It’s been a while since I’ve written here.

I was at first surprised to see that the last time I posted was in December, but then I realized it makes sense. The past few months have been a blur. Taking a new job has, in some ways, been less of a change than I expected. My day-to-day is much the same. I still wake up and walk down the hall to my home office. I still spend an inordinate number of hours on Zoom. My work day is still bracketed by walking the dog and attending my various morning classes. 

In other ways it’s been a big transition. 

Moving from my freelance lifestyle back to a “regular” 9-5(ish) schedule was more of a shift than I anticipated. I’m now accountable not to 2-4 clients who claim a percentage of my time, but to one employer who owns 100% of my working hours. So, while the number of hours worked is the same, the shape and autonomy of those hours is different. I’m leading a team again, after a long hiatus from management in which I was primarily responsible only for my own work output. I am once again a part of organizational dynamics that, as a consultant, I was generally operating outside of.

I am not only new to this organization, meeting and forming [virtual] connections with new colleagues all over the world, I’m also new to the environmental justice field. The systemic approach and social justice mindset of my new org means that’s not a huge adjustment, but it is, sometimes, different material. I also don’t have a traditional fundraising background, so the challenge of both bringing in more money and changing the power dynamics behind how that money reaches grassroots movements is an exciting and daunting one. We’re still staffing up my team, and in particular searching for my “other half” the Co-Director with whom I am excited to share leadership.

It’ been a lot, let’s put it that way.

And, as I’ve been learning and adapting and adjusting, it has been humbling to see how quickly I found myself knocked off center. More than once, I have thought with chagrin about the bold statements I have made on this very blog against urgency culture and in favor of rest as resistance to capitalism, patriarchy, white supremacy. How easily that intention and sentiment was subsumed by the need to make myself indispensable to new people in a new context! 

I remember my, What if you had nothing to prove? piece, and think wryly about how I’ve spent the past few months trying to prove myself; my Owning my generalism post, and reflect on how often I’ve recently wished I were more of a specialist; my high-flying, We shall not cease from exploration declarations, and realize I care very much what my new colleagues think of me.

It’s embarrassing to watch play out on this very website my own cycle of learning and forgetting and relearning the same lessons. But, in a way it’s also comforting. I’ve been here before, I’ll be here again. I’l work it out. I’ll untangle the knots. I’ll tie them up again.

All that makes me think about the future of this blog. 

I’ve been wondering, does being a part of an organization again change how and what I write about here? Can I be as free? If not, does it make sense to continue? 

In answer to my own question, To blog or not to blog?, I have asked myself another: Why did I start this whole thing in the first place again?

For four years I’ve written consistently on this site, deliberately placing outside myself thoughts for public consumption that I previously would have kept to my journal or shared with a few close friends. It continues to be an exercise in tentative, self-conscious experimentation. Every time I hit publish, there’s a cold little shiver of fear. And yet, I’ve been amazed to see that sometimes the posts I gave the least thought to - those quickly and almost blindly typed out in a moment of fury or elation or anguish - are the ones that most resonate. 

It’s a powerful lesson to see that my unvarnished, half-baked ideas can land as well - or even better - than my carefully considered, thoroughly researched thoughts. For someone who values the discipline and skill of drafting and fine tuning a piece of work, someone who carefully considers her words, this continues to be a revelation. So often I think to myself: who am I, how dare I even speak about this? But the answer is always, simply: I am just myself, and I have a point of view informed by how I have been able to experience the world. Nothing more, nothing less.

This reminds me that connection comes from honesty and vulnerability, not infallibility. And I know that community, in turn, is created and nurtured through consistency and accountability. That’s what has pushed me to so diligently post at least three pieces every three months - fifty three since April 2020 - whether I felt like it or not. This consistency feels important, and is in part what encourages me to go on writing here. And in fact, sometimes the diligence is what has prompted some of the most resonant pieces. The simple practice of just writing something, because I said I would, can at times result in unexpected breakthroughs.

And yet.

I don’t know how free I will now feel to be wildly critical or expansively and unspecifically frustrated. Which perhaps means the blog will again change shape. And that’s ok, really. It will evolve as I do, it will keep pace with me because I guess, in the end, it is me.

In short: I have no idea what comes next! But I will continue to write. 

If for no other reason than to keep shouting into the void :)