Making Sh!t Happen

An old friend came to visit me here in Mexico a few weeks ago for some much needed R&R. She has spent her entire career as a dedicated nonprofit professional. Last fall, she began a new job at a large public university.

Over the past few months, I’ve been working with a client who is opening a retreat center in the Southwest. During November and December, she held three different focus groups.

I played in my first ever tennis tournament last weekend. My best friend, Andie, is an amazing player and she asked me to partner with her.

My mother is not someone who has ever moved slowly. I’m not saying she’s not thoughtful or deliberate; she just likes FAST. She can’t just be, she is compelled to do.

I am a 5’2” person. In all my years of clothes shopping and wearing, I have never once found myself within the range of “one-size-fits-all.” It may fit most, but it doesn’t work for me.

Let me be clear. This isn’t about what I learned when I went to high school… it’s about what I learned as I lived through that same four-year journey with my son, Morgan, who graduated earlier this month.

I was in San Francisco last week on a business trip, one of the first I’ve been on since Covid. All week long, as I made my way through the airport, to my hotel, and through my client organization over several days, I was reminded how much easier and more natural it is to build trust in an in-person environment.

Every spring, the same movie plays in my household: While I am buoyed by the season, feeling renewed with each blossom and warm breeze, other members of my family slowly lose their minds. 

For the past three months, I’ve been living in Puerto Morelos, Mexico, a small fishing village midway between Cancun and Playa Del Carmen. This was not my original plan.

In many professional workplaces, “knowing” is currency. It is how meaning and value are created. Figuring out what we know, how we know it, and how and when to share it, represents a significant part of many folks’ daily work life.

Your Netflix account and my Netflix account don’t look the same. We may both have access to all the same programming, but based on our demographics and past behavior, artificial intelligence (AI) is dictating how our respective home screens look and the programs that are recommended.

My friend Debbie owns a small restaurant downtown. She’s had some staffing challenges — it’s hard to find and retain quality people. Part of it is supply and demand — but there’s more going on than just that.

I went to see my doctor yesterday. Every person I encountered in the office, myself included, was wearing a mask. These days, of course, that seems appropriate. Though I felt compelled to ask her: “How long do you think everyone in a medical setting will stay masked?”

It was 2004, and I was seven months pregnant with my first child. Throughout the summer, I worked every weekend in our small backyard — digging, planting, painting.

Have you heard about the Mitchell airport in Milwaukee? Just past the TSA checkpoints are signs designating a “Recombobulation Area.” I love this! And not just because it’s a fun word to say.

Burnout. I hear that word a lot these days. It is a persistent theme in my conversations. For nonprofits especially, where the work is generally in support of our most vulnerable populations — those who are experiencing the greatest impact of today’s turmoil — the work has never felt more urgent and unending…

My gremlin showed up again last month. I’d been having a bunch of productive conversations with a prospective client regarding a very large fundraising consulting project. Things were going well and everything felt on track.

For the past 30 years, I’ve had two (now faded) yellow sticky notes taped to my computer screen. One says, “Don’t confuse activity with accomplishment.” (The subject for a future newsletter.) The other says, “Don’t postpone joy.”

I didn’t realize I was running on fumes. 2021 was a craptastic year for too many reasons to enumerate; I just kept putting one foot in front of the other. Until, that is, I stopped moving. I took a full two weeks off at the end of the year. That’s when I felt the wave of exhaustion — mentally, physically, spiritually.