This
Seeming
Chaos

The 1st.

“Filling the well involves the active pursuit of images to refresh our artistic reservoirs…In order to function in the language of art, we must learn to live in it comfortably. The language of art is image, symbol. It is a wordless language even when our very art is to chase it with words.” —David Whyte, The Heart Aroused

Reading this was so powerful for me. The image that came up for me was this little house in a field full of orange and red poppies. In this house, I can be fully myself, reading books and writing and gardening and making delicious food. It’s an image that’s stuck with me through the years, but I had never thought about it in terms of life direction. For me, it represents the things that make me uniquely me, outside of what anyone else wants or expects.

I want to move to that house. I want to become a permanent resident. How do I do that?

Bryan Zavestoski published a podcast interview we did today. It was a good conversation, but not sure if I'll listen to it.

The 2nd.

Moving into that house in the poppy field requires me to live under a different kind of leadership: a leadership of the soul. That is going to take getting my sea legs. It is difficult to know what to do because the soul is all about being.

It feels irresponsible, not making productivity my main goal. It makes me anxious even thinking about detaching from that. All the more reason to go through with it, I think. It will require me to dig deep into the messiness of where I get my identity and value. And what exactly am I so afraid of?

The 4th.

Quiet time feels good. It’s really hard for me to have the constant noise of 7 people in one house. It builds up in me to the point where I shut down socially. And then I feel bad because my littlest just wants to be next to me on my chair or cuddle or hold my hand or sit closer at the table and my emotional capacity for connection is so low.

It doesn’t help that my stress levels are high. No matter how calm I make my immediate environment, the bigger picture of this pandemic amps up my anxiety baseline. Self-care is one of the most important things I can do right now. And my expectations for my energy and productivity levels should be low, as frustrating as that is. I want to be able to do so much more, but it’s just not likely right now.

The 5th.

“How long have the planets been circling the sun? Are they getting anywhere, and do they go faster and faster in order to arrive? How often has the spring returned to the earth? Does it come faster and fancier every year, to be sure to be better than last spring, and to hurry on its way to the spring that shall out-spring all springs?” —Alan Watts, The Wisdom of Insecurity

Planning has become so meaningless. Every week is practically the same. I don’t have anything to add really.

Yesterday I had the thought that I just wanted a simple job—something that is 100% helping; something that is plainly a contribution. Something that does not require a sales page. Maybe a priestess or a social worker.

Right now being CEO of a software company feels like so much fluff in a world where the actual needs are great. I know it’s all in how you frame it. The needs of the people on my team to remain employed and insured are great. &yet is a service to them as much as they are in service of its goals. Maybe more so.

This is my garden. This is my monastery. I do not know what is needed. I can only hold my hands open and wait for the rain right now. I just wish I could know. I wish I had a vision that meant something to people…that meant something to me. But I don’t right now.

The thing is, everyone in the world has their own ideas, their own plans for what they are building. They don’t need or want anyone else’s plan…they just want to see their own succeed. They want to feel validated, they want to feel seen. They want to know that it matters. I look at that and just see the pointlessness of any one endeavor. I see all the people everywhere being noisy, trying to get their needs met. It’s like a busy public market, all the sellers with all their wares. Pay attention! Give me your attention! I have what you want! Will that get your attention?

I think that might be the point of my whole framework with Gather the People. But it’s difficult because it requires deep humility to create out loud—to be interested in other people enough to find out where they want to go and to help them get there. To do it with grace; to articulate it honestly and well. To be patient. To be direct but not obnoxious. To let go of your self-consciousness. To just be you, in public, over and over again. To build your own platform, but more importantly, to build others’. It is so hard.

I don’t know how to advise anyone right now. I hear people saying “OMG everyone’s making all these free things.” It is a terrible time to try to get someone else’s time and attention. And yet, we do. We want to help. We want to be a part of the conversation. We don’t want to be left behind.

It is no wonder I’m having such a hard time making anything right now. One thing all of this is teaching me is I have a deep need to believe in what I’m doing. When I don’t believe it, it’s excruciating. It hurts to write, it hurts to make. It hurts to share. I need everything I do to stem from a place of contribution.

The thing is, I don’t have any way of making connection my contribution without creating some kind of group. But what would the structure of that group be? What would it be for? Just so I can know that I am at least reaching this small group of people in a relational way? That seems a bit absurd.

The 7th.

“But who wants reality, she thinks. I want the stars.” —All This Could Be Yours by Jami Attenberg

I’m outside! It feels so good to be out. I need sunshine so badly. I love that we live close to the river, even though there are so many people out that we need to stay away from. Adam keeps saying it’s like that scene in 1970s Batman where he’s trying to find a place to put this lit bomb and keeps running into people everywhere he goes. I feel pretty safe here perched on this bench. And also strangely connected to all the people who pass by.

Wow, there are so many people on the trail today. People with their pets or lovers or families. People with their shirts tied up or taken off to let more of the sun in. Probably people who don’t get outside much these days.

It’s pretty amazing the families on their bikes…the energy it takes to put that together and make it happen. The old people who are trying their best to stay healthy, balancing the need to stay home with the need for sunshine and exercise. There are so many people. And on a Wednesday morning. It’s truly surreal.

Oh my gosh this couple who are both wearing earbuds while the dude is un ironically singing “the next time that he cheats, you know it won’t be on me” completely off-key. She’s just walking along like this isn’t happening.

The 8th.

I don’t know what to do with myself. It definitely feels like every day is Friday. There’s just not much momentum or motivation. I’ve been living in limbo for weeks. I get little spurts of energy, but nothing long-lasting.

Are any of us going to be productive again? There is some part of anything I do right now that feels completely pointless. I know we create our own meaning. And we have to, to keep our sanity. But this particular context makes that a little harder if you’re not helping provide for people’s basic needs.

The 10th.

“Sentences may alter the weather, and poems might tear down walls. Stories may change the world.” —The Ten Thousand Doors of January by Alix E. Harrow

It’s weird how beliefs work. Change the beliefs and everything else changes. But it can’t happen on the surface. It has to click somewhere deeper. I don’t really know how that happens.

It happened with me a few weeks ago with &yet’s revenue gap. I had believed and believed and believed we could close it. Gradually but swiftly, changes started happening in the world. One day those changes clicked into my beliefs on another level, and I didn’t believe we could close that gap anymore. Immediately, I knew what we had to do, and I reduced our workweek and our paychecks.

Working with our underlying beliefs is a lifelong process, but sometimes circumstances do the work for us.

On another note, I’m feeling a project budding out of this image of the house in the poppy field. I don’t know what it is, but I know that I really really want to create this feeling and freedom for myself and other people. It’s weird, and I can’t put it into words yet, but it’s thrumming deep inside of me. I want to do this. I really really do. Something in me needs it even.

But I’m not going to get ahead of myself. It is going to become my Special Project. The one I do on nights and weekends or whenever plans change. I’m so excited about it. I haven’t had something so alive in me in a really, really long time.

I think these are the projects I’m meant to do…these first-person player story adventures that help you become freer in some area of your life. I love it so much it makes me want to quit everything and just do crazy things like this. It feels like coming home.

I used to make these things all the time, but at some point in my career I decided that these weird experiences I was creating were too childish, too amateur. I was embarrassed of my execution of them. But man, it is so who I am. I need to shed my ego and my grown-upness and just go back to that person who made these strange worlds to inhabit.

But I’m not going to quit anything to do it. I have my job at &yet, and I love it. But I am going to be me, completely free, on the other side of that. And because I have the solid foundation of my job and my service, I can let myself be free and just give in to everything my soul wants to make possible.

I had felt like new ideas had left me because of the situation the world is in and because I was afraid of what those ideas would take. But I know now they were just waiting for me to open myself up to them all along. This is what happens when I let myself be driven by the soul; by giving it what it really wants.

The things my soul wants are all about integration. And the things I need to integrate back into my life are not the confidence and the “thought leadership” of my former days. They are the creative projects that used story, image, and metaphor to express a profound truth and take people on a journey. That is what is next for me; allowing that back into my work.

Learning, story, magic, beauty, connection, truth—all of these things need to be my highest goal in anything I decide to do.

The 11th.

“Living, being in the world, was a much greater and stranger thing than she had ever dreamed.” —The Tombs of Atuan by Ursula K. Le Guin

I beat Animal Crossing. I got K.K. slider to come to my island. This feels like a significant accomplishment compared to how hard everything is right now.

I wonder how our world is going to change because of this pandemic. I haven’t written about that for a while. It’s honestly gotten pretty easy to put it out of my mind. We have our little house and our little company and our little deliveries every so often. It’s just everything is both unfathomable and unknowable. I have to return to some semblance of internal order, at least. Even though on the one hand I want things to stay jostled, what I mean by that is I don’t want to go back to “this is the way things have to be.” Now is a time where change is allowed, expected even. That is so freeing to me, and I don’t want to lose that. Though of course, I don’t need to lose that. That is a feeling I can cultivate in myself no matter how solid or shaky things may seem.

The 12th.

“The idea hovered and shimmered delicately, like a soap bubble, and she dared not even look at it directly in case it burst. But she was familiar with the way of ideas, and she let it shimmer, looking away, thinking about something else.” —The Golden Compass by Philip Pullman

I’m so excited about this Special Project, even though I have no idea what it is. I’ve been thinking about delivering a literal package that says “open this in week 1,” etc. That would allow me to deliver things all at once, so timing wouldn’t be an issue. But I love the idea of having things to unwrap each week. You’d have literally everything you needed, right there in front of you. And you’d have a much deeper connection than something that’s fully online. I just love that.

The thing I’m not sure of is what is the purpose of this? Also, none of the names I’ve tried for it feel right. But if there’s anything I’ve learned about naming things, no concerted brainstorming effort is likely to get to something that feels true. But also this might just be too early. I don’t really know what this even is right now. What exactly am I walking people through?

There’s the question of curriculum. I have a curriculum in Gather the People, but this is more of a personal journey. It’s more open-ended, but it’s also dealing with the situation you’re currently in. It’s self-discovery but also assumes you know some things about yourself.

What would we do? Well, first there is some sort of self-assessment or validation of where you’re at, what you’ve tried to accomplish.

Maybe it’s an online retreat for self-differentiated leadership.

I like the idea of self-differentiation being a part of this. And “retreat” is exactly what I’ve wanted to create. Maybe it’s just one week, and the boxes to open are days 1-5. We are very with each other for a week, and then we go back to our regular lives.

I need to let this sit for a little bit. Oh man, maybe the website evolves every day, too, kind of like Animal Crossing. You have a more fully fleshed out experience each day.

I’m sending my inner productivity censor going “Hey now, this is too many things! You need to focus!” But I’ve been focused for too long. I need to be driven by something I deeply believe in.

The 14th.

I’m so grateful to our CFO for the work he did in getting us that stimulus money. We need to make a plan for how we’re going to use it. I’m going to let our COO lead that.

Man, I wish I had clarity on our vision though. Everything I come up with feels fear-based. We could shift our messaging to try and position ourselves for this big project opportunity that we have, but that feels weak and pandering. It’s a clear market we could be serving and we could really pivot to be all about that. But if it’s just temporary, it feels like something that would project confusion to anyone watching, as well as a lack of confidence in our previously stated vision. Its short-term benefits (that aren’t even guaranteed) do not outweigh the cost. So hard to think long-term though when we really can’t see a foot in front of our faces.

I just can’t believe how things are right now. Still. But it feels more normal with each passing day.

The 15th.

Iterative growth is such a compelling concept for me, but it’s so hard for me to allow it in my life—to just build something and make it better. To think very small, but to intuit on a larger scale. My fear is that I will do small things and then get tired or frustrated with them before they have a chance to grow into my vision for them. It is so difficult.

But I think that is something I need to learn to do…to lean into the discomfort of starting things and maybe not seeing them through. Maybe they won’t work for me. Maybe they won’t work for others. But I need to try. I need to at least give myself permission to do that.

I want to ease up a bit and trust that it’s okay. Some ideas will thrive, others will need to be pruned. I don’t want to create in fear. It’s all okay; I just need to keep showing up at the page, to rest, to dream, to try. It is enough. It truly is.

The 21st.

“Freedom is a heavy load, a great and strange burden for the spirit to undertake. It is not easy. It is not a gift given, but a choice made, and the choice may be a hard one. The road goes upward toward the light; but the laden traveler may never reach the end of it.” —The Tombs of Atuan, Ursula K. Le Guin

It’s difficult to identify the tyranny that is my own self. True freedom has to take that into account, I think. Otherwise I’m a slave to my own impulses, rather than living out the life I truly want to live. There is a mix of zooming in and zooming out that’s involved. Paying attention to the moment and trusting myself, but also being able to interpret what that self is really saying. Sometimes I will not want to work on something, but what that reluctance is really saying is that I’m scared. Sometimes I will feel too tired or lazy to read that book or take that class, but what that laziness might be saying is I need to take care of my body.

That is really the core of it: not balancing two opposing sets of needs and desires, but listening closely for the truth.

The 22nd.

I’m kind of jealous of people like Maria Popova and Tina Roth Eisenberg who have so effortlessly taken what they like to do and share and turned it into pretty incredible resources for people.

I want to do that..to take what’s on the inside and put it on the outside. And really, I want to do that through &yet, not my personal site, because I want to invest the time and energy and collaboration to make it excellent. I just need to figure out what that whole thing is.

Honestly, I think that is the purpose of all this exploring. I’m trying to find a framework for doing this that makes sense. But my ideas are such a tangled mess right now. And that’s okay. It’s going to eventually come together, I just need to allow myself to explore and rest. And keep nudging myself toward dreaming about what is possible.

The 26th.

I’m starting to use a new tool. Oh no. It sucks because I don’t want to do things digitally, but Roam is like the answer to all my learning and research prayers. I will keep using paper to write, but I want to make sure everything is ultimately digital. Maybe not planning and productivity, but information.

It is the thing bullet journaling is designed for, but I can never actually stick to on paper. I’m much too verbose, and I want to be able to re-arrange my thoughts if I’m making an outline. Which I can’t do on paper. And there’s the whole cataloging older information thing. It’s overwhelming to do that with a paper system. I can see the “migration” benefit so you’re only focusing on what is still relevant and not spending your time organizing useless information. But overall, it’s challenging. Especially for keeping track of book notes and things like that.

Anyway, I’m still the tiniest bit hesitant. I know what new systems are for me—a distraction, even if they do relieve my anxiety for a time with their promises of The Perfect System. Moving to a new system basically ensures I will never have a system that includes more of my life than the chunks I give it when I switch. I mean, maybe that’s okay. But it’s a shame when I look at the big picture.