A year of the blog.

A year ago, I started this blog because I felt that more genuine connection was - quite literally - at the heart of better, more effective social justice work.

I committed to posting once every three months, but wound up doing it much more often: 13 entries over the past 12 months. As much as it terrified me at first, the stated intention to publish my doubts and questions, rather than keep them in my journal, gave me a sense of purpose. In fact, it’s often when I least feel like writing, when it seems I have absolutely nothing to contribute, that the most interesting things surface.

In a way, this whole process has actually helped me connect (or reconnect) to certain aspects of myself, as well as to you. I think that explains the increasingly blurred lines between “personal” and “professional” reflections in the posts. Of course, this tracks with life outside the blog: over the past 20 years I’ve moved from zero work-life balance (i.e. working way too much), to rigidly separating the two worlds, to a messier but arguably more honest and sustainable overlapping middle ground. A realization about my meditation practice can easily bleed into the need to be more present for a challenging Zoom workshop later in the day. A reflection on fear and ego driven power grabs by authoritarians can relate directly to an early morning run-in with a pushy fellow dog walker. And so on.

Reading back over the year of blogs has also helped me realize that I was somehow teed up right in time for the vulnerability that this pandemic would require of us all. And I do think these hard edges softening, blending, and blurring make me better, more compassionate, and more creative in the way I think about (and hopefully act on) human rights.

I guess what I’m saying is that a year of this blog and email experiment has reaffirmed my belief: more connection is where it’s at. It’s what we need, as activists, as donors and grantees and implementers. And as angry, elated, confused, dejected and inspired human animals.

Oh, and another thing: I cannot seem to write one of these things without some kind of completely inappropriate music or pop culture reference. As I typed the words, “more connection,” all I could think was, “more cowbell.”

Aaaaand…I’m out.