. But then again, how well is the world we are in right now working for anyone aside from those select few? Even many of the people who are still enjoying a relative degree of comfort (which in many ways, includes me) can see the asymmetry of access, resources, and opportunity afforded (or not) to others. When we look to the compounding impacts of all that is going on right now on so many, it (I hope) brings into focus the necessary changes to enhance circumstances and life chances for all.

So, with that in mind, what part can you, whoever you are, play in making any of that possible? I promise you you can, in however small a way, and even those small steps take work. It can and will take years and likely will only show incremental progress across any of our lifetimes. But it is work worth doing, because leaders will not save us, but leadership is how we save ourselves and each other.

The practice is on going.

I’ve been thinking about this video lately. I used to use this clip as part of an exercise in a class I taught on college students in the US. I would instruct students to find a media clip from a piece of pop culture that depicted someone exhibiting the behaviors of a particular developmental stage or position. Since dualism is the first stage in Perry’s model (of which I know there are substantial criticism, and with which I agree) which is usually the first model to which students are introduced (at least in my fields). It was pretty rare that anyone else could find a clip this short to so clearly demonstrate a key aspect of the stage, but then again most of them were attempting to describe a much more complex set of developmental positions that required a bit more nuance to detect. I also made up the assignment so I had more time to figure it out than I would give them to make their contributions. Go figure.

I was in a meeting recently in which I, along with the unit of which I am a part, were asked how we were feeling about the state of the world (largely related to the ongoing mess that is and is created by the US government) and what we are hearing from others around our campus. After listening to my colleagues sharing their insights and sharing some of my own I was reminded of a thought I had a week or so prior and realized a more refined version of that thought.

A week ago (at the time of first draft) I attended a workshop intended to provide clear explanation of my employers policies regarding undocumented students. Those attending were given a lot of information, all of it very insightful and important. We, the audience, also had ample time to ask questions. I started to notice a theme in several of the questions, which I would summarize/synthesize as “What are the requirements of us as state employees to comply with directives of law enforcement/ICE agents if those directive pose a risk to our students?” In that moment, the thought I mentioned in the last paragraph: if someone has never considered that they should not, or do not have to, follow the orders of police, if someone has never considered that the police might not have their interests or the safety of people in mind, this could probably be a very disruptive moment for them.

Earlier today (again, at the time of writing) I was reminded of this thought and, as I said above, realized a more refined version of it. Through the course of the conversation with my colleagues it became clear that many people in our lives had gotten a very wide variety (from none at all to a great deal) of levels of direction, support, or even acknowledgement of the difficulty from those to whom they look as manager, people with authority, people in charge. The people who were receiving little to none seemed more and more distressed, more and more subject to the swings of ever changing policy and the catastrophizing way they are reported in the media and discussed on social media. The people whom we observed having regular, nuanced, thoughtful conversations across authority levels seem (generally) to have greater capacity to accept the ambiguity and the fear and the struggle with a greater sense of clarity and commitment (I count myself among them). We know what matters, we know what we can and can’t do, we do our work (both our jobs and “the work”). I don’t claim to possess representative samples, only reporting my observations and meaning making of these conversations.

One of the first lessons I learned about leadership in a graduate level class was “in times of crisis, people look to authority and they turn toward structure”. As I have written about before, it is pretty inarguable that we are in a state of crisis in the United States right now. Many people who live here are, understandably, looking toward authority for guidance, for assurances, for certainty in navigating the uncertainty.

It is also important to point out that many people have lived a life opperating under the assumption that the president will tell them what to do and role model what is right for Americans. A lot of people certainly do believe that about our current president, thought that veneer is cracking for many more.

So in this moment I am recognizing at least two points of dissonance: 1) a lot of people are beginning to truly internalize the grim reality that the president is not a good role model and that does, in fact, have a substantive impact of their own sense of order and direction, and 2) the other authority figures in some of their lives are not fulfilling the functions of authority (protection, direction, orientation, conflict management, and sustaining/evolving culture) in a series of moment in which those are desperately needed by many.

Coming to these realizations offered me a stark reminder of the value of empathy. I can remember the terror moments of dissonance like this brought up in me and how scared I was to admit to anyone how deeply this existential crisis shook me. I can also admit that for me it was the realization that my parents were flawed, imperfect people who did not actually know everything, they were not gods. It was a hard realization to grapple with and one I’m only fully aware of and clear on 25-30 years on. And the impact on my life was also very different from that of a government’s slide into facism (one many of our neighbors and family members think is a slip-n-slide); losing faith in the role model for god wasn’t going to kill me and my friends.

Having empathy for the people experiencing this existential crisis also helps me to acknowledge and own judgement. My commitment to meeting people, wherever they are, welcoming them to and joining them in “the work”, I believe, is a necessary part of taking up the responsibility of orienting, directing, and protecting people, developing all of our capacity to engage in healthy conflict and working toward a new version of the world in which we hope to live. I recognize the desire to judge the old version of myself, to evaluate that person as less than the “better” version of me I am now. This, too, is a developmental position. I imagine this, too, shall pass. If I can recognize this in myself, if I can connect to compassion for myself and what I know I needed in those moments of terror and dread, I can show up for others in the ways I needed someone to show up for me.

At which time I arrive at the point: the developmental realizations I have navigated earlier in my life, the ones I recognize in many around me right now, are the experiences that helped me find authority in myself without relying on it from “those in charge”. It was probably one of the things that started me on the decades-long journey to more fully understand leadership; a journey I recognize many are being violently pushed or dragged into without their interest or consent. This is the same realization I described in my last essay, the articulation of which will stay at the close of each essay for the foreseeable future.

Leaders will not save us. Leadership is how we save ourselves and each other.

The practice is ongoing

I, like many of you, have been taking in quite a bit in this new year. There is, of course, all of the typical things a new year brings, the resolutions and the reflections and lists and cleaning and newness. It was a long December, and even if in the new year I don’t feel any different, perhaps there could still be reason to believe…

There is also, of course, the new presidential administration and the utter chaos they have introduced and fomented in two weeks time. As a person who works in the DEI realm, but also as a person wanting very badly for people in my life to thrive not just survive, something much more difficult with each passing day, I worry about myself and the people I care deeply about. On another level, I can acknowledge both that this is a heightened level of scrutiny and boldness while also being in many ways the culmination of things set in motion long ago and toward which many people have been working for a long time. I know many people didn’t believe it could ever get like this. I’ve tried to spend a lot of my life learning from people for whom this is the next step in generations of steps toward this moment.

And regretting how long it took me to listen.

I would be remiss to leave unsaid the ways my whiteness, maleness, cisgender-ness, class, and such have also meant that I am only targeted by these things when I choose to be. I always have the choice to hide and run and blend. I don’t encounter many white people talking about that, which was something I was reflecting on and realized that I had not either. Which I intend to change.

I’ve also been thinking about this chart a lot lately.

I don’t imagine anyone (at least of the people who read this) would argue that we are somewhere in the vicinity of the “limit of tolerance”, which I often call the threshold of meltdown. Whether we have crossed it or not might be a matter of individual opinion, but most of us who haven’t are still certainly closer than is comfortable or desirable.

In Ron Heifetz’ work on leadership he talks about the role those practicing leadership play in controlling the heat. In order to sustain the adaptation and evolution at the heart of leadership we need to make the environment uncomfortable enough to move onward without triggering crisis. Inevitably any level of discomfort will trigger what he calls “work avoidance”, the tactics to quickly draw us back into our comfort zone and back to “normal” or where we were before.

Right now I observe a lot of people (which has included me) wanting very badly to get back to where we were. We knew how to operate there, and for many people it was a comfortable (enough) life. I also feel the need to ask (and again, I start by having to ask myself this) “will going back to how things were will actually make getting the work done easier?” DEI work, the work of making a more just world, has met resistance through time immemorial. Even when the attacks were less aggressive, less drastic, less directly and intentionally in service of shortening the lives of so many so quickly, they have been there.

Before I continue, I want to note that I am not arguing that any of what is happening right now in the United States is good. It is not, not by any metric or measure (aside from perhaps the pervasive and horribly under-interrogated assumption built into much of our lives that the rich people who thrive in these times deserve it just like they deserve to be rich and in charge). *a quick note: this video is 40+ minutes long and discusses a number of things that might be very triggering for people. Take care of yourself in whatever way you need.* No one deserves to live in a fascist world, and I don’t care if we are going to get “good” art or punk music out of this (which we won’t).

So, what is there to say about our desire to return to the way things were. Perhaps first, when is that? Was it 2015, or 2008, or 2000, or 1981, or 1965, or… Of course there are a variety of reasons that each of those times had clear examples of where “the work” was needed. And much of our nostalgia for them, especially right now, is, at least in part, because we now know what we should have done or what was possible with the world then. Like a zinger we realize as soon as the argument ends. But we aren’t in that world anymore.

Also, there were a lot of people trying whatever it is you or I think of now. I’d bet every dollar of student loan debt I carry (roughly the cost of a nice house in many parts of the US) someone thought of it and was doing the work of it and had likely taken up that work from someone who thought of it before them.

Systems of oppression do not wait to be dismantled. They, too, adapt to our efforts to dismantle them. They entice new participants, they reward new supporters, and they do it without the burden of a conscience.

Rather than pining desperately for a dem to be in office or to be back fighting the good fight in the Obama or Clinton or Carter years, I ask you (and myself) this:

what do we need to do to keep those with whom we are in the work from melting down and to keep the work moving?

Those folks, the ones practicing leadership, need to not burn out or get taken out. They need support in a variety of ways. They need people to help take care of them. They need to eat and sleep and laugh and love and cry together and a massage and a million other things that sustain people in times of crisis. They need resources, tangible and capital and human and intangible. And if they have them they need more. We need them and they need us. They (we) need community. We are truly all we have and when we have each other we have everything.

The world as it is will do plenty to keep us in the “zone of discomfort” (I’m not comfortable at the moment using the word optimal to describe anything about what is happening right now) and make it clear to us all that staying here is not sustainable. The “leaders” (and by that I mean those with authority and power, many of whom many people will turn to in hopes of “fixing everything”, especially those taking advantage of the current moment to enrich themselves, see this post for more) are not, in fact, leading or practicing leadership or even really managing anything other than their interests.

But there is a lot of leadership happening. All around us. Just like in every moment of crisis, if you pay close enough attention you will see the people who have been preparing for this moment and the one before that moving into action and doing what they have been preparing to do. If you don’t know who they are, or you don’t have any of them in your life, that might be the first step in your part of what I describe next. But I promise you they are there, even if you don’t know.

It is hard to ignore “the work” at the moment, it will be for a bit but not forever. Now for sure, and even more then, I hope that you and I can set our sights on the world we imagine and the world we all deserve rather than the world where it was “easier” and where we might, in hindsight, know the trick to get it right. Let’s resist the temptation to prioritize replacing the current moment of terror with one that just impacts us a little less directly. Let’s get to work with the ones doing the work.

In these moments leaders will not save us.

In these moments leadership is how we save ourselves and each other.

The practice is on going.

A few caveats to get started:

• Any of the grear I list in here, I already have (in some cases, several of them). If you are going to use this to find a gift for me, the advice might be helpful but the specific stuff, not to much. Unless you want to gift me a year of Proud Mary’s Deluxe (but I might also argue anyone reading this has better things to spend ~$500 on in 2025).

• I’m not being paid to recommend a specific brand or person or anything like that. If I name it, it is just because I have one and generally like it. If anyone reading this would like to pay me to talk about coffee stuff you should email me about that. This is absolutely a gift you can give me and of which I will not get tired.

• Anything I caution against isn’t because I particularly dislike the thing or the company (other than Amazon), but because my values and what I think matters (in coffee and in gift giving) might not align with that thing or the process. You aren’t a bad person for doing something different than me, I just want you to know where I’m coming from.

With that, lets get to it.

In the event that you have a person in your life that is in to coffee, whether just getting into it or is deep into the hobby, you might want to give them a coffee related gift. This is, generally speaking, a good thing. Gift giving can be a great way to encourage a hobby. It can also be an opportunity to express an interest in someone’s hobby, give them a chance to talk about it (a thing lots of hobbyists would like more of), and in the case of coffee a thing you as their family or friend could derive some level of benefit from, in the form of getting a delicious coffee served to you.

Giving coffee gifts, and really any gift to someone who has a strange or niche hobby can also be very easy to “get wrong”. What I mean here is that it can be easy to get them something, however well intended, that doesn’t actually work for them and that the won’t use. In coffee there are a lot of options, probably too many of most things. This is probably why gift guides exist.

Evergreen ideas

As the name suggests, some hobbies will have things associated with them that will and should always be on every list. They are great for anyone and always a good thing. I’ve captured a few here for coffee people.

An aeropress.

This is the one piece of coffee making gear that only requires asking “do they already have one?” If the answer is “no”, this is a great gift for someone at any level of coffee hobby-dom. Travels well, now comes in a bunch of cool colors (I love the clear one and am seriously considering gifting my not clear one to someone so I have an excuse to buy one), really easy to make good coffee, also can be adapted and played with forever. Cant recommend enough (says the person who resisted getting one for years, bought one, doesn’t use it enough, and every 6-9 months rediscovers it in my collection and kicks myself for not using it more). It is a glorious thing.

A “nice” coffee mug.

People who drink coffee will need something to drink it out of. This could take a few forms and a variety of price levels.

On the (likely) cheapest end of the spectrum you might get them a mug from their favorite cafe. This will probably be between $10-$20 (largely dependent on the quality of mugs that cafe is using. Which might include brands like Fellow, Loveramics, Kinto, and Notneutral. All of these companies make really nice, coffee specific, cafe quality cups/mugs, in a bunch of colors that will fit nicely into most people’s cupboards and kitchen aestetics.

Up a bit further in price (about 2-3x), look into a local or otherwise small batch ceramics studio. In San Diego Kristen (@ artschooldropout on instagram) does great stuff, though in very small batches that always sell out very quickly (says the person who have several of them). The same goes for Drippy Pots in Philadelphia.

If you are looking for a splurge gift, especially for someone many years into their coffee hobby, two thoughts: MK Studio CPH makes truly stunning mugs for espresso, coffee, and really any drink. They are also beautiful and each one is unique (note this involves paying shipping from Denmark). Or, an ember mug. It’s a mug that keeps your coffee or tea warm for 90 or more minutes. A godsend for people who get distracted or who forget their coffee or tea. It’s also expensive (~$125-$150) but no one I know that has one (including me) has ever said it isn’t worth it (though to be fair, I got mine as a holiday gift).

A coffee class.

There are a bunch of these online and lots of cafes do these in person. If they are just getting into pour over or espresso, see if there is an upcoming class that could help them build their skills. If they would enjoy a cupping (a coffee tasting experience) buy them a chance to do that with coffee pros and a few other people really into coffee.

Ideas that require some investigation

These are some ideas that CAN be really helpful but also present some opportunity for mishap. Coffee hobby people are very specific about their gear, how it fits into their general workflow and how much space they are willing to let it take up.

Most “gear”.

I won’t recommend buying things like a kettle, grinder, a scale, a storage canister, or a coffee maker unless you really know the person and their wants/needs. This isn’t just “do they have one or not”, but “do they have the one they want and that works well for them?” If you know they aren’t happy with their kettle and just don’t want to spend the money, you might then ask about what they might want to change or what they are interested in. They might tell you exactly what they want, or they might at least give you a general idea that you can research further. James Hoffmann, Lance Hedrick, Morgan Eckroth, and Sprometheus, have all reviewed most things out there to help make decisions. This is also where people not into coffee as a hobby realize how expensive this hobby is. Brace yourself for sticker shock.

A coffee subscription.

Mostly you want to make sure you have a sense of what this person likes. Someone who likes dark roasts might not want a year’s worth of light roasted, Carbonic Macerated natural coffees and certainly Vice versa. If there is a cafe the person really likes, whether it is a local place or a place they really enjoy somewhere else, a subscription can be a great way to make sure they always have something they like. You might want to make sure you know what kind of coffee they like and order accordingly. Also many subs give a “surprise me/roasters choice” option which is great for variety, but this REALLY is for someone interested in experimenting or trying a lot of different things, which is not everyone. if you want to splurge on something like this, places like Proud Mary have a deluxe option (~$40/month) with some really special, rare coffees folks might not get to access otherwise. If you go the subscription route, limit it to 1 bag a month so it doesn’t pile up. Also, don’t use a service like Trade Coffee. Give your money directly to the cafe/roaster.

Coffee books.

There are lots of them, some of them are very thoughtful and informative, while others are absolutely terrible. Also, each person might want different reading materials. So if the person for whom you are buying is a reader, find out a bit about what might interest them. If they are interested in learning more about coffee and different ways to brew it, “how to make the best coffee at home” by James Hoffmann, or “brew” by Brian Jones are really good. If they are really into the science of coffee, “the physics of filter coffee” by Jonathan Gagne comes highly recommended. If they are interested in the history and sociology of coffee, “coffee milk blood” by Vava Angwenyi has been well regarded (I actually don’t own this). There is also “standart magazine” a quarterly coffee magazine that comes with a single serving of coffee from around the world with each issue. I gave a year of Standart to my brother-in-law last year and he has really enjoyed it.

Don’ts

Yes it is the thought that counts, and some thoughtfulness here will go a long way. These are things lots of coffee people get that always get given away, go in the back of a cupboard, or otherwise take up space while causing some (however small) level of resentment. I’m sure that you want to give someone a gift that they will actually use and enjoy, so with that in mind avoid the following.

• Silly/punny/“ironic” mugs, shirts, posters. No “but first coffee” stuff, nothing with “live laugh love” vibes (unless you know for an absolute fact they like this and don’t already have whatever they would consider “enough” of it).

• “celebrity” coffee. Most of it is terrible. If you see it in target/grocery stores and it has an actor’s or musician’s name on it that is just a branding partnership rather than an actual coffee company. You will over pay for something really disappointing. I’m told the Chamberlain Coffee is pretty good, so perhaps there is an exception if you are buying for someone who also really likes Emma Chamberlain, but generally avoid this.

• Most “cheap” coffee gear. Yes, a $199 espresso machine, for example, might be the most you can spend on something, this isn’t about demanding people spend beyond their means. Most espresso machines at that price 1) are usually not very good, 2) will break quickly, 3) have a fantastically low ceiling for what they can do. The cheapest thing on Amazon is so for a reason. All of this will mean these things, like the ironic mugs mentioned above, will get put away or thrown away very quickly. Even in the best instance, they will outgrow it before gifting season next year.

If you are considering the above, for points 1 and 2 I’ve offered you a better version of that ealirer in this guide. For the third, I promise you can offer them a lot more enjoyment spending (in many cases) the same amount or even less a gift card to their favorite cafe if you have no other ideas about what to get them.

Conclusion

We (people, that is) give gifts for a lot of reasons. I find myself appreciating most the gifts that mean someone thought enough about things I like, took some of their time to learn enough about it (and perhaps by extension me), and spent their money on it in ways that align well with my values.

In addition to this being the approach I hope other people take when giving me gifts, this is also the approach I try to take when finding a good gift for others. I want to learn a bit more about them, about their values and what they like, so that I can share something meaningful with them. As I write this out I find myself thinking about how useful this approach to being a friend and a husband and a son and colleauge and a co-worker might be; to spend my time being interested in and invested in what matters to others and finding ways to support that (and by extension support them).

The practice is ongoing.

Hello. I hope the changing seasons are being good to you.

Some of you might know, I enjoy coffee. Beyond it being a beverage I enjoy each morning, part of my morning ritual, I also enjoy it as a hobby. It is a thing I spend some of my time learning about, I spend some of my disposable income on coffee and coffee making things. I like making coffee for other people, though I have not desire to work in coffee or make a career of it.

I like coffee for a lot of reasons. The particular reason to which I’m present today is that it is a thing that is easy to learn and close to impossible to master. This has been a consistent thing about my interests and hobbies, I’ve started to notice. At this point I have been making coffee, through a variety of manual brewing methods, for about 17 years. In that time my average cup of coffee has gotten exponentially better. I’ve also failed spectacularly, sometimes wasting going through a good amount of some very expensive or very-hard-to-get-more-of coffee trying to get it “dialed in”.

The morning I write this I made the cup of coffee pictures at the top of this post, I had the chance to make myself a second cup of coffee at home. I grabbed a small bag of the last bit of some coffee I had purchased over the summer, a very lightly (what the roaster called “ultra-light”) naturally processes coffee from Ethiopia of the landrace variety (links to what those words mean if that sentence didn’t make any sense).

Typically, when I make coffee, I use a ratio of 1 part coffee to 16.6 parts water, which works out to 60 grams of coffee per liter of water. This morning, as I prepped my coffee and boiled my water, I dropped the coffee into my dosing tray and saw the scale jump to 17.3g. I’ll admit that in that moment I felt annoyed and let down. “Why did I leave such a random amount of coffee in this bag” “what the hell” and so on.

That subsided after a moment. While I can do the math, and take note than I should make about 280ml of coffee using my normal ratios, I also thought a bit about some of the advise I’ve heard people share that light and ultra-light coffees can often benefit from “an extra push” to a 1:17 or 1:18 ration. I decided to try a 1:17.5 ratio. The coffee was delicious, with a lot more nuance to the flavors that I’ve been able to get using my typical approach.

As I sip the last bit of this coffee I return to why I enjoy coffee as a hobby. Most days it tells and teaches me something new. And as I am told Vasudeva, the ferryman, said to Siddhartha along the banks of the Ganges, “listen better”.

The practice is on going.

It has been a moment. I last wrote to you all at the beginning of April. It is now the early part of July. I have certainly had several things I have wanted to write down in this space, but either lacked the energy, or the drive (which may or may not be the same thing), or the time, or the words, or something else. I have missed this space. I’ve missed getting to spend this time with each of you, even if it is just the version of it I imagine.

Around the end of April I started a new job. It is largely the same as my old job, in the same office and doing much of the same thing. For the most part, I have added a few major projects to my portfolio and time allotment, which will take me into next year to prototype and probably a few years to fully realize. The process and the nature of the work has also shifted a lot in the time since I took this promotion. I, as I often do, hesitated committing to anything because I knew it would change again. For better and for worse.

My boss, in her infinite wisdom, has been prompting me to be serious about letting things go. I, in my infinite hubris, have not done a good job of actually letting things go. I went back and re-read some of my previous posts on the topic of letting go as I sat down to write this. I’ve maybe been a bit better about letting things go in some parts of my life than others, it would seem. This is certainly something I saw role modelled in my home growing up, and I chose to go into a field that likes to capitalize on that sort of unhealthy attachment.

Much of the need to start letting things go has become clearest to me as I have come into the summer. I started teaching another class as soon as I finished the one I offered in the spring, which while a wonderful experience with a great group of dedicated professionals, it was also very tiring. My partner and I also spent a lot of time hosting friends and family in San Diego, which was both exciting and tiring in its own way. At the end of June I took a few days off to show my best friend around Southern California. It was the first day off I have had where I actually did not check my email or work on some level. We went to a theme park and I really felt like I let go of work. I haven’t worked a full, five-day-week since. And while it certainly has added some stress as I try to make sure I can actually accomplish all the stuff I need to in fewer days each week, magically it is all getting done.

I’ve been listening to Elliott’s “False Cathedrals” a lot while driving lately. I have spent several days constantly replaying “Drive On To Me”. I’ve often had trouble telling people what my single favorite song is but it might be this one, even if just for now.

This song makes me think about my spouse a lot. Some of the lines that stand out to me are things like “you were free when I was taken, you did your best to change that” and “we are the bruised and the tender, we are the cracks that were mended.” I also think this year will be the first since I moved back to California where we don’t take some sort of road trip. But there is still half the year left. I also think we would both like to not need to drive somewhere for a family emergency. Sometimes the time alone in the car made it easier to get ready for what was to come on arrival.

I was interviewed on a podcast recently, called The Dork Forest. The host asks people about their hobbies and the things they dork out about, often things she doesn’t know a lot about. I spoke for about an hour about coffee. I also got to make a professional comedian laugh a few times. It kind of rambles around, definitely a greater focus on breadth than depth. The experience reminded me of the importance of having a hobby and spending time and energy on something that is not work. That I was paid to do it (something I did not know when I agreed to be a guest) feels a bit strange. I’ve also been presented with a few different opportunities to get paid to talk about my coffee hobby lately. I’m not sure how I feel about that yet. I do know that enjoy it (evidenced by the picture below, of me giving a talk to staff in my division about the differences between percolation and immersion brewing), so I suppose I will keep doing it until I don’t any more.

I’m not going to commit to anything specific for the future of this space, at least not here or now. Or at least I’m going to work on letting go of the idea that it has to keep the shape I thought it needed when I started.

I will keep writing. I will keep sharing.

The practice is on going.

I wrote last week about the approaching anniversary of the day my mom called me to tell me she had been given a terminal diagnosis, stage IV pancreatic cancer. Interestingly, the days since then have given me a few opportunities to think about loss a bit more. While I will, at some point, write some more about the process of saying goodbye to my mother, this week I’m thinking more about some other aspects of letting go.

I wrote last week about having a day off and wanting to spend some of that day writing music. I tried. I didn’t get very far. I had a beat in my head and a melody I wanted to explore. I programmed it in Garage Band over a few minutes and then spent an hour tinkering with it. I couldn’t find the right BPM, I couldn’t find the right place on the grid for the pattern, I couldn’t find the right spaces between the grid for it, either. I couldn’t hold the notes long enough or let them go fast enough, I couldn’t find the right amount of delay or sustain or decay or attack. I decided to give up. I saved the file (EXP 1) and closed the program, followed by my laptop.

I know, on some level, why I couldn’t get this right. I’ve been listening to Radiohead’s Kid A a lot lately. I walk around with the driving beat and the swelling chords of Idioteque in my head and was hoping I could write my own version of it. I was hoping to use this song as a starting point on which I could come up with something new. I also felt so stuck in trying to recreate something exactly that nothing new could emerge from it because nothing could be it. I’m not Thom Yorke or Johnny Greendwood. Even knowing I am not working at their level (or with their resources), I found myself frusted not being able to realize a creative vision. This is often why I find it hard to accomplish things on these sort of deadlines.

I wrote last week about an upcoming event, a large conference I plan for my campus each year. It happened today (on the day of writing this, Tuesday April 2). I’m sitting on my couch, legs tired and stomach full of a celebratory dinner. I’m also feeling a bit sad that it is over. I spent 9 months working on this event. It consumed a good amount of my energy, time, brainpower, workload across that time. For the last month it has been most of what I have worked on. I spent more on this conference than my salary for my first or second full-time position. I almost doubled attendance from last year. So many people told me how much fun they had. So many presenters told me how well their sessions went.

One of the presenters, after the conference ended, said to me “You know when you said you had been working on this for nine months, the first thing I thought is that you have been trying to give birth to this.” I can’t reflect on any personal experience of having birthed children. I do find myself thinking about how, while stressful and consuming, a thing I absolutely wanted to by over toward the end, the experience has been a constant thing; a goal toward which I was working. And now it is over. I don’t have to wake up tomorrow and accomplish the next set of tasks. I’ve already scheduled the follow up emails and written the “thank you” notes to keynote speakers. It also isn’t time to start planning the next one yet. It is just over. I suppose this is what Tuckman called “adjourning”.

I actually feel more “sad” about the end of this than I do about experiencing writers block. I never thought I would be more emotionally impacted by work than I did by my own creative pursuits.

I’m thinking this week about what it means to fail at something. Something I usually use to define a piece of who I am and how I understand myself in the world. This gave me a chance to get a bit more okay with that, to realize that this does not mean I am not creative or musical. It makes me think that I can be more than just creative or musical. I can be someone who tries, who fails, who learns, and who grows with those things instead of staying stuck in who I wish I was instead of who I can be. Maybe the music I am meant to make doesn’t sound like Radiohead.

I’m thinking about what it means to miss something that stresses me out. What it means to feel a sadness as I say goodbye to something that asked me to do several things I would say I don’t like doing. I’m not a planner, and yet I miss planning this event. It makes me think I should probably focus less on the stress. I can still be stressed, but maybe I don’t need to start every conversation about the event with how much it stresses me out. Maybe I can plan things. Maybe I can lean in to what these events and my seemingly more regular call to take up planning directing roles in them more often have to offer me.

I’m thinking about the value of rest in all of this. How sometimes making meaning of all of this is the task for another day instead of a way to not let go of the thing I am afraid to let go of. Maybe tomorrow has something new, something to start again.

The practice is on going.