practicing emergent strategy: change is constant. be like water.

24 Nov 2017

last week, during our boston sunday session with adrienne maree brown, we did an activity where we somatically developed an understanding of how we individually and collectively dealt with change. there were definitely interesting lessons about the collective, but one of the takeaways for me was that i generally deal with unexpected change poorly. this i knew, but it was funny to see it show up somatically.

learning this again in this way has committed me to trying to be different. this principle from emergent strategy felt very relevant for me to practice:

change is constant. be like water.

and so, i am practicing.

first practice opportunity: tuesday morning for my flight to jacksonville.

mistake: didn’t double-check my itinerary before bed. woke up and got ready, called a lyft, all under the illusion that my flight was at 6:30. second mistake: because i have tsa precheck now, i left myself even less time than normal for the drive. even though i woke up with plenty of time. once in the car, i see on my digital boarding pass that my flight is actually at 6:10. begin freaking out. start searching for alternate flights. see that there is a direct flight (as opposed to my bos -> tpa -> jax) at 8:39a. begin breathing intentionally to get back in my body. arrive at terminal c at 5:42. check boarding pass again: gate change, e1. ask myself wtf/how/why. start walking from terminal c to e. make peace with the fact that i’m not going to make this flight and will probably have to buy the $250 ticket from bos -> jax. walk fast anyways, just in case. get to the gate out of breath. gate agent wonders why i came the way i did instead of the shortcut from my original gate to e1. i said i guess i just had bad info? graciously, she tells me to breathe, gives me handwritten directions back to gate c (without going thru security again), rebooks my flight (for free), and tells me to take it easy.

change embraced.

words / writing / post-processing
334w / 12min / 11min