Loose Ends #SOL2021

Everything feels stormy.

So, I’m going to try to breathe into this feeling and to breathe out into the summer, full and lushness, never striving to be green and growing. And it seems that everyone I know also feels this similarly untethered lurking anxiety, this sense that stuff needs to get done, yet we don’t quite know where to begin or how to begin, but we really, really want it to be done. We are done, and we want it to end.

Everytime I begin a task, I am yanked (usually by myself) in another direction and then I’m left with a dozen sticky notes with curling edges and smudged pencilled letters fading after salad dressing has touched the dry porous paper at the bottom of my lunch bag. I’m not very efficient in my physical file management, in my creative idea or problem solving management, so the sticky notes are ready when a thought arrives. I grab them nearly unconscious as I intend to transfer these notes to the agenda, or the journal, or well, one of the four or five colour coded journals that I now have begun, nearly finished, tried to label and keep separate for the many different roles that I play. But, it hasn’t worked. The journals aren’t separated by my role or the club or the plan. My thoughts are not organized in these journals. Instead, notes spread from one journal to the next like salad dressing staining each task with some taste of a thought from another time or place. It’s all blown apart now, each club coming to a close, each class nearing an end.

Still, I’ve learned to imagine my “file management system” using the image of leaves caught in a gust of wind, cycling and swirling around me. The ideas are there, hovering, but not always landing simultaneously. Sometimes, I wait, other times, I can pull them from the vortex and connect them to an important conversation. Often, I imagine that the ideas are not my own, but ones generated among us, and I just help to bring them into a space or a conversation. Even though I’ve had enough experience to know that there is probably a more efficient way for me to learn and lead and teach, I’ve allowed this way of working to flow because pushing against it feels like I am working against the weather. I also wonder if the carefully organized binders of lessons, or if the planned march to completion leaves enough room for spontaneity, for that gust of wind like breath that sends me down some path of curiosity in search of meaning and solution. I’ve always feared and loved the wind.

In fact, my father is a sailor. It all began when he joined the Navy, floating on a minesweeper that travelled the Mediterranean, and then, he decided to construct his own craft, a sail boat he built when I was six. That small craft built by hand in my garage, called a Penguin, then inspired another wooden vessel, a Fireball, when I was ten. We sailed every summer on the tempest that is Georgian Bay. My parents forced me into the boat sensing my fear each time I struggled into the life preserver, and sat me squarely up front in charge of the jib, the small sail beside the main sail. I was tasked with reading the wind, knowing when to pull the line of rope in, and when to let the line of rope out. Each tug and release was an attempt to catch it. When gusts hit and we were about to be tossed overboard, I would let out the rope, slacken the jib so it was not resisting, and the boat would level floating along the choppy waves as we zigzagged our way to Blueberry or Pancake Island (one named for the bushes that we would raid and the other named for the rock formations). With fear and love, I learned to use the wind to guide us safely to shore.

Maybe this year is ending with unpredictable weather and that is what is leaving me at loose ends. Maybe I’ll just pay attention to the wind.