Week 8, 2021 - And, retreat

When we think of going on a retreat, we tend to think of it as time away - a reprieve from the humdrum of daily activities to rest and re-connect with whatever is important in our belief system, in the hopes of coming back rejuvenated. In our modern world, it carries a flavor of self-indulgence, something that only certain individuals can afford to prioritize at the expense of other people or things that might be deemed more worthy.

But consider the military context, from which perhaps the spiritual initiatives originally drew from, where a retreat is the withdrawl from enemy forces “as a result of their superior power or after a defeat”. In other words, it means to remove yourself from the situation because the game will be over otherwise. A strategic retreat makes possible the option to come back and fight another day, with better chances.

From that perspective, a retreat starts to look like the responsible and obvious move to make, in many more situations than we currently allow ourselves. I’ve been playing with new narratives for “investing in self” and this is my latest iteration.

Addendum: A great addition to this line of thinking from Marion, who points out that upon retreating, it’s important to be as careful as we can about what we take with us. If we take a hostage (or remaining work and other concerns) along with us, it needs to be watched over and cared for!

Week 7, 2021 - Spring is in the air

I’ve signed on for two exciting projects - one which is a quasi-coaching assignment and another to join an experimental academic research initiative. Both are wondrous offshoots from my core work of design and research. My role is to hold space and provide structure for group processes to flourish x injecting an outsiders’ perspective. It’s not a facilitator role, and it’s also not exactly “group therapy” as a friend remarked… I’m not sure what it is exactly but both inquiries seem to have come from a similar need. A gap that two completely different friends saw and thought, huh I should call Tomomi. I’m making a note to myself to ask them to walk me through this logic.

My hay fever kicked in over the weekend and I am declaring that it’s spring! It’s time to crawl out of the cave and frolic.

Week 6, 2021 - Play with what you have

A quick inventory of notable things:

• Was interviewed for a podcast for the first time. The level of fun was proportionate to the level of stress that I carried leading up to it. A lot, and a lot. Heh.

• Turned a new page with one of my practice groups. With self-organizing groups, there’s a learning curve to sense our way towards the boundaries we want to set and it starts with figuring out what “we” means. I’m quite excited about the possibilities.

• Kicked off our Advanced Facilitation course!!! I don’t know what to write because there’s so much to say about it! Gotta pull some thoughts together or six weeks will pass by in a blink of an eye…

• Crossed Paris with my Brompton for the first time. I didn’t have the right clothes for the biting wind so it wasn’t great… and I’m learning that 15km is the threshold for a fun ride for me. I could easily put in more distance in an “outing” mode, with a proper meal along the way, but as a casual thing in the middle of the day among other activities, 15km is enough.

• Passed the 100 subscriber mark on my YouTube channel! It’s the only metric I’ve been chasing because that’s the requirement for claiming a unique URL. The option isn’t available in the interface yet, though… maybe it takes a few days?

• Got invited to join a R&D project in an academic context. I have no idea what I’m getting myself into or what it’ll take to find my place in it (or if I’ll even want to) but it’s the kind of open door that I’ve been hoping to walk through. Feeling wondrous.

• Got an inquiry for a sparring partner-style assignment from a past client. We’ll meet next week to see what kind of arrangement could work. I’m sitting with some quiet satisfaction that the nature of my consulting practice has shifted.

• Declined a client assignment that would have tore a huge hole into my week. It’s not easy to say no, especially to a potentially huge opportunity via a warm introduction. It’s getting easier with practice, though. Red flags are red flags.

• Had great starter conversations with two potential new collaborators.

Week 5, 2021 - Getting on with it

I’m back to daily life in an apartment, quarantined with just quick forays outside for groceries. With a full week of severe jet lag and plenty of projects and engagements to keep me on my toes, the days are running long and packed. Not much space for adjusting but not much need, either.

Week 4, 2021 - Going home

I’m tapping away on my phone in the darkness of the airplane, in the final stages of the long and complicated process of getting myself home. 

There were loose ends to tie up, shopping and packing to be done, paperwork to be printed and filled in, covid tests to be taken... that’s in parallel to wondering if I should stay a while longer, while worrying about the EU restrictions that changed right before my departure date. There’s a fair amount of mental fortification needed to get through it but I’m almost home. Just crossing my fingers that it’ll be smooth at Charles de Gaulle! 

I’m incredibly fortunate to have been in a position where I could remove myself from the claws of malaise and detachment, long enough to recharge and start nurturing saplings that I’d painstakingly planted in the last few months of 2020. I benefitted greatly from being in a known environment I know like the back of my hand, with access to abundant resources and energy. Now, I’m ready to go home.

Week 3, 2021 - Be a beginner

The YouTube-ing continues to be a ton of fun. It nudges me to make more opportunities to cycle in good weather, and the immediate feedback loop for improving any editing skill is gratifying. The GoPro, not so much! The settings don't match my mental model and the fiddliness of the livecam makes it a chore when I just want to hop on the saddle. I barely check the app once I start riding so there's been a lot of un-usable footage and un-recorded stretches of time.

Between the filming and editing, there are a lot of small things that need to be figured out and so much of it is trial and error. I knew there’s a ton I don’t know how to do but I didn’t expect to be making so many mistakes! Yesterday, I deleted a freshly edited video thanks to a series of misunderstandings. A few hours of work gone in five clicks. Oops.

I tend to have high expectations for myself, and have a habit of avoiding real effort if I don’t feel like I can reach a certain level in a short amount of time. All mind games, of course. It’s good practice to be forced to stay a beginner. Making videos is a craft and mastery of any craft takes years.

An unexpected upside of editing is that I get to enjoy that captured moment again and again. I notice new things or new reactions to known things, and this rich layering is a strangely beautiful way to slow down.

All in all, I’m enjoying the process and thankfully there’s enough interest in my “productions” that I get a boost of energy with each shoutout and new subscriber. Publishing at this frequency also stirs my imagination and I surprise myself with the volume of ideas I have for the channel!

Week 2, 2021 - Come in, the water’s fine

Recently I had the chance to visit a few places I’ve never been to - a constant occurrence in pre-COVID days but something I wasn’t sure if I’d really missed. It’s safe to say that, yes, I do. I feel more like myself when there’s travel and discovery in my daily life. It’s the act of going somewhere but also of coming back. Back to home base, to rest deeply and re-appreciate what I already have.

Notable happenings this week:

• We opened registrations for Advanced Facilitation: Liberating Structures Intensive, the Greaterthan course that I’m co-delivering from February. I can’t wait to see what kind of magic will happen once the cohort comes together.

• Scheduled the kickoff for a client engagement that I’m working with Alex Simon. We have a hunch that it’s going to be a watershed project for a totally new stream of work. It’s finally time to jump in.

• Joined the inaugural general assembly of the Intersection Group of which I’m an Advising Member. There’s an ambitious intellectual effort planned between the eclectic group of core enthusiasts and it’ll be really interesting to see the collisions, slow and fast, that’s bound to happen.

• Posted the first English video for my new YouTube channel Bromptomo. I don’t have a personal social media presence in Japanese so this makes it easier to start talking about it publicly. Some warm responses already. I’m having so much fun with this project.

• Coordinated a collaboration between AQ and a non-profit that’s doing amazing things. More on this in a few weeks.

• An early celebration of my birthday. My sisters gifted me an activity tracker, a slim one that actually fits my tiny wrist. I’m most interested in improving sleep quality by tracking sleep patterns and using the watch as an alarm instead of the phone.

• A day trip to Shimizu City in Shizuoka with Sachiko, who showed me around her hometown. It was a beautiful and peaceful place - I’ll add more photos below of Miho-no-Matsubara, which is a majestic stretch of pine trees along the coast. The whole coastline was begging for a cycling adventure. The thing about cycling in Japan is that it includes amazing local food and onsen hot springs. I need to find a way to cycle more in Japan…

• Had a wisdom tooth pulled out. It’s been a problematic tooth for a few years and I finally agreed to part ways with this piece of my body. What a brutal act!

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Week 1, 2021 - A gentler and more playful gaze

We’ve had glorious cold and sunny days here in Tokyo, a combination that makes you breathe deeply to catch the crispness of the air and stop for long moments to bask in the sunlight.

The new bike has give me a new source of energy. I like that it’s a second hand one, broken in and well-maintained, like it was ready to jet as soon as it left the box. The casualness of the folding bike makes for a different type of fun than my road bike, too. The barrier to moving a couple of kilometers is infinitely lower because I have plenty of bag space, not wearing conspicuous cycling gear, and unconcerned about parking. I already made an impromptu detour to pick up sushi for dinner so that counts as #winning in my book!

On the whole I feel restless - ready for activity and not in the mood to overthink all kinds of plans. Next week I’ll be investigating what kind of bets I want to place, and expanding my imagination of distant horizons. To paint some irresponsible, wild and ludicrous scenes and sit with them longer than I’m comfortable with. And then I’ll unravel them with a gentle and playful gaze on myself and the beautiful people that I’m blessed to have in my life, to see what threads I can pull.

Week 52, 2020 - Time is a story

Let’s step into a fresh start. Let’s turn the page. Not with vague optimism that things will be better because surely we’ve endured enough, but with the inner strength to find agency in what we can make better, day in and day out. And if small improvements are hard to sustain, a couple of drastic interventions on our environment isn’t a bad idea.

This is a weeknote published on a Friday morning (Jan 1st) to carve out three days to calibrate my inner dialogue before Week 1, 2021. Time is a story we tell ourselves, and I’m determined that 2021 isn’t a dumb continuation of the mushy and bland and stretchy and depressing and confusing blah of last year.

Week 51, 2020 - Breaking away

It took a couple of uncomfortable days to stop feeling unsettled. I’m now sleeping as much as I want (a lot, and it’s not just the jet lag) and sinking into quiet time to read and re-connect with family. I also found a great online deal on a second-hand Brompton bike. I’m really looking forward to learning its ins and outs, riding in Tokyo and bringing it back with me to Paris.

Looking back, my bike-buying process was a mess. A few months ago, I did a ton of research and decided I wanted one and then… I didn’t take the step of buying it. And what happened was like a car stuck in the parking lot with its engine left on. I didn’t drive out and I didn’t turn off the engine, so I just kept using up gas.

A series of events this spring/summer, both pandemic-induced and not, caused an ongoing state of upheaval that really depleted my confidence tank. One of the consequences was not being able to make decisions or take action after I’d made them. Rendering choices through action, no matter how small, generates energy and I haven’t been able to do enough of it in the past few months. The bicycle is one of the simpler examples.

This insight had the power to knock me out of my recent malaise and feeling of helplessness after realizing that 2021 will look quite similar to 2020 in terms of corona risks and constraints. I’m glad for it, and it probably wasn’t a coincidence that these thoughts came while journaling on the riverside, feeling the winter sun and enjoying a cup of hot tea from my trusty thermos.