Tag Archives: creativity

Where the magic happens

The key to getting things done is doing them on your own terms.

This is a motto of mine; words I live by. A commute can be a pain, but what if I left a little earlier, took the scenic route, drank some good coffee and listened to a good book on the way? Dishes can be a pia, but with music? What if I focus on the bubbles?

As a researcher, I am often motivated by the power of noticing. As a moderator, this means providing space for the quietest voices to blossom. As an analyst, this means taking the time and care to represent all of the voices, not just the loudest or most eloquent.

I’ve often taken pride in my invisibility as a facilitator. I feel like I’ve done my job when I’m barely noticed, but the tone is set, the participants are at ease and the conversation stays on track through the subtlest of prompts and cues.

Today I’m kayaking. I enjoy racing through the water, but when I stop, I see birds hidden in tall grass, fish jumping, and the almost magical pops of light reflecting on water and trees.

My community work has also followed this model; amplifying quiet voices, endorsing those who seem tentative but I know to be insightful. Noticing.

This is my way of working, living and interacting in the world, and this is what drives me to do the work I’m doing now.

I have a voice that I have never hesitated to use. But I’ve learned that the world comes alive around me when I choose to observe. I trust that the same voice I use to advocate for others is well practiced and fully available when I need it, and with that trust I can fade back.

I’m in a transformative moment. I’m deciding what I want to build and that requires repeatedly doubling back to my principles. What do I stand for? What do I provide as naturally as I breathe or paddle? Who am I without institutional backing, when I’m free to create?

There is a large exodus in my field; people who have lost jobs and are beginning consultancies. For some, the path may feel more clear than for others. How can we support each other better? Connect more? Collaborate more? Grow stronger together? Are we all adrift? Could we paddle together?

When I finished my paddle today, I pulled onto shore and a park employee greeted me. I saw poop on both sides of the kayak and tried to point it out to her. She didn’t see me or hear me. She appeared to have already decided my words didn’t merit her attention. ‘Watch where you step!” I shouted, after a few attempts, and then watched her croc’d foot come down in a large pile of poop. In this world of paddlers, where we all sit under the same blanket of sky and listen to the sounds of birds that live freely amongst and between us, I choose to listen, to observe, to hear, to find pockets of magic and to step in poop as little as possible.

What is the real product here?

I was recently talking with a friend about my community conversation series. She told me that the real value in the sessions was in the data produced. I was shocked! Do community conversations produce data?

I have to say; this ruffled my feathers. The intention behind the session was always one of self expression, forming or reinforcing connections between people, fostering healing and resilience, and building community. If they were intended for data collection, I would have instituted a consent process and considered inviting ethical review. Data collection has a very different connotation in my field, and these are community based advocacy, not focus groups!

But I’ve been ruminating further on her words. Coming out of these sessions, there’s a clearer sense of what people are experiencing, how they are coping and what kinds of resources would be helpful to better support them at this time. And honestly, for any group that knows that some members are suffering, these are important outputs.

Are they data? No. Insights? No. Traditionally, they are none of these things. But they do provide valuable and necessary information that can be built upon to build better support systems and structures.

I’ve heard anecdotally from many groups of people affected by the sweeping government changes that they want to know what’s going on with their members and how to support them. I honestly believe that these community conversations are the answer to that; allowing both an opportunity to support people and an opportunity to explore a path forward through the chaos.

The value is on both one-off sessions and in repeated sessions within the same community. My mission is to build them in such a way that groups and people can benefit. It’s a slow process, as I figure out how to meet people where they are, and I’m always open to advice or interest!

Interesting in joining a session or getting involved?

Here is the mailing list:

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfrIlrlCJzm5E4ahoR_JOh6E-KaB1nbGyJ2SmdQqKL99JHrOQ/viewform?usp=sharing&ouid=114493619372705360657

Here is the next online session:

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/1382445414449?aff=oddtdtcreator

Let’s be real for a moment.

Let me be really honest with you.

This community conversation effort is one of the most fulfilling projects I’ve ever been involved with. I believe in the groups and find them cathartic. The support I’ve received and enthusiasm for the effort blows me away, and I’ve had amazing conversations with people in my network about how to build them. I’m excited about the possibility of adding additional activities and opportunities to connect with art and nature and even do retreats!

But I have one big, perpetual challenge in bringing them to fruition.

For whatever reason, people heartily cheer from the sidelines and then don’t register for the events. People don’t seem to believe that these sessions are for them.

Some people are intimidated by the weight of the subject. But they haven’t seen the lightness that people walk out of these rooms with. Ultimately, the events feel like a wellness activity that leaves people smiling, laughing, relaxed, connected and inspired. We’re countering the weight, not basking in it.

Some people don’t want to talk about what they’ve been through. I get that. But it’s not school. You’re welcome to come and listen!

Some people care a lot, but aren’t directly affected. To these people I say we still need problem solvers, workers, concern and support.

And what is there to gain from all of this?


1) First, wellness. Skill-building. As a caregiver, I work regularly with anxiety and grounding techniques that have been transformative. I want to share what I’ve learned, because we are continually dealt blows. I want us to be ready for them as they come.


2) Connection to community. Community is bigger than us. It spreads the load on our shoulders across multiple backs. It allows us to care and be cared for.


3) A sense of where we are and how we can survive and even thrive in this fast-changing environment. The occupational and political landscape today is unique, and we will need to find new ways to handle it. If we can dream it, we can build it!

I don’t know, ultimately, whether this idea will grow the way I dream. But I’d like to believe that we can build community networks to support each other, grow in innovative ways, stay ready, heal together, and be inspired together by our common passions for learning, for art, for a natural world that is bigger than us, and for a good common humanity that still exists beneath the surface of this plastic, unfeeling society.

I want to believe that we can build something beautiful together!

There are two upcoming events, one in-person and one online. We’re working on more, different types of events, focusing on individual topics, sharing about books, making art together, being in nature together and more.

In-person event:
Community Conversation: Finding our Footing in this Uncertain Time https://www.eventbrite.com/e/community-conversation-finding-our-footing-in-this-uncertain-time-tickets-1363624811519?utm-campaign=social&utm-content=attendeeshare&utm-medium=discovery&utm-term=listing&utm-source=wsa&aff=ebdsshwebmobile

Online event:

https://www.eventbrite.com/e/online-community-conversation-finding-our-footing-in-this-uncertain-time-tickets-1382445414449?aff=oddtdtcreator

Mailing list:
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfrIlrlCJzm5E4ahoR_JOh6E-KaB1nbGyJ2SmdQqKL99JHrOQ/viewform?usp=header


Please, come join us. You’re welcome! Come as you are. Bring your baggage. Lighten your load. Find connection and inspiration. Believe in us.

Navigating Career Changes from the Inside Out

Years ago on this blog, I wrote about approaching career changes from the inside out. I had accomplished the biggest career change of my life that way, by following my passions with my books, talks and extra research sessions and then blogging about them here.

Last week at the annual AAPOR conference in St Louis, an attendee in a session about Navigating Career Change asked about feeling unsatisfied with their work. This is a common motivation for switching jobs, but I chimed in from the audience as a voice of caution.

“I think about it like an unscratched itch,” I advised. “Maybe there is some part of you that your work life isn’t satisfying. But this is a horrible time to switch jobs so I advise you instead to find other ways to scratch that itch. You may still decide you’re ready for a change, but if, for example, you decide that you really do need your job to offer more space for creativity, you now have recent experiences to speak to as examples of you pursuing your creative endeavors.”

We expect our jobs to be our calling, our everything. And we give them everything. But we are so many things, and we need to exist beyond our work.

I’m at another point of career change. After nearly 30 years of working in my career- with the longest break being 3 weeks of maternity leave, I’ve lost my job as a government contractor as part of the deep federal cuts. I could look directly for another position, but I want to take my time with it. We only live once, and I want to take inventory of all of my itches before deciding how to scratch.

I want to build out this Community Conversations initiative, but I want to be thoughtful about it. I’m not trying to recreate what others have done, so much as build something new that fits our current needs. This requires intuition, reflection, patience, resilience, and determination. It means that some days are among the most fulfilling of my life, hosting cathartic community sessions or having really inspiring conversations with friends and colleagues, and some days I wonder why I’m adrift instead of staying on the career path.

This initiative was founded from the inside out, reflecting 

  1. my facilitation skills that I’ve learned through years of moderating, facilitating and community work, 
  2. my passion for building mental health that was cultivated through voices like Iyanla Vanzant, Pema Chodron, Rachel Cargle and the Nap Ministry,
  3. my profound interest in community based participatory research and the principles that guide it, and
  4. my love of strategic conversations, brainstorming and forming new ways to approach problems.

Forming an initiative from the inside out means that guiding our next steps is a continual process of self reflection. This means that a day spent at one of my favorite art galleries, taking pictures that I may able to use for an exhibit of my own one day, getting lost in the woods on its campus and finding new ways to engage with my surroundings is just as important as a day spent documenting the plan for the initiative, including the financial and communication aspects.

I always imagined my life in chapters, with a later chapter as a more wholeheartedly creative era. And I love the creativity I’m feeling now! But a change so dramatic as this requires some careful stewardship and navigation.

I’m not really sure where any of this is headed, but I’m confident that just as when I recreated my life before, these steps will lead me in the right direction. Because I’m scratching my itches!

Have you navigated big changes like this? Do you have unscratched itches? Do you have any advice or resources to offer? Please comment! Let’s continue the conversation.

Picture taken by me, in the grounds of the Glenstone Museum in Potomac, MD 5/22/2025

In praise of getting things wrong and working toward better

“An expert is a man who has made all the mistakes which can be made in a very narrow field” -Niels Bohr

I’ve been reading “In the Plex,” a book about the history of Google by Steven Levy. I highly recommend this book, because as I read it I am increasingly aware of the ways in which Google’s constant presence invisibly shapes our daily lives. Levy makes a point in the book of attributing some of Google’s constant evolution to its obsession with failure. In search terms, isolating failures is relatively easy- if people soon return to the search page, reframe their query, or continue down through lower ranked results their search was a relative failure. Failures are identified and isolated by Google and then obsessed over until the PageRank algorithm can be appropriately tweaked in a way that passes rigorous testing protocols.

In this way, Google is similar to an increasing number of failure- focused initiatives, including some of the engineering based models that have been applied to healthcare and more. These voices are increasingly the source of innovations that are continually shaping and reshaping our future. But the rhetoric of failure and success of its evangelizers can be hard for us to wrap our heads around, as people who naturally fear, avoid and focus on failure in a negative way.

Over the weekend, while I was practicing Yoga I told one of my kids my favorite part of the practice (note: not a good time for chatting). I love that Yoga is a process. One day you will be able to do something that you may or may not be able to do the next day, and vice versa. My practice involves quite a bit of balancing on one foot, and there are days when that balance feels effortless and days when that balance feels impossible. But the effortless days only come because I continue to practice despite the disappointments of my wobblier days. Yoga instructors sometimes talk about the power of intentions and working in ways that align with our intentions. One of my kids pointed out that the wobbly days, as I call them, are exactly the reason why she hates Yoga. She’s believes that she’s no good at it, and because of her assessment she will avoid it. You can probably guess that this conversation is far from over between us.

We see attitudes like these affecting people (including ourselves) every day. Some people theorize that the lower representation of women in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) fields is due to a larger proportion of women than men who doubt their abilities or judge their abilities more harshly. We hear about graduate students who experience what is sometimes called the ‘imposter syndrome.’ I remember some students in my graduate classes who chose not to participate in class for fear they would sound stupid. I’ve heard of medical practitioners who were so worried that they would make another mistake that they were afraid to practice. As a writer, I know that the power of self doubt can cause writers block, but I also know how much easier it is to edit or rewrite.

I would encourage all of you to embrace your failures, your mistakes, your shortcomings, your missteps and your errors and see them as part of a process and not an endpoint. These stumbling points are the key points of growth- the key moments for us to learn and to redirect our actions to better suit our intentions. To err is human, but to learn from our missteps is surely something greater.

Great readings that might shake you to your academic core? I’m compiling a list

In the spirit of research readings that might shake you to your academic core, I’m compiling a list. Please reply to this thread with any suggestions you have to add. They can be anything from short blog posts (microblog?) to research articles to books. What’s on your ‘must read’ list?

Here are a couple of mine to kick us off:

 

Charles Goodwin’s Professional Vision paper

I don’t think I’ve referred to any paper as much as this one. It’s about the way our professional training shapes the way we see the things around us. Shortly after reading this paper I was in the gym thinking about commonalities between the weight stacks and survey scales. I expect myself to be a certain relative strength, and when that doesn’t correlate with the place where I need to place my pin I’m a little thrown off.

It also has a deep analysis of the Rodney King verdict.

 

Revitalizing Chinatown Into a Heterotopia by Jia Lou

This article is based on a geosemiotic analysis of DC’s Chinatown. It is one of the articles that helped me to see that data really can come in all forms

 

After method: Mess in Social Science Research by John Law

This is the book that inspired this list. It also inspired this blog post.

 

Instagram is changing the way I see

I recently joined Instagram (I’m late, I know).

I joined because my daughter wanted to, because her friends had, to see what it was all about. She is artistic, and we like to talk about things like color combinations and camera angles, so Instagram is a good fit for us. But it’s quickly changing the way I understand photography. I’ve always been able to set up a good shot, and I’ve always had an eye for color. But I’ve never seriously followed up on any of it. It didn’t take long on Instagram to learn that an eye for framing and color is not enough to make for anything more than accidental great shots. The great shots that I see are the ones that pick deeper patterns or unexpected contrasts out of seemingly ordinary surroundings. They don’t simply capture beauty, they capture an unexpected natural order or a surprising contrast, or they tell a story. They make you gasp or they make you wonder. They share a vision, a moment, an insight. They’re like the beginning paragraph of a novel or the sketch outline of a poem. Realizing that, I have learned that capturing the obvious beauty around me is not enough. To find the good shots, I’ll need to leave my comfort zone, to feel or notice differently, to wonder what or who belongs in a space and what or who doesn’t, and why any of it would capture anyone’s interest. It’s not enough to see a door. I have to wonder what’s behind it. To my surprise, Instagram has taught me how to think like a writer again, how to find hidden narratives, how to feel contrast again.

Sure this makes for a pretty picture. But what is unexpected about it? Who belongs in this space? Who doesn't? What would catch your eye?

Sure this makes for a pretty picture. But what is unexpected about it? Who belongs in this space? Who doesn’t? What would catch your eye?

This kind of change has a great value, of course, for a social media researcher. The kinds of connections that people forge on social media, the different ways in which people use platforms and the ways in which platforms shape the way we interact with the world around us, both virtual and real, are vitally important elements in the research process. In order to create valid, useful research in social media, the methods and thinking of the researcher have to follow closely with the methods and thinking of the users. If your sensemaking process imitates the sensemaking process of the users, you know that you’re working in the right direction, but if you ignore the behaviors and goals of the users, you have likely missed the point altogether. (For example, if you think of Twitter hashtags simply as an organizational scheme, you’ve missed the strategic, ironic, insightful and often humorous ways in which people use hashtags. Or if you think that hashtags naturally fall into specific patterns, you’re missing their dialogic nature.)

My current research involves the cycle between social media and journalism, and it runs across platforms. I am asking questions like ‘what gets picked up by reporters and why?’ and ‘what is designed for reporters to pick up?’ And some of these questions lead me to examine the differences between funny memes that circulate like wildfire through Twitter leading to trends and a wider stage and the more indepth conversation on public facebook pages, which cannot trend as easily and is far less punchy and digestible. What role does each play in the political process and in constituting news?

Of course, my current research asks more questions than these, but it’s currently under construction. I’d rather not invite you into the workzone until some of the pulp and debris have been swept aside…

Fostering Creativity at Work

This book looks fantastic. Whenever I need to do a lot of thinking at work, I’ll go for a walk or hit the gym. Or start reading about a similar topic. Or stare out the window. We don’t have Ping Pong tables, but we do have floor to ceiling windows overlooking a wooded patch. I can’t tell you how any cumulative hours I’ve spent watching the trees wave in the wind and working my way through a stumbling block.

 

http://www.npr.org/2012/03/21/148607182/fostering-creativity-and-imagination-in-the-workplace?ft=3&f=122101520&sc=nl&cc=sh-20120324