Storytelling Observations from The Bear, Part 1

I enjoyed Hulu’s The Bear last summer when season one aired. I was thrilled that season two was dropping this summer — no multi-year wait for me.

If you’ve watched the show and haven’t said this unironically in any context outside of a kitchen, are you really a fan?

BTW at least in this post, there are no spoilers. In future posts on the topic, I’ll give fair warning if I plan to discuss specific plot points.

Let me start by saying that Six Feet Under has represented peak TV storytelling for me, for like 20 years now. Nothing has come close to topping it until now, and since The Bear is only two seasons long and each episode is about 25-30 minutes, I allowed myself to geek out and drill down to tease out why it seems like a masterclass on a specific type of storytelling.

And I’m not sure yet what takeaways will apply at all to the training, public speaking, facilitation, and general communication work that I do. But when I figure it out, I promise I’ll share. 😊 For now, here are some takeaways to get the conversation started…

The Bear’s storytelling style is severely economical

My biggest takeaway from season 1 is how much story could be told in a 20-25 minute episode. I got so much story, in such a short period of time, that I felt exhausted after each episode! (And I was still left wanting more, which I will have to dissect later.)

It’s a little like reading Hemingway — you don’t think that such a short little novel will do much, but maybe you also walk away 150 pages later with your perspective on life changed. So it is with The Bear. There’s something about spare and truly intentional dialogue — no words are wasted. Every word and scene does a specific job and probably multiple jobs, really, really well.

You can communicate massive shifts through tiny details

Related to the intentionality of dialogue and words, some characters in The Bear get stuck because they can’t stop getting in their own way. And the progression of these characters’ journeys through challenge and growth is often told to the audience in the most minute details — a word, a gesture, a look on their face.

Who needs five minutes and the entire cast to explain through words and dialogue that the story is changing direction, when one character can take a ten-second glance across the room to say the same thing?

The same phrase can say different things

The vocabulary of The Bear reflects the vocabulary used in professional kitchens everywhere (or so I’ve heard 🥴). Who among us has not uttered, “Yes Chef!” in casual and lighthearted conversation after bingeing a few episodes of The Bear?

And yet, when you put down your phone and really watch with your eyeballs each scene of the show, and you tune in to those facial expressions and tones of voice, each “yes, chef” can communicate a totally different subtext every single time. There’s the “yes, chef” of wholehearted agreement; the “yes, chef” of resentful compliance; the “yes, chef” of ride-or-die loyalty; and about a thousand other variations in just two seasons.

That’s masterful storytelling when you can use the same two words to communicate nearly the entire range of human emotion!

I’ve got more thoughts but I will take a break here. How about you? Anything you are noticing about storytelling from watching The Bear?

Changing An IRL Classroom To A Hybrid Classroom

Adjusting to an all-virtual training room last spring required overnight change. And while some of us were no strangers to Zoom-land, many of our adult learners were. To be sure, very few of us had full command of all Zoom’s features.

We now have a solid idea of pros and cons of virtual learning. Pros: No commute in order to attend; more people have access to learning, as long as they have wifi; no physical student materials to prep, and probably a lot of paper saved as a result. Cons: Engagement requires more planning, practice, and expertise on the part of the facilitator; everything takes more time; and Zoom fatigue is real.

And we’ve had plenty of time to learn how to create virtual learning experiences that are as enriching as IRL learning experiences. As pandemic conditions ease and IRL training rooms re-open, knowing that the days of “packing students in like sardines” is over, it turns out that we must meet demand for a hybrid classroom.

When I’m asked to consult on the development of hybrid classrooms in the pandemic, there are four main areas we discuss before jumping into a training room redesign:

1. Virtual Host
   Rather than expect an instructor or facilitator to run both the IRL and the virtual classes, a Virtual Host in the IRL classroom can manage the virtual space and make seamless the two experiences while the instructor is leading the IRL class. The Virtual Host can assist virtual attendees and enhance their experience without disrupting the flow of the overall class. Sample tasks for Virtual Host:

   • Admitting attendees to the Zoom room

   • Providing technical support

   • Answering questions in the chat box, and elevating questions and issues to the instructor that need to be addressed

   • Dropping links to resources in the chat box

   • Creating and managing breakout rooms for virtual attendees

2. Audio requirements

   • Two audiences must hear the same instructor. A wireless lav microphone for the instructor is a must. Although there are many models out there around the low price point of $30, I recommend not skimping on this vital piece of hybrid classroom equipment and shopping closer to the $100 range for a more reliable investment. The Virtual Host must remember to set the Zoom microphone to pick up the instructor’s audio.

   • You can decide ahead of time if you want virtual learners to be able to be heard by the IRL class as well. Many virtual learners appreciate being able to mute themselves for the entirety of a class, and are content to drop their questions into the chat box. But if you are committed to being able to hear virtual learners IRL, consider what cables and equipment will best serve this.

     • If your IRL training room is pre-wired for sound, you might be able to use an HDMI or simple audio cable to connect the Zoomed computer to the room’s sound system

     • In a small training room, you can use a high-quality portable bluetooth speaker

3. Visual requirements

   • Ideally, two audiences will see the same instructor. The camera that’s “on” the instructor and the slide deck at the front of the IRL training room is also feeding Zoom, and so it must be connected to both the computer that the Virtual Host is using to run the Zoom as well as the camera itself. The connections may be wireless, wired, or both. Committing to this requires time to experiment with different equipment, placement, and angles, and may benefit from investment in equipment. I personally like to play around with what’s available before I make a shopping list, because this list can get pricey real quick.

   • Many hybrid classrooms skip this next option: the IRL learners being able to see the virtual learners. This means having a projection screen in the IRL training room, plus a second display for the Zoom video with virtual learners. You don’t always have to have the Zoom feed displayed in the IRL classroom, though. It’s possible to toggle what’s on a single projection screen between a slide deck and a Zoom feed — this simply requires additional planning, practice, and commitment to power through technical challenges.

   • Frankly, most hybrid classrooms skip this next option as well: the virtual learners being able to see the IRL learners. This would require a second camera on the IRL learners, and the Virtual Host toggling between the two cameras in Zoom.

     • Or, in some IRL training rooms, there is a 360-degree, ceiling mounted camera that can change focus anywhere in the room. I’ve heard mixed feedback on these cameras for virtual classes. They often have an automatic feature where the camera will change view to the source of sound. This alleviates the need for the Virtual Host to manually control the view of the camera by using the camera app at the same time as they are running the Zoom room. But I’ve also heard from learners that sound quality in the ceiling-mounted camera is inferior to an instructor’s wireless lav mic.

4. Physical space
   Social distancing requirements aside, here are a few considerations for the IRL training room:

   1. Where can the IRL instructor move so that they remain on camera? Marking the boundaries of this area on the floor with masking tape can help keep the instructor in the frame so virtual learners stay engaged.

   2. Where will the Virtual Host sit in the room in relation to the instructor? It takes time to figure out the best placement of this key person as well as all necessary computers, cameras, and cords.

   3. Can IRL learners see all necessary visuals — not just the usual IRL tools such as a flip chart, smart board, sample tables, etc., but also the instructor themselves and the various screens and displays for the virtual side of the class? And can they still move around the room to form exercise groups and otherwise participate fully IRL?

5. Practice, and new practices
   We can’t ever be too confident, thinking that one small change in a hybrid setup is a “no brainer” and requires no additional practice to integrate. We should instead assume that every change might affect one or two other pieces of the hybrid setup, and make time to prepare and practice. In fact, I even caution people against assuming if any setup worked once, it will work flawlessly again. Be ready for things to not go according to plan, and have a Plan B, Plan C, and so on.
   
   It’s a good idea for the instructor and Virtual Host to get into the training room together and spend solid time together before class, planning and practicing setup, breakdown, key tech equipment transitions, activities, and how they will communicate during the class.
   
   And in the interest of “keeping it real,” I encourage my fellow instructors to slim down their presentations, because while everything takes longer in Zoom Land, it takes even longer in a hybrid environment. If we want to create transformative learning experiences, we’re much more likely to do so when we aren’t running 120mph through a lecture that covers 120 pages in 2 hours.

This blog post is so long! If you’ve made it this far, I’d like to know: Have you taken any steps to convert your IRL training room into a hybrid? Is there a device or tool you’d recommend? Any advice for others, based on your experience?

Change You Made And Now Must Un-Make

Bullet journaling. That’s what I’m working on right now.

Pre-pandemic, I was sooo busy, and my bullet journal (bujo) helped me keep a lot of balls in the air. A few weeks into quarantine, my life was suddenly not nearly as busy. I drew out weekly layouts anyway, and each week they remained mostly empty. By May, I had to admit that I was just going through the motions, so I finally stopped keeping the bujo up to date.

Now there is again such a variety of projects and tasks on my plate that I have known the past few weeks that the bujo could work its magic, if only I revived it.

Stopping bullet journaling = change I made
Resuming bullet journaling = time to unmake the change

And you’d think I could just pick up where I left off, but it hasn’t worked out that way at all. My projects and tasks are different, and frankly, my life is different, what with working from home most of the time instead being on the road half the time. So far, so good, but it is a process getting ramped back up. I bought a new template set and have been trying new layouts. It’s a funny practice, planning to plan.

But it sure does lead to clarity and peace of mind at the end, so I’m sticking with it.

Do you keep a bujo? How is that going?

Change You Knew Was Coming For You

I’m hungry! I am fasting before my annual physical exam, which has not been annual, exactly, thanks to the pandemic. There’s absolutely nothing about this exam that I am looking forward to, and in fact, it will lead to more things to not look forward to (at least one: a mammogram).

I find so many of us surprised to change as we age. Probably because there’s very little physical change we attribute to aging until we get to 40. If you haven’t experienced it, you’ve heard: hangovers feel worse and last longer; pounds cling to your body stubbornly; you suddenly must hold everything you read about 5 feet from your face. You didn’t do anything differently, and one day you wake up and your body is changing — things are harder, more difficult, more annoying.

This past year and a half, the two age-related changes I can’t escape: I think I need bifocals, and there’s a lot more gray hair on my head now!

But I’m not surprised, and I’m not feeling at all resistant to these changes. There’s no near-term plan for Lasik or other corrective vision surgery, nor am I applying chemicals to turn those gray hairs dark again. It’s not really how I’m wired to insist that things never change, and frankly I just don’t want to work that hard.

I’m mostly putting my energy and focus on the small, incremental changes to my lifestyle that minimize the aches and pains of growing older. I exercise not to win bodybuilding competitions, but to ache less than I need to… and to keep my annual physical from concluding in a referral to a heart specialist. I try to eat better, without sacrificing pleasure, for the same reasons. I work on putting things in proper perspective, staying curious and supportive, for mental and emotional well-being as challenges get more complex and heavy in this chapter of my life.

In other words, doing the same dumb stuff, only slower and at less personal cost to myself. ;)

Habit = Choosing A Little Change, Every Day

I’m surprised there are so many memes on having and breaking bad habits, and very few on forming good habits!

Routines are, to me, a curated collection of habits. I’m a fan of some routine in my day. While I’m no stranger to change, I do like to have some small part of each day that is predictable — in this way, routines help me make sure I’m regularly taking my allergy medication, for instance, and otherwise doing the self-care that keeps me feeling and doing my best.

Pre-pandemic, I traveled 2-3 times a month. I had “daily routines at home” and “daily routines on the road” and TBH it wasn’t too bad. But after I went into lockdown at home, I found the “daily routine at home” to feel endless and full of drudgery! I abandoned my daily routines for whatever I felt like doing from moment to moment. Fun for a while, but probably not great for my health.

Seeing an opportunity to be intentional about new habits I wanted to “bake in” to each day via my morning routine, I added one new daily habit at a time, in addition to coffee and walking the dog, until I reached the point I’m at now:

• Journaling each morning upon waking

• Cooking breakfast

• Exercising

And now I would like to figure out how to fit blogging into that morning routine so I make sure it gets done every day. The trick is doing all these things before 8am, which would be ideal and isn’t quite happening now…. (Get up earlier is one option, yes. I’m already up between 4-5am with no alarm and given my sleep issues the past year and a half, I won’t be pushing this one.)

I’m pretty happy with the way intentional habit-forming has worked for me in my life. What’s worked for you?

Change That You Choose

After the pandemic unfolded, I ran toward more change. I don’t know why. But the pandemic putting the kibosh on my livelihood and lifestyle made it easy for me to wrap my now-empty arms around all kinds of creative opportunities that came my way.

Within a month, I had done countless livestreams, guest talks, facilitated sessions, Zoom meetings, and otherwise honed best practices. Then I wrote a workshop on those virtual best practices and taught it.

The next month, I started a podcast with my friend Lucas. Which is what happens when you quarantine a public speaker at home and give her a microphone. By summertime, I’d started a second podcast.

A month after that, I became a gamer.

A month after that, George Floyd had been murdered and lots of people woke up and suddenly the divide between my social conscience and my professional work didn’t exist anymore. After all, right is still right and wrong is still wrong, regardless of whether you’re at home or in the workplace. I think that’s what we call integrity.

Change is always happening. Some change should be resisted — the change that hurts people, puts others at risk, is morally wrong. Other change can’t be, or shouldn’t be resisted. But when change like the pandemic chooses us and we can’t loose its grip, wonderful things can happen when we allow ourselves to fully explore that new space.

Change That Chooses You

I was on the fence about blogging today! It’s Saturday, so I could justify skipping today and coming back to it Monday. But I do way better with daily habits than with M-F habits. I can lose steam over the weekend and watch my motivation crater on Monday morning. So here I am blogging away on a Saturday night!

After the sudden stop to my work life and main source of livelihood, the pandemic brought me sleep interruption. I didn’t get the kind of insomnia that my friends told me about, where you stay up most of the night, binge-watching TV, increasingly tired but never sleepy.

No, my kind of insomnia was the kind that would rouse me at 3am, wide awake and unable to fall back asleep. I thought I’d trick my brain by skipping the all-appealing nap and staying awake until 9pm the next night — but my body tricked me back, waking me up at 2:30am the next morning, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed.

I decided to give in to the afternoon naps for a week, but then had trouble falling asleep at a decent hour each night, and woke up around 3am anyway.

When problems like this arise and are so deep-seated that I can’t actively fix them, I trust they are temporary and let them run their course. Just go with the flow, adjust my schedule and expectations the best I can, and roll with it. This insomnia tried my patience for an entire month. Seeing a possibility I could resume my work schedule after a 90-day moratorium, my psyche relaxed, and the insomnia went away.

But then Texas “opened back up” quite prematurely, and we ended up with a spike in COVID infections before the first wave had ever subsided. This same leadership failure happened in enough areas of the U.S. that my hope for a 90-day pause to my work looked more like a one-year pause. The insomnia change chose me again.

I happened to find the video game Animal Crossing: New Horizons during the first period of insomnia, and it was an excellent way to spend those wee hours of the morning alone. Becoming a middle-aged gamer exposed me to new online communities I’d never have been part of. It’s total immersion in Gen Y and Gen Z! And I learned some coding and other new tech skills along the way. But I still wasn’t sleeping well.

Several months ago, I decided to stop being a potato and start exercising regularly again. In the past, I’ve experienced a direct relationship between consistent exercise and better sleep. And what do you know? A week or two after engaging in HIIT workouts three times a week, I was naturally sleeping later each morning.

I’m not sure if waking between 4:30-5:30am is insomniac or if that’s just my life now. Either way, I continue to observe, measure, and experiment. I continue to flex, make accommodations, try new things, and learn everything I can along the way.

Change

Did I say I was going to blog daily? Oof, integrity. Let’s gooooo….

I have been thinking about change lot. In February 2020, the most popular business buzzword in my circles was “disruption” — loosely defined as the ability for a business to change an industry so innovatively and unexpectedly that they would create a sustainable lead. “Disruption” had come to inspire reverence, as the preferred state of being. Everyone wanted to disrupt, everyone wanted to be a disruptor, and if you didn’t disrupt your competitors, you were doomed to mediocrity.

March rolled around, and every single person (and business) in the world was disrupted by COVID-19. And we got to face the other side of disruption — when we, our businesses, and our lives are disrupted. When you take the veneration off “disruption” and think about the kind that happens to us, it means sudden, abrupt, wholesale change that we didn’t ask for or plan for.

More instructive than watching people try to disrupt was watching people respond to disruption.

With all my IRL events cancelled for the next 90 days and myself literally grounded with no end in sight, I embraced Zoom as a platform for connection. Pulled together a group of like-minded trainers and public speakers and launched a series of webinars to help people brush up on the skills that would help them make sense of chaos and find light in the darkness. We called it Leading Through Disruption and it carried us to the next phase of the pandemic, after the initial panic had subsided. We created a community and strengthened bonds and helped each other through the darkest early days. I am grateful for this experience, even though it was borne of such hardship for others.

I have lots more on my mind about change, so this is probably the first post of several on the topic of change.

When life handed you the change of your lifetime last March, how did you respond? How did you embrace this change?

Start Anywhere. Like... Here.

The best way to be sure I don’t start something is to overthink it. Which I’ve done so many times regarding this blog. I’m actually big on chronicling stuff! During the pandemic, I wrote a series of Facebook posts on my experiences going to the local grocery store every week; I had a long-running daily pandemic meme habit on Instagram for a couple of months; and I literally journal pretty much every morning. The habit of regular documentation is in my DNA and in my schedule — I haven’t been blogging because I overthink it way, way too much.

So I’m going to write this and post it. No “save as draft,” ruminate, delete later. Just post. What’s the worst that could happen? (Don’t answer that.)

Yesterday, I sent out my first email in well over a year to a list of trainers. I’ve thought about everyone on that list for a few months, as I prepared myself to head back into the field to conduct live, in-person events again and figured all of us trainers and public speakers were. I was fully vaccinated and cleared for re-entry in late May, and went on a very short work trip in June.

Here’s a short list of things that became quickly clear I’d need to learn again:

1. How to airport

2. How to restaurant

3. How to sit up straight, without my legs in a pretzel formation, when in public

And here are some things I’m glad I didn’t lose or forget, because they came in handy:

1. The ability to look at someone’s face and truly listen (thank you, Zoom!)

2. The value of a reassuring smile to someone else

3. It takes time to build and maintain high quality relationships, so plan for it in the agenda

What about you? When did you return to in-person teaching and speaking, and how were your experiences? I’ve missed you all and hope to hear from you soon, on this post or another future post.

My Journey Into Visual Note Taking

I shared visual notes I took during a recent conference on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. They got more engagement than any work-related post I’ve shared in years, as well as many questions, so in this post are answers to FAQ’s about what visual notes are, why and how I got started, and what I use to make them.

Visual notes are a way of recording information non-linguistically. Public speakers are remembered for their words, but I’ve always known that I could be a better visual communicator. And visual notes were one way for me to rely more on visuals and less on words. I fall into the camp of “I can’t draw,” so learning this new skill was extra daunting!

I was first inspired to improve my visual communication skills by Dan Roam’s The Back Of The Napkin, and then the first part of Gamestorming. I’ve decided to jump into visual note taking with both feet, adding a few new books on the topic to my library:

• A Simple Guide To Sketchnoting by Alessio Bresciani
  (IMO this is an excellent starting point for those of us who are “not good at drawing”)

• The Art Of Visual Notetaking by Emily Mills
  (Emily generously shares a free and helpful sketchnoting demo on Youtube)

• Show And Tell by Dan Roam

For a few weeks I immersed myself in the exercises from these books and practiced visual note-taking during a few podcasts and TED Talks. While I love writing with physical paper and pens, I prefer my three-year-old iPad Pro and Apple Pencil combo for visual notes. I’ve tried the Procreate and Notability apps for note taking, but Paper by wetransfer is far and away my favorite at the moment.

The “visual notes” I took at several sessions of the annual winter conference for my largest client were decent, but IMO still too wordy, and nowhere near as charming, whimsical, or VISUAL as the samples in the books above. I think I’m still focused more on information architecture than the visual communication, but that just means there’s lots of room for me to grow.

Here is a gallery of my conference notes, in chronological order. I learned a lot, and I feel like I can see the improvement in my notes from the first session to the last. I’ve taken a little break but will keep practicing with podcasts and TED Talks.

Do you take visual notes? What tips do you have for us newbies?

TAW Week Two: I'm Ready For A Band

I started taking drum lessons a year ago, on a 15-year-old electronic kit that was sad and tired; it didn't really want to be played anymore. But in "make do" mode, as a practical parent myself who always says, "Let's see if it sticks before we invest," I practiced my rudiments and exercises and learned a few songs dutifully on that resistant equipment.

I went, in those early months, from telling people, "I am taking drum lessons," to, "I'm learning to play drums." And somewhere at the end of summer, I started to really feel in my heart and soul a little bit like a drummer. Even though I never said it out loud, it was rattling around in my head: "I AM A DRUMMER."

Imagine my surprise, days later, reading the opening to Week Two, which is not coincidentally titled, "Recovering a Sense of Identity," and opens with, "This week addresses self-definition as a major component of creative recovery." How we identify ourselves matters. I don't know what magic threshold I was waiting for to call myself a drummer, but I passed it in my head.

Due to a bout of tendinitis late this summer, I did almost nothing with my right arm for 6 weeks. At my first lesson after recovery, my drum teacher asked me to play through all the songs I'd learned. After the second song, he said, "You're ready for a band." He might as well have said, “You’re a drummer.”

That felt like a signal that I had “earned” a new (to me) acoustic drum kit. I bought this Ludwig kit from a retired drummer in Liberty Hill, TX -- a musician-turned-local-businessman who seems to have almost made it as big as he’d hoped. I'm excited to give this drum kit a new adventure.

Getting Attention vs. Paying Attention

I stumbled on this TED Talk by Joseph Gordon-Levitt last week, as I started a 12-week group tour of The Artist’s Way. Given my own personal desire to share more on social media, it really grabbed my attention, haha. It’s a great reminder to keep chasing the focus that comes with paying attention, and to share on social media, but to not let getting attention change the focus and the creation and the output. Quite a few good thoughts in this very short, under-14-minute TED Talk. If you watch, LMK what you think.

Ways To Practice Your Presentation

I was invited to participate on a livestream panel yesterday called “Secrets Of The Pros,” geared toward folks working hard on their presentation skills. I redirected a question on preparation to the importance of practice, especially for me. I used to be a serial preparer and never practicer, which often meant I’d keep tweaking a presentation until I walked in front of a group — and then I’d get confused about what my real and final plan was for the actual presentation.

While it’s still uncomfortable for me to end the preparation phase and commit to a plan, it increases my confidence (and therefore the audience’s confidence) when I know what the plan is and practice enough so that I can facilitate to that end.

I mentioned on the panel that I’ve tried lots of different ways over the years and come back to the same four or so. To my surprise, someone asked me to list them and explain in more detail. At the risk of geeking out a bit much, here are my four go-to practice methods:

1. Running through a presentation, start to finish. I usually only do this for short presentations, 30 minutes or less in length, and I usually video record myself and watch on playback (painful, but oh so helpful!).

2. Running only through new bits, like stories I’ve never told, sections of material and activities that I’ve never explained before, transitions between content sections, etc. Usually this is what I do with longer classes, when it’s not practical to do a run-through from start to finish, and when I have content I’ve been given and need to stick fairly closely to.

3. Writing out exactly what I think I want to say, word for word; reading it aloud into my phone as a voice memo; listening back and editing the written speech a couple times; recording a “final” take; and listening to it a few times. This works best for shorter speeches, esp. keynotes with limited interaction. The goal isn’t to memorize the entire thing, word for word, but to internalize the structure, flow, and key phrases that I want to be sure to say during show time.

4. If I’m feeling particularly punchy, sometimes I’ll just record everything I want to say about a topic on the fly, again as a voice memo into my phone. After listening back, I’ll transcribe only the parts that are worth saving, and then structure an outline and fill in blanks.

What about you? What practice techniques help you get ready for a speaking engagement?

The Artist's Way: Round Two

I decided on a whim to start another round of the 12-week The Artist’s Way program this week (which means I’ll finish the final full week of 2019). This whim was immediately followed by another whim to invite folks along with me, so I posted on FB and IG that I’d help facilitate for anyone interested in giving it a go. Almost 20 folks expressed interest, so it’s a thing!

I’m excited to see what folks uncover in themselves. It’s a great program for so many people who attempt it.

My intention this time around is to share more of what I create… it’s not so much that I’m a private creator, as I have some serious reservations about social media! So I’m just going to keep up this impulsive spirit for the next 12 weeks, over-posting and over-sharing and seeing how much of this new habit will stick after the new year arrives.

So far, I’m 2/2 in daily artist pages journaling. The weather in Austin got suddenly crisp this morning, so everything feels fresh and new and full of possibility.

Cowboy gets cozy with a spiky autumn pumpkin.

Don't Leave Politics To The Professionals

For a short while, in high school, I considered studying political science in college, to become a politician. That inkling left me quickly, but the idea that one must be a “professional politician” to dive into, understand, or in any way get involved in politics stayed with me until 11/8/16. I really believed it was more than enough for me to read up on current events, talk with my friends about what we knew, and vote. Just as I was a professional in my area of expertise, so were politicians, and they would know best how to govern and and make the best decisions for us all.

Wrong.

And so, I’ll never again leave politics to the professionals. In fact, if someone sees themselves as a professional politician, they’ve probably been so far removed from the everyday lives of the people they supposedly represent that they shouldn’t be making decisions for us anymore. I’m certainly not calling myself a politician, nor do I have aspirations to run for office. But, as in the past year, I will remain civically engaged and active in my community and in the world, standing up for what’s right. Always.

Social Media Activism: OK. Also Not Enough.

I have a serious love-hate relationship with social media. Love the baby pics and cat videos; hate the subtle encouragement of carefully curated phonyism. Love the possibility of connecting with people on a meaningful level; hate people mistaking transparency for full disclosure. Love catching news and thought-provoking stuff my friends share; hate folks thinking they can change minds with a click.

I'd long accepted that social media activism was "slacktivism."

In the past year, though, I've seen some friends post thought-provoking stuff, and then facilitate the ensuing comment thread with patience and persistence, ultimately resulting in a few others accepting the challenge to think and act differently. I haven't witnessed a Facebook post transform a bigot into a justice warrior, but some social media activists seem to be successful in pushing others, incrementally, in the direction of questioning the systems and their own personal, deeply ingrained beliefs that keep us from making gains toward equality.

And then there's the heart-warming sensation I never get enough of, White Nonsense Roundup.

I'm accepting of some social media activism, and I know it is not a substitute for in-person action, a.k.a. showing up. There are rallies, protests, meetings, and other actions that we must all take, to exercise our voices and advocate for what's right. As I heard DeRay McKesson say early this year, "Protesting is truth telling in public, using our bodies to speak." If we don't show up, we aren't saying much of anything meaningful.

One Year.

One year ago, I watched with horror as everything I thought I knew about politics in the U.S. exploded before my eyes. Since then, I've been one of many Americans picking up the pieces and figuring out how we put it all back together -- better, stronger, longer-lasting.

We've learned things, and yesterday's elections feel like a tiny bit of validation and progress. I feel more hopeful than daunted by uncertainty. The biggest lesson I've learned is that, "He / she is a professional; this is a job for professionals," does not apply to politics and politicians. At my level, it's not so much that I need to be involved in politics as it is I need to stay aware and knowledgeable, and engage and raise my voice, as a citizen in a democracy is obligated.

My last blog post occurred ten months ago, at the start of an organizing whirlwind that is just now leaving space to breathe. I've got a lot on my mind that I'll explore here in the coming weeks. 

Leader-full.

Sitting in a membership meeting of a small arts nonprofit years ago, I couldn’t help but chime in with suggestions and ideas. My friend elbowed me and whispered, “Pipe down, or all your ideas will turn into projects, and you will be expected to spearhead them all.” After initial feelings of panic subsided, I saw the wisdom in how many organizations run on volunteer help. Because even though tiny nonprofits have official, elected leaders, most active members will find themselves at one point or another leading something or some others, even if they don’t have a title. If you have an idea, and you want to see it become reality, you must be ready to take charge and make it happen.

Now, participating in various community organizing meetings, I see the same level of ownership. It is so cool! So energizing. And I find myself less than patient with those in the room who criticize what others are doing, offer an alternative idea, and then ask what everyone else plans to do about it.

I haven’t been able to identify the source of this quote or sentiment (it’s attributed to multiple people, and sometimes not attributed at all), but current movements may feel leaderless, when in fact, they are leader-full. Leaderlessness was one criticism leveled against the Occupy movement, which is first an issue of limited understanding of the movement. To someone who did not experience or otherwise learn about it beyond surface level newspaper coverage, it would seem that the movement was destined to fall apart and “achieve nothing” without a leader. But it didn’t, at least in part because those involved in the movement tried to accommodate as much self-leadership as possible. 

The same spirit of leader-full movements can carry us through the coming years. We need enough citizen leaders. I hope you are all on board.

Tiny Rebel Daily feels like it’s coming to a close. We are all involved in our own individual efforts and projects in this movement, and that’s where the work will get done. I’ll recalibrate the blog content and start adding back sewing posts, book reviews, and the usual hijinks and shenanigans. The movement will always be there. And I’ll always be here for you. Thanks for reading along, accepting my challenges, and doing the work. I’ll return you to more of your normal programming…. xo

Getting Busy.

In only the second week of the new year, I feel reassured at the organization I’ve seen, individuals doing their part to protect our rights, fight for the weakest among us, and continue working for progress: a few stories on the national news about ordinary citizens lobbying their legislators; more than a few Facebook groups getting things done; and personal friends who are attending the meetings, signing up for work, and supporting causes using their talents and skills. Love love love, and thank you thank you thank you. You know who you are.

It’s now been two months since the election. If you’re still sitting on the sidelines, stunned and shocked and praying it’s all a bad dream, please instead find a local group that’s organizing, and get thee to a meeting. And bring a friend. Some organizing can be done virtually, yes, but there’s a unique charge you’ll get from being in the physical company of many other people who feel the same way and are ready to do something about it. 

As Rebecca Solnit wrote in Hope In The Dark: “Hope is an embrace of the unknown and the unknowable, an alternative to the certainty of both optimists and pessimists. Optimists think it will all be fine without our involvement; pessimists take the opposite position; both excuse themselves from acting.” Be hopeful! Act!

Since the election, I’ve noticed that some groups prefer to work semi-anonymously, even when the work seems like pretty ordinary citizen engagement. In that spirit, the safest thing to do would be to not share anything that isn’t available from an open, public source. That might mean that this sort-of-daily update becomes less frequent as we (all, hopefully) buckle down and focus on our own engagement. As usual, I’ll figure it out as we go along. 

In the meantime, if you need any help finding your place on this big tug-of-war rope, let me know. For those of you news-and-twitter-savvy folks, there is a cool companion guide to Indivisible called Indivertible, and this one is about individual citizens helping TV news get back on track with reporting… news. Actual news. The first 18 pages had some good info and almost too many inside jokes for me to get through it, but Chapter 4 (the rest of the doc) was meaty.