Greetings!
“How can I evolve my career so I am doing work I care about and still have time to pursue other things without getting caught in the fray?”
This was the nature of similar questions posed to me in a few different networking conversations I recently had with younger colleagues.
I was flattered that these foresightful folks would think to ask me such a question. I *might* just have looked over my shoulder to double-check that the question was really directed at me.
And I had to break my honest opinion to them gently: “You can’t.”
Not that I don’t value the question. It’s just that I’ve realized that it all goes much better when I embrace the fray. Let me try to explain.
It’s those wolves again!
This is partly about what the “serenity prayer” gets at, which incidentally I think was also what Kenny Rogers’ late 1970s hit The Gambler was about. “You gotta know when to hold’ em, know when to fold’ em …”
But it’s more than just knowing what to accept or change. It’s deciding which parts of the fray to focus on since they’re all there, all the time whether we heed them or not. While detaching from everything may have worked for the Buddha and a fellow who drank a lot of whisky playing poker on a train, it’s not really for most of us.
A few newsletters back I talked about the parable of feeding the good wolves – including our inner thought wolves – so that the good ones win out over the bad ones. This is something I’m trying to practice. I have to constantly remind myself that the place where I put my attention is the reality I choose. My most recent blog post “What We See Is What We Get” is another round of learning this important life lesson. Yes, terrible things are happening all around us. But so are many amazing things. We get to pick what we focus on, when and why.
Experimenting with experiments
Meanwhile, I have been trying to learn new things, not just inwardly, but outwardly too. I’m still a fan of snail-mail and book-books, but I have been tinkering with new forms of expression instead of bemoaning how fast these things have been flying at me (although I do that too). Hence, my YouTube channel.
I was cleaning out my home office the other week and I laughed when I came upon a photocopied, hand-written newsletter I created for my dorm-mates – The Tanneneck Canuck-chicks’ Connection – when I was on a summer work exchange in Germany in 1992. Maybe one day I’ll unearth my rudimentary YouTubery efforts and have a similar chuckle. Who knows? I see it all as one big experiment with a lot of frayed edges, and I’m okay with that.
With YouTube, my intention is to combine categories I’ve been playing with for a while – specifically narrative and poetry – with photography and video, to see what new notions might emerge. Sometimes a piece might cross-reference a blog post, such as the video from the orchestra in the middle of the Atlantic forest near São Paulo that was part of a bigger story on regenerative business. Sometimes a piece is just a separate thing, such as this one exploring the Brazilian Portuguese word, saudades, a theme that endlessly compels me.
I’ve also been using this as a venue to house video of talks I have given. I have a backlog of them, as listed on my speaker page, that I will upload somewhere in the fray – stay tuned!
Speaking of speaking …
I am very excited to share that I will be speaking at the upcoming Soil Symposium hosted by Regeneration Canada in Montreal (March 28 - 31). This promises to be a fertile (ahem) convergence of people exploring how ecosystem regeneration can bring about rapid (and frankly, really awesome) solutions to our ecological challenges, including global warming. If you’re going to be there, please send a signal – I’d love to connect! And if you’re not but you’re curious about the proceedings, watch the hashtags. I’ll be tweeting from the fray.
There is a lot going on. Probably about as much as there was before and there will be in the future. And equally probably, it is the perfect amount of fray. For this reason, I welcome the opportunity to be a-frayed… very, very a-frayed.
Yours in connectedness,
Lorraine
