Week 38, 2020 - Be water
I write this on a Sunday morning from my balcony that overlooks the apartment courtyard. There’s a good 150m stretch between the street and our various building entrances and I’ve spent a lot of time looking out to this view, watching the endless stream of people coming in and out. A husband getting in a quick stretch before starting his mission for a fresh baguette, a young man striding back home from a gym session, a kid swiveling his head from the vantage point of the back of dad’s bike, dolled up girls checking their phones, toddlers on their little scooters circling their parents. The courtyard acts as a buffer between home and street, an in-between where our defenses are lowered, and it fascinates me how much inner monologue seems to be expressed in the physicality of how people move through it. I’m moving out soon, and I think the courtyard is what I’ll miss the most.
I overdid it this week with a book club, a facilitation class and two conferences, one for which I was a speaker. I treasure the rich discussions, though.
Conversations
The distinctions of the role that only someone who’s both a friend and peer can play when you’re delivering a public speaking engagement
How our insecurities shape how we interpret power in group dynamics
How communities of practice take years to gain cohesion and there’s just no rushing it
How to consider where one’s line is between unpaid passion-driven work and leisure, and why that’s a/the key to balance
What kind of feedback loops lead to feeling deep satisfaction in the work done, and how our individual needs are actually quite different
Structures that allow us to sit with a question when our initial reaction to it is ambivalence or even boredom