Why

After many years of working as a facilitator and program development specialist in a variety of communities, I feel some urgency to get out of my own head and beyond the limitations of undocumented verbal exchange, so the words and ideas last beyond the breath it takes to say them. By making them available here, I hold them up to ridicule, but with hope that I will connect with people who also think about these things, or want to. I want to engage in the challenge of dialogue, and share some of the interesting materials that have informed my many moments of ‘Aha!’. I am interested in sharing my experiences and learnings and knowledge and questions with others who may be reflecting and questing in the same areas of interest: Leadership, community, creativity, sustainability, communication/language and governance.

I hear and see how things work for this great diversity of people I meet in my daily life. Systems modeled on the social architecture of the past, and outmoded ideas of work, family, career and learning, continue to form the basis of support for students, parents, workers, job-seekers, freelancers, artists, parents, teens, and so forth

It is frustrating to know that as the knowledge economy, the ‘new work’ economy, increases in importance, and human capital appears to be recognized as the ‘renewable resource’ of this economy, we have dressed the old lady up in new clothes, but changed nothing that forms her opinions. There is a sense that outmoded models can be transformed to address the challenges of rapid change, by applying new language. Orwell’s concept, but not fiction. The underlying paradigms are not always addressed, and that is what I am interested in exploring. Asking the hard and stupid questions to stir the pile of leaves to see what’s underneath..

I am working through a lot of thoughts that synthesize bits and pieces of inspiration from many sources, and from my own very eclectic life experience. Being an outsider – or at least not a “deep” insider – in most of my orbits, lets me see things from more than one perspective, and enables me to ask the ‘stupid’ questions that go unspoken or assumed. This brings some of the concepts that form the foundation of the shared assumptions into a place where they can be viewed, and where, perhaps, they can be challenged.

Some have called the work I do subversive in nature, because I mostly ask questions which do express my curiosity to find out what is going on and what it means. And I encourage others to delve into this for themselves, because I love it when people begin to get that strange look in their eyes.. kind of a combination of fear and hope. It is the journey of discovery that leads me through the topography of other people’s lives and ideas that gives my life meaning and makes the search so fascinating.