These are trying times. We tell ourselves they are unusual or unprecedented but given my 50 years of life, it’s pretty clear that some version of chaotic, world-defeating, testing of justice and bastardization of American principles is perpetual. These are unprecedented times like all the other unprecedented times – but, these are really unprecedented.

These are the times that drive us away from our country, our neighbors, and even our families. These are times when passions are so high, we can’t talk about - or even find - our commonalities. These are times when we can’t seek to understand because our sources of information seek to radicalize – while disparaging those who get radicalized on different soil from different sources. These are times when our leaders are so vocally and so visibly dehumanizing toward anyone who disagrees with them, anyone with differing physical abilities, anyone who loves someone other than who they think they should, anyone who is wrestling with identity issues they could never truly understand, anyone who – god forbid – was born in a different land that it challenges all of us to come home to our common humanity – and at the same time, makes it seem that much more difficult to do so.

Our common humanity is not, in fact, grandiose. It is not a sweeping statement or a newsworthy act. And, the sooner we can realize this fact, the sooner we can live to be the decent human beings I think most of us actually want to be.

Here’s my proof:

The other night I took my girls and wife to the Nashville Predators hockey game. Near the end of the first period, the “Preds Energy Team” started shooting off t-shirt cannons. My younger daughter, at her first Preds game, had a flying, tightly-rolled, t-shirt hit her in the hands but drop to the floor in front of us to be gathered by another group. She was disappointed, but it was all good fun.

After the break between the first and second periods, my older daughter got a strange sense as an elderly gentlemen with gray hair seemed to be walking right toward us among 15,000 other fans. I looked to my left as he approached. He reached out toward my younger daughter with a plastic Preds pro shop bag folded neatly in his right hand: “You deserved to have that shirt.”

He handed her the bag and turned around and walked back to his seat two sections over in the arena. He had given my daughter not only a t-shirt, but a dated, commemorative puck from the game.

We were all four so stunned that we got teary eyed processing it in the moment, the shear kindness of a stranger. The profundity of the feeling, of the simplicity, deeply moved us all. A simple gesture of generosity. A simple gesture of love. A simple recognition from a man from near the other side of the arena of the disappointment in my daughter’s face and the willingness to do something about it - because he could and he wanted to.

I do not know that man’s political party.

I do not know that man’s religious beliefs – or absence thereof.

I do not know that man’s position on abortion or border walls or capital punishment.

I do not know that man’s perspective on church and/or state.

I do not know where that man gets his news.

I do not know where that man came from or where he went after the game.

I do, however, know that man’s kindness.

I do know what it meant to my family and to me. I do know that we spoke of it restoring some faith in people, some hope in humanity that we all agreed we desperately needed. I do know that it moved us to tears. I do know how much we needed that reminder – that gift of simple kindness that blasted right through the protective shields we’ve all four built around ourselves to survive these times.

Kindness is so easy. It is so profound. And, in its absence, everything else manifests askew. We are living life askew.

Thank you to that man from my wife, my daughters, and me. Thank you for the reminder. We promise to pass that kindness along. And, thank you in advance for whoever receives it from us.

Even with bombs falling and cities flooding and democracy stressing, kindness matters. It matters a lot. It always has and always will.
​
There is nothing unprecedented about it.
 

After I wrote my last blog “What are you seeking?” a young man reached out with some questions. He liked the blog and was really trying to be thoughtful about his early career but wasn’t sure how to put this idea of “seeking” into practice.

When we met, he started by telling me he wants to be an investor and wondered how he should be thinking about “seeking” given his aspiration.

I simply asked him why. Why do you want to be an investor?

He had answers ready. He talked about the kind of work it is, the pace of it, the way it stretches you, the arc of the career, the people you get to be around, the chance to have impact. He was thoughtful. He had clearly given it real consideration. But as I listened, I heard exactly what I expected to hear. None of the reasons he gave as to why he wanted to be an investor was a unique attribute to a life or work being an investor.

So I asked him the next question: So, do you want to be an investor, or do you want those other things?

He looked at me confused.

I explained: Every reason you just gave me for why you want to be an investor, you could find on a dozen different paths. And, maybe the right path is actually being an investor. But, the problem with defining what you are seeking by a single destination is that you end up focused on the destination - and stop paying attention to the criteria that made you want it in the first place.

I have seen this pattern throughout my entire career. When I worked in the nonprofit sector, I had young people seek my advice all the time and tell me that they wanted to work in nonprofit. It is a strange thing to say when you actually pay attention to those words. No one has ever told me they wanted to work in for-profit. Why do they say they want to work in nonprofit? What those people wanted was work with purpose. They wanted meaning. They wanted to have an impact. And, in their thinking and their declaration, they had simply decided that those things lived in one place and nowhere else: nonprofits. Before they had taken a single step in their careers, they had already narrowed the aperture not just for their work but for their lives.

This aspiring investor had done the exact same thing, just pointed in a different direction.
Here is the trouble with narrowing your aperture on a singular career destination: once you fixate on the one path you believe will give you what you want, you stop watching for what you actually want. You optimize for the destination and lose track of what you were seeking - the why behind that destination.

So, how do you put this thinking into practice early in your career? How do you keep the aperture open without losing focus? How do you focus without losing the breadth of your values and the depth of what you are seeking?

Here are four domains to pay attention to:

The Structure of the Work
I learned early that I didn’t just want unstructured work. I needed it. I needed ambiguity. I needed roles that did not exist yet or needed to be radically transformed. I needed to create. I needed to build. I did not need rules or clear pathways or promotion criteria. The blank canvas is oxygen for me. For someone else, it would be a nightmare. Plenty of people do their best work inside clear boundaries, defined expectations, and a clean picture of what good performance looks like. That is not in any way a lesser way to work. It is merely a different one. Neither is right. The only real mistake is not seeking to understand where you are and what drives and excites you along that broad spectrum of work structures. Not noticing early can mean not noticing when the answer starts to shift as your life priorities and work evolve. The structure that fed you at 25 might suffocate you at 35, or the reverse. Pay attention to whether your needs and your work are still moving in sync. When life happens, this sort of self-awareness is your biggest source of resilience.

The Context of the Work
This is about what you are doing and where you are doing it. Every context has culture and process and people and impact. Some contexts will feed you and some will not. Some may become your true vocation, and some may just be a step along a bigger exploration. Part of the work is learning where context sits on your own ranking of what matters most to you. I figured this out early when I was working with youth. I loved this work. I gave everything I had to it, and it was some of the most creative and meaningful work of my life. But, when I looked at my colleagues who were equally invested and committed to the work, I saw that their commitment was often about a life’s commitment to young people. Mine, candidly, was not. And, I made that clear. I was all in. The context of youth work was deeply engaging. But, at the end of the day, if the work stopped being innovative and creative, I was going to need to find my next thing. Sometimes you learn the most about what feeds you by standing next to people who are fed by something you admire but do not exactly share.

The People You Work With
Early in your career you are told to build your network, and you should. But it’s far more important in your seeking journey to learn from the people around you – and not just what they do or how they do it, but who they are, how they learn and grow (or don’t), how they treat each other, how they see the world, how (and if) they live their values and if those values align with yours. You will never be content in your career surrounded by people you don’t like, trust, respect, or care for. That’s just being human. And, when we think of our career merely as the mechanics of industry, of promotion, or of financial progress, we may find ourselves having achieved all our goals on paper but feeling lonely, unfulfilled, or even a bit sick in our stomachs as we head into work every morning. People matter. They always matter. If you learn early that they do not, that lesson has a way of sticking. It hardens into a way of working, then a way of leading, and it shows up as an unrecognizable version of yourself down the road, long after you have forgotten how you got there.

The Impact of Your Work
Why does your work matter? That question has three parts. Why does it matter to you? Why does it matter to others? Why do you matter to it? When you start a career with ambition but no eye on purpose or impact, you should not be surprised to look up one day and find you’ve built a real career, earn a good paycheck, and feel a deep unsettled feeling you cannot quite name. This is your midlife crisis even if it hits earlier or later in life for you. The absence of purpose and meaning compounds quietly. It sits under or behind the wins, waiting for a slow enough season, a significant enough loss, or a large enough accumulation for you to finally feel it. You do not have to change the world in your first job or any job. But you should be asking, early and often, what your work is for. The habit of asking matters more than any single answer.

None of these four domains are things you find or assess once and check off the list. They are dimensions you keep evaluating, over and over, as you change, life changes, and the work changes. They are the criteria that keep your aperture open so you see when changes must happen before you hit a crisis – or, you are more ready and able to change when crisis hits you. They enable you to keep becoming, to keep seeking, to stay intentional in every step along the pathway rather than simply chasing the destination.

Just because the clock strikes midnight, and the calendar turns to January 1 doesn’t mean some magical transformation happens in our lives or that we’re suddenly ready or able to make such a transformation happen for ourselves. Pretending the passage of time is somehow also automatically the turning of a page is a setup for disappointment, self-doubt, and lingering unease. Suggesting that this mirage of an annual milestone called New Years is magically the time for starting things anew and changing course in our lives explains why most of the stuff we start in January as a year-long resolution has stopped by February.

I don’t mean to sound negative. I mean to sound honest, to be realistic about growing and changing rather than merely being hopeful or delusional we will grow and change. I suspect, if you are like me and like most humans, 2024 wasn’t all peaches-and-cream, and that didn’t change on January 1, 2025. My friends (4) from their 30’s to their 80’s are all still dead, and I am still mourning. My family member is still fighting cancer and managing a difficult recovery. I’m still raising my children in a world that many days frightens me, and most days frightens me for them.  

What I am reflecting on as I enter this new year is that it’s ok to let the New Year inspire goalsetting. In fact, it’s a good, symbolic moment for it. It’s ok for a New Year to be a time of optimism and planning for something better. But, it’s also a great time to look back at all the stuff that sucked about the previous year, to evaluate the scars we earned, to see what we can control and what we can’t, and to name the stressors and anxieties we are carrying into the next year.

Knowing what past we need to let go of or what present we still need to work through is the only way we know what future we can honestly and freely run toward.

If we are resolved to work on these things first, our New Year’s resolutions will become a lot more resolute.

So, I want to offer a few atypical tips on New Year’s resolutions with the understanding that they will likely be far more meaningful than magical.

1. Talk or write or otherwise reflect on the parts of 2024 that sucked. Name them. Accept them. Then talk or write or otherwise reflect on the parts of 2024 that were wonderful. Name them. Accept them. Neither is right or wrong. Neither can be changed. Neither is controllable at this point. Both just are. And, both are now a part of us as we head into 2025.
2. Evaluate your wounds. Which ones are still active and open? We all hurt sometimes. It proves we love. It proves we care. It proves we are human. How can we allow those wounds to start to heal and become scars? How can we accept, as Buddha might, that our pain is what makes us human but our suffering is our choice? How can we carry pain, but not suffering into the New Year? Let’s make a resolution around that.
3. Own your scars. These are the wounds that have healed in some way, whether by time or deliberate effort. Can we allow them to become a part of who we are, a symbol of our strength and resilience moving forward, and not merely a marker of something that hurt us in the past? Can we own them and thereby claim the power from the life or events or people that caused them? Can we define which ones we caused ourselves and define a better way? Let’s make a resolution around that.
4. Define your next-best self – wounds, scars, and all. Plant a seed in all that newly fertilized 2024 soil. How might we be a better person in 2025? How might we be better at work? How might we be better to ourselves? How might I become the father, spouse, sibling, uncle, cousin, friend, and co-worker that I want to be? I know, for me, it starts with quieting the noise still swirling in my head from 2024. Let’s make a resolution around that.
5. With this foundation of honest, practical resolutions starting where we really are with life, with ourselves, with our relationships, with work, let’s define a goal that excites and stretches us, that defies any negatives and triggers our spirit, that gives us energy, that offers us something to run toward as we work on and through our other resolutions.

May we all be resolved to find peace and love and hope in the New Year knowing that it starts within us.  


Image: https://www.fastweb.com/student-life/articles/a-college-student-s-guide-to-new-year-s-resolutions

Life is full of stuff we can’t control, both big stuff and little stuff that can create chaos in our lives, work, and relationships. This reality just makes it that much more imperative that we avoid creating more chaos-inducing stuff for ourselves – that we control what we can control knowing that little choices today can create (or help avoid) big chaos tomorrow.

The goal is not to pretend we can avoid chaos altogether. I don’t think that’s life. The goal is to keep our chaos “resting state” at a level that gives us capacity to manage when the uncontrollable things hit. Managing our resting state then demands daily diligence and discipline around the little, controllable things.

So, here are 10 ways you may be creating chaos today for your self tomorrow:
​
1. Not taking care of your mental health:​
Whether it’s managing stress, anxiety, Depression, grief, trauma, or otherwise, if you’re not managing it (or at least giving your best effort), it’s managing you and all of your relationships and work.

2. Not taking care of your physical health:
Whether it’s exercise or sleep or what you eat, it impacts how you relate and respond to the world - adding chaos or neutralizing it.

3. Avoiding difficult decisions:
Decisions that need to get made but don’t only get bigger and more complex in time. And, they don’t get easier or less necessary.

4. Avoiding difficult conversations:
Conversations that need to be had but aren’t only get bigger and more complex in time. And, they don’t get easier or less necessary.

5. Not monitoring and managing your relationships:
Relationships are dynamic and need tending to. Some relationships need more investment, some need less, and some you probably need to just let go of.

6. Cutting corners:
When you sacrifice quality or completeness whether in work, relationships, or otherwise because you think you don’t have time or the energy to do things fully, it will almost always pay you back with a chaos flywheel.

7. Not defining and keeping your boundaries:
People who can’t say “no” eventually create chaos for everyone around them.

8. Needing to be a fixer:
Helping others is good. Enabling their chaos creation is not. Thinking you can fix their chaos only ensures you are now a part of it.

9. Being vague or ambiguous about your needs:
Uncertainty in relationships or expectations breeds behavior, investment, and performance that are uncertain.

10. Failing to relentlessly prioritize:
​There is never enough time and yet we all have the same amount of it. We don’t find time or create it. We only prioritize it.


Image: https://www.freepik.com/premium-vector/chaos-mess-circle-continuous-line-drawing_346070449.htm

I finished a leadership training a couple of weeks ago and paused to thank the participants before we wrapped up. I thanked them for their engagement and their participation. And, I explained to them that I had lost a friend and team member just two weeks before to a tragic and untimely death. After two days of adrenaline facilitating and actually enjoying it, I was clearly and quickly coming down off the high. Through tears, I thanked them for helping me find joy in my work again during such a terrible time. I explained that getting back in there and doing the work was one thing, but I hadn’t yet figured out how I would find joy in it.

Fast forward to today, about a month later, when I was out for a run in one of my sacred places, Shelby Park. I’ve been running lately without music because I recognize how noisy my head has been since he died. When I run, I just let my head be noisy until it gets tired and finally quiet. I just let it run while I run.

I passed a woman going the other direction whose t-shirt said in bold letters: BRING JOY. I instinctively complimented her and after she’d passed thanked her somewhat to myself.

That shirt planted a new thought path amidst the other noise in my head. It quickly dawned on me that I needed to reframe where I am and how I have been thinking about it since my friend’s passing. I need to stop looking for joy, trying to find joy, and instead concentrate on bringing it. Looking seems an endless, outward journey. Bringing feels like an empowering, inward prompt. (That’s a helluva t-shirt.)

Over the last month, I’ve been looking. During my search, my “good mornings” to my team were practically non-existent for several weeks. They weren’t “good” mornings. They were shitty mornings. And, I’m shitty at faking it. I just needed to get through the day and get some stuff done and put one foot in front of the other. No more. No less. No joy.

This last week, I somewhat unwittingly returned to the “good mornings” but still a bit half-heartedly. I’m trying or perhaps I’m just progressing and it’s not really about effort. I don’t know. I know my “good morning” is not insincere, but it’s also not what it used to be. Better, but joy would be a stretch.

This is what was running through my noisy mind thanks to that t-shirt.

And then, a bicycle approached going the opposite direction and it had two little girls in some sort of contraption on the back with a dad driving. The girls were facing each other, meaning one of them was looking forward in the direction the bike was going and one looking back to where it had been. As I passed, the girl facing forward broke into my noise with an enthusiastic “hello!” And, by the time I was responding in-kind, the other little girl said “goodbye!” It was cute and funny and kind of brilliant.

I kept running now pondering these two little girls and slowly realized something important from that interaction: every moment is both a hello and a goodbye. It passes as quickly as it is acknowledged, often more quickly. This is a simple fact of life. It’s fleeting.

Now, to connect that with my previous noise on grief and my t-shirt prompt to “Bring Joy”…

Not every moment is joyful. Not by any stretch and not just in the midst of tragedy. Life is complex and always will be. Joy is a function of sorrow and sorrow is a function of joy. But, every moment is, in fact, passing just as certainly as it approached. Hello. Goodbye. Another moment is there waiting. We don’t have to look for it.

The shirt didn’t say “be joyful” or “be happy”. It said to “bring joy”. So, what’s the difference?

Fundamentally, one is about a state of being we often can’t control. The other is a choice of an action that we usually can.

Even in the midst of loss, I can find joy in what my friend/colleague and I created together and bring that joy to new work. I can bring the joy of the memory of his laugh as I face an office full of other friends/colleagues who are laughing but aren’t him. I can bring the joy resonating in the echoes of our absurd jokes and his goofy impersonations as I listen to others joyfully bantering among themselves. I can bring those joys to my current work and the opportunity I have to build on what we started. The joy of what we had.

This doesn’t mean it is easy, but it means I have agency and not just aspiration. I can bring joy and not just look for it, not merely hope to find it.

Image: https://greatruns.com/nashville-shelby-bottoms-greenway/

Wisdom isn’t inherent in our darkest days, but these days are our clearest path to it.

Perhaps it’s only in the darkness, or at least in the rationing of light, that we can come to appreciate it. Appreciate what it does for us. Appreciate what it makes of us. Appreciate what we are in it.

Recognize what it does to others, what they do to it. Who creates it? Who consumes it?

The darkness asks us different questions than the light.

What does it feel like to be cold? To stay ever damp, the light never coming to dry or to offer warm reprieve? The cold and damp merging and wrapping us and dissolving us?

What does it mean to be starved for light? To believe ourselves to be desperate and in need but still knowing the sun will proceed with its plan? No control. Fewer hours. Shorter days.

How does gray feel? What are we supposed to do with it? It is a thing, this grayness. It cannot be ignored or explained with - or in contrast to - other colors. We must own it for what it is.

What happens when life skins us of our perceived beauty, or our defenses, the leaves that sway and flicker and distract with their color and charm? What’s left?  We are merely who we are. What do we do with that?

What happens when we feel our bones? The deep ache of brokenness? That dull, radiating sense of being lost, exposed? Bare.

These are not questions of death or desperation or darkness. This is life. This is winter.

In winter, it is our ability to see what is, not what was, or what could be, or what should be that lets the light break through. The warmth. The growth.

In the dark and barren and broken and matter-of-fact of the season, we may see more honestly the layers and cycles and phases of light, of life, of death, of time, of distance, of our place in it all.
​
This is the brutal wisdom of winter. 
​

25 years ago, when I learned to paint and draw, the learning process had nothing to do with technique. In fact, by most people’s standards, it had little to do with painting and drawing at all – at least if I was doing it right.

I was being taught to see. Once I could see, I could paint.

And, while I don’t paint or draw at this point (someday again), I keep this lesson with me in every aspect of my life. To create, to find meaning, to communicate that meaning, I must be humble enough and patient enough and open enough and diligent enough to see myself and my world in its essence, to understand what it is offering and telling me – and then to create from there.

I took a walk in the woods today, and everywhere I turned nature was asking me questions. It caught me off guard honestly. I just wanted to get out and get some exercise with the dog, but the woods wanted me to do more. They wanted me to see. To paint. A self-portrait.

To be clear, I didn’t paint a thing – except in my mind. I tried to see what nature wanted me to see; myself, reflected in her. And, in her own constant changing with the wind and the water and the light and the seasons, she made it clear that my portrait was transient too. I am ever becoming a new self, seeing a new self, if I’m willing.
​
So, here’s what she asked. 9 simple questions I should probably answer every day:

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​What color are you today?
Color is a vibration. It is the perception of energy, wavelengths. So, what is yours today? Is it what you want it to be? How do others see it?

​



What colors do you surround yourself with?
How do they blend or complement or contrast with your own? What frequencies do you absorb? What bounces off?

​




​What’s your texture today?
What coarseness is unavoidable at your age, given your life, experience? What strength can be created in the layers? What wisdom? What beauty?

​




​What’s your light source?
Where do you find your light? Do you run toward it? Look askance? Turn your back? The light is there and it’s bigger than you.

​




​Where do you cast a shadow?
How long is it? Is it getting bigger or smaller? Who is in it? What thrives in its cover? What fades or dies by it?

​








What’s your background?
What past wraps you in stories without words? What blurs and fades? What defines your form? Your sense of shape?

​




​How much space do you take up?
Do you fill the empty space? How much positive space? How much negative? Are you the right size in your world, for your world?

​




​What is in front of you?
What lies beyond the canvas? What will you see in tomorrow’s portrait? And tomorrow’s tomorrow? Where you look determines what you will have the chance to see.

​




​Do you accept the beauty?
She didn’t ask where I find beauty or what I find beautiful. Its ever-presence was implied in her question. The question was whether and where and how I am willing to accept the gift.

I was out walking my dog the other morning and as he started to slow his gait and do his extra-intensive sniffing, head down, gravity causing his lips to flap open to show his fangs, I knew he was about to do his business.
​
Circle. Circle. Squat. Avert eyes!

And there, as I looked away, in a lawn full of clover, a big, glaring four-leafed clover is staring right back at me. I ponder a moment to pass the time...

Dog business complete. Steam rising. Bag over hand. Well, you know the rest.

My business now also complete, I looked back to the four-leaf clover still glaring back at me. I picked it to take home to my daughters. You know, share the good luck!

And, as I walked home with a big bag of shit in one hand and a four-leafed clover in the other, I felt there had to be some life learning in the symbolic contradiction and absurdity of the image.

So, here we go:
​
1. Hold on carefully. Throw away intentionally. We best remember what we have in each hand! Hold on to the correct one. Throw the other one away. How we hold a four-leaf clover or a bag of shit with a loose grip, a tight grip, a couple of fingers minimizing any possible transfer to bare skin, a couple fingers gingerly trying to protect and save - this will remind us in our bodies what we are holding onto even when the mind wanders and life moves on. It will remind us what we need to let go of. We need to pay attention to how we hold things.

2. Clover with a pile of shit in it is still clover. A pile of shit in the midst of clover is still a pile of shit. Our circumstances don’t define or redefine us as we move through the shitty or clover-y parts of life. We define who we are and how we are in the world and carry that with us wherever we go – come what may. We also know this to be true for others. So, we should always recognize shit cloaked in clover for what it is. We also shouldn’t be blind to the clover just because there happens to be some shit around it.

3. Own your shit. We don’t have a lot of choice as to whether or when we have a four-leaf clover or a bag of shit. As with my walk, most of us have some of both most of the time. We can’t just drop the shit for someone else to deal with because it stinks, it’s gross, or we just want to pretend it’s all clover. We have to hold on to it carefully until we can dispose of it. It’s ours. Own it. But, get rid of it as soon as possible.

4. Seize the clover. We also don’t always have the choice to just focus on the clover. Sometimes, shit rules. Focusing on clover doesn’t magically make it disappear. So, when we do have the choice, we have to claim it. If we stop looking for the clover and holding carefully onto what we find, the shit just gets that much heavier and more stinky. Carpe clover.

5. Avoid pattern blindness. Look for the misfits. The four-leaf clover is a misfit. In the land of three-leafers, it’s probably ridiculed and bullied. But, when we look at a field of three-leafers, our eyes eventually blur and we don’t see much of anything specific or nuanced anymore. And then, the four-leafer jumps out! Our senses awaken and we start looking more closely, looking for more like it. We become curious. We become explorers. We look at all of the clover differently.

I’ve never known if I’m an introvert or extrovert, so I’ve just considered it a function of my surroundings - who I’m with and how many of them there are (and yes, probably whether or not I have had a drink or two).​

I also suck at bringing people together myself, which naturally feeds my introvert. But, I really do end up enjoying when others bring people together and I am one of those people - with a little effort feeding my somewhat reluctant extrovert.

The year of Covid, however, has force-fed my introvert. There haven’t been any even reluctant options to balance him out. Initially, this felt ok, like maybe this whole work-from-home and forced isolation thing might have just put me square in my wheelhouse. This isn’t so bad - at least for the first couple of months.

And yet, time kept feeding the isolation. My introvert kept ingesting it with no other choice. A touch of indigestion perhaps setting in.

And more. The normally passive and quiet introvert starts gorging himself grossly on the all-you-can-eat bar of social isolation and disconnection. That subtly perverse drive of the over-stuffed to go back for one more taste, maybe a touch of desert.

And…still…more. The absence of hugs or hand shakes. No smiles. The lack of reason for normal dressing, or even showering at the usual cadence. The loss of my physical self at least in relation to others has brought a certain ignorance to my body. The physical vehicle once supporting and transporting the spirit - and vice versa - becomes an object, dynamic in nature, but rather dumb in practice.

My introvert has eaten its fill and now rests bloated, in pain, and putridly satisfied on this his year of Covid.

I am not an introvert.

Like a new year’s resolution, I am desperate to disrupt this gluttonous isolation. There’s still a flicker in me that remembers laughing and being stupid with friends, creating passionately with co-workers, engaging serendipitously with strangers - even enjoying isolation as a counter force to something else, not itself all things.

And, while I dream of it, this miracle land of extroversion, it also stirs some anxiety. I don’t know if I have the tools for this return any more. Will it be like riding a bike? Or, will I have to work at it, to teach myself again, to overcome an even greater reluctance?

I am not an extrovert.

My now shapeless, boundless introversion has left me unsure, unskilled - and yet desperate to know.
​