year in review: 2018

03 Jan 2019

commitments from 2018

experiments!

i ran or co-ran a ton of stuff last year. it’s important to note that i set a goal in my 2017 annual reflection retreat to facilitate 100 meetings. some of those workshops and experiments include…

new things

• a 3h workshop on enoughness with caroline howe
• a 3h workshop on whiteness and power in urban planning with danya sherman for lily song’s multiple miami’s workshop
• two one-week rays of light prototypes with danielle coates-connor
• a three-evening unleashing alternative futures iap workshop with grant williams via colab
• an imagination workshop for a future of transportation project of WRI
• facilitating the self-determination narrative summer fellowship (my first fellowship) via colab
• ran ‘the alternative futures of libraries and archives’ at MIT with radical libraries and archivists
• “train the facilitators” with multicultural teaching institute facilitators in advance of their annual conference
• started a radio show, colab radio on air, at MIT’s wmbr. also began 2nd season with a co-host (dj soco aka morgan auguillard).
• a collective courage workshop for ujima

things expanded, deepened or iterated on

• two online book clubs: jackson rising, pedagogy of the oppressed
• 8 3-hour project nights (3hpn)

[sort below]

• facilitated 1.5 day leadership team retreat at grist.org (co-facilitated with alexis frasz)
• facilitated 1 day full staff team retreat for grist.org
• 4-week personal storytelling for social change workshop with the prx podcast garage, dudley cafe, and the pao arts center
• ecosystems of care: pilot for anti-patriarchy time-travel mouse.
• first full moon circle. at grant and jenny’s on afropunk saturday. dave madan, grant (co-holder), jenny, and me.
• started black sci-fi book club video series with reed jordan. bernadette merkle joined
• jp queer movie night. jay lamotte and mike leyba and me.
• queer full moon circle w/ leo at old oak dojo
• public #thismooncycle routine experiment (followed gibrán’s lead; want to do again for 2019)
• started roommate beginning anew practice
• began organizing ‘the upstarts’ - a parallel to consultant coffee
• avatar + craft night with crystal, seth, and jonah
• meadowbrook schools: facilitating group conversations about identity and race [sort above]

what did i start

• tarot
• astrology
• the formation project
• first float session
• family tree work
• jp queer movie night

what went well

• hit my goal of facilitating 100 meetings

what did i learn?

• i like working with students
• i like giving talks
• i like to work with groups i can facilitate with over multiple sessions (ptop, 4-week ps4sc)
• i still like coaching and it seems valuable to others still
• i’m beginning to feel the value in bi-weekly and monthly things (continuing to develop grasp of things at lower frequency but high depth)
• how to teach mindfulness to k-12 humans
• i love babies. 3 were born this year in my life (asa, alvie, leah). 2 last year (abraham, apollo). jayden is 8.
• as i get older, annual rituals are way important.
  • 4th of july in maine
  • 2nd family weekend in maine
  • lamb roast (memorial day)
  • sinterklaas
  • cider quest
  • halloween
• monthly rituals are also becoming important
  • roommate dinner + beginning anew
  • bullet journal setup + room clean
• serious writing only works for me in long chunks
• facilitation of a lot of things makes me learn a lot
  • i most often facilitate: organizational development, team-building, difficult conversations, identity (notably race, but not exclusively)

what didn’t go well

• failed one consulting contract
• started but never got off the ground: wakanda tarot deck, audio storytelling platform with rajesh and david benjamin, SHIFTcities job, DUSP home groups
• never got started: organizing EL men, involvement in harvard sound education conference
• under prioritized connections with fraternity brothers

relationship stuff

• lots of opportunities for relationship but i’m mostly not making time for it right now. feels more important to focus on myself, my growth, my work, and my finances.
• traveled a lot and it was super fun and i’ve got to get better at the coming in and out of town. i used to have this down back in my florida days (age 19-21, right around my last 7-year transition) and now i need to learn what’s gonna work at this age and this moment in my life. this is also a part of learning how to be more adaptive (maybe i’m a traveling mystic/shaman/sage?)

quotes for the year

• “No tree, it is said, can grow to heaven unless its roots reach down to hell.” ― Carl Jung
• “You don’t have to do anything that feels wrong to grow.” - Barbara carrellas
• “We are what we repeatedly do.” - Will Durant, summarizing Aristotle
• “Mysticism and revolution are two aspects of the same attempt to bring about radical change. Mystics cannot prevent themselves from becoming social critics, since in self-reflection they will discover the roots of a sick society. Similarly, revolutionaries cannot avoid facing their own human condition, since in the midst of their struggle for a new world they will find that they are also fighting their own reactionary fears and false ambitions.” — Henri J.M. Nouwen
• “No tree, it is said, can grow to heaven unless its roots reach down to hell.” ― Carl Jung
• “You are moving at the correct pace.” — danielle coates-connor

what does all that mean for 2019?

• top level message: transformation. support it.
• babies, especially when they’re little, demand attention in ways that are unpredictable. in order to make time for the babies/kids in my life, i’m going to have to develop much more dynamic structures. “strong structures, loosely held.” (a play on “strong beliefs, loosely held.”)
• i want to focus on personal storytelling, pre- and post-patriarchy x time travel, reading and producing afrofuturist work (including black sci-fi), neighborhood community-building, men’s work, and self-and-community development
  • say no to things that fall outside of those lanes
• move away from facilitating one-off engagements. move towards recurring or on-going engagements. this supports transformation.
• move towards building on what works/gets results. move away from first-time experiments.
• collaborate with more folks of color.
• mentor more young folks of color.
• release no meeting day. seems not functional while working 1/2 time job and consulting outside of that.
• being more prepared for traveling. that means getting a set of stuff that’s pretty much just for traveling. (s/o to annemarie for taking my thinking one layer farther by suggesting i actually just have 1-2 sets of clothes that stay in my suitcase so that i don’t have to think about what’s in there when i pack). i expect this to reduce my travel headaches (forgetting things, taking forever to pack) by one million percent.

2019 commitments

new commitments

• support transformation wherever and whenever possible.
• make/do more art.

continued commitments

• make my list of commitments public on my website
• 2 fridays / month are tech sabbaths (sundown friday to sundown sat)
• in order to keep my mornings for deep work/flow/focus, before 12p
  • do not check or send email
  • do not check social media
• plan to end all meetings i facilitate at :20 or :50. begin this in february.
• write a poem or blog post daily.
• don’t eat while working (i.e. no working meetings)
• never answer “how are you” shallowly. i can either (a) answer for real, (b) politely, explicitly abstain from answering, or (c) offer to answer a different, more specific question (how’s my day? how am i right now?)
• meditate: 20 mins/day + 1h session/week (the 1h session can replace one of the 20 minute days)
• use a 2-hour chunk of time on fridays to schedule upcoming meetings and get to inbox zero
• on the first saturday of every month:
  • clean my room
  • process and pay my bills
  • set up the new month in my bullet journal
  • review personal and business finances