Today I became my neighborhood’s crazy garden lady.

Yes, this has been coming for quite some time. There’s the front yard vegie garden, surrounded by a pony wall of wine bottles. And the empty soda bottles on spikes for irrigation (I tell those who ask that that is actually where Pepsi bottles come from – they grow in the ground upside down). The old push-lawn-mower as decoration under the huge Rhuslancia tree that overhangs the sidewalk with just enough headroom for an average-sized man to pass under unscathed.

And yes, occasionally there is a construction paper homage tacked to the mangled sunflower stalk that remains when someone thinks it will be far easier to surreptitiously break off one of those magnificent beasts than it really is. (Helpful hint to those of you who are considering stealing your neighbor’s flowers: Please, people – bring clippers!) In an odd blend of mourning for my own loss while celebrating how happy that flower is likely making that person, yes, I confess, I have in the past used my kindergarten skills to draw a smiley-faced sunflower head on yellow construction paper, pinning it to the very spot where its very-much-alive predecessor had stood.

And I guess when it comes down to it, the sunflower wall itself, planted in honor of Earl – a neighbor whose wife loved my yard, whose devil’s claw birds inspired my own art, and whose presence I miss since he passed last year.

And ok, while I’m confessing – yes there are the occasional times when I put my old green recycling crate out on the sidewalk with a sign for whatever my garden happens to need at the moment – including those wine and soda bottles. When sunflower season is over, I load bins with the dried seed heads, and post a sign asking my neighbors to take one and plant those seeds (which they do, and I watch those progeny grow, secretly hoping that one will actually grow a construction paper head).

For the past few weeks that sign has asked for pine needles. With our dry alkaline soil, pine needle mulch does double duty – adding acid to the soil while keeping the moisture in. As always happens, several of my neighbors filled the bin, asking if I needed more because they know in a few weeks, there will be more to rake in their yards. Pine needles are truly the gift that keeps on giving.

My neighbor Gary, who lives down the street, even stopped me on my evening walk last week, to tell me that he had spotted “enough pine needles to fill your whole yard!” several neighborhoods over, on his own nightly walk.

Truth be told, my neighbors are the reason for my front yard garden. My garden gives people a reason to stop and chit chat as they walk by. It has led to friendships I cherish, and has led to my being so well fed by the amazing Mexican cook that is my neighbor Cathy – her kids knocking on my door with plates of tacos and calabacitas in the summer, in thanks for whatever garden abundance I have left wrapped by their door (as well as the things I grow mostly for Cathy, but I don’t tell her that. Like the cilantro that I do love, but really, how much cilantro can one white woman eat? Cathy, on the other hand, feeds an ever-growing brood of extended family and seems always to be running to the store for more cilantro. Or at least she used to…).

All that faded in my mind today, as I took a deep breath to hold my pride way down in my toes where it could do no harm, and headed down the street, green wheelbarrow and rake in tow, to rake my neighbor Karen’s yard. Because Karen lives next door to a pine tree.

Early this morning when she was out walking her greyhounds, I mustered up my nerve and asked if I could rake her yard – a peculiar sounding request. Thankfully, having seen my bin and sign, Karen was not taken aback.

Still it felt like I had crossed some unspoken line of crazy when I pulled out the wheelbarrow and rake, and a broom to clean up after myself, and headed down my long street to Karen’s house. I could have done it early in the morning, before anyone was awake, but no, that’s my reading and writing time. It was now, in the middle of the day, or never.

I toddled down the sidewalk, my beat-up green wheelbarrow bouncing along (an oddity in and of itself – a 30 year old inheritance from Dimitri’s mom’s garden). The broom and rake clanged against the metal wheelbarrow at every bump. No, there was no going quietly into this good moment. Bright sun, metal clanging as if I were dragging tin cans behind me with a sign that said, “Crazy lady, please help.”

Fortunately, the street was empty. I filled up that first load quickly, heading back home to dump it in the garden. I realized I’d save a trip if I added the recycling bin – the one with the sign – to the load. I could fill up the wheelbarrow, then fill up the bin to weigh down the needles in the wheelbarrow, and schlep it all home in one haul.

And it was then, on my way home – a green recycling bin filled to overflowing with pine needles, sides covered with bright orange signs with bold black letters screaming “Pine Needles Wanted,” balanced gingerly on top of my green wheelbarrow, itself overflowing with pine needles, all while juggling a rake and a broom and walking the full city block home – it was then that I encountered neighbor after neighbor.

“I think I have officially tipped into the land of neighborhood crazy lady,” I told Gary as I passed him, thinking of his tip about the yard-ful of needles almost a mile away. He smiled and nodded. “I’ve told the kids to pay no attention when they visit, so as not to encourage you.”

“Good advice!” I told him, and we laughed as I walked past.

Cathy’s husband Bob was working on his truck in their driveway as my itinerant pine needle parade moved past. He looked up, sincerely happy for me. “Oh you found some!” I had no idea how many people had been watching that bin with the sign, wondering if it would be filled.

Which made me sigh to wonder how many people were also quietly watching as today I officially crossed over into the land of the neighborhood crazy lady. And then to wonder how many people were quietly rooting for the crazy garden lady to succeed…

Because here’s what I learned today. In order to have a neighborhood crazy lady, you first need to have a neighborhood.

And I am feeling immensely blessed that my own neighborhood feeds my garden, feeds my stomach, and feeds my spirit in every single way.

The penny thing is happening again.

I’m not sure if it’s because of the webinar I’m preparing on “moving from frustration to abundance” – or if it’s just life. But the pennies are back.

It was last spring when I began to notice that everywhere I went, I found a penny on the ground.

A single penny. Not a dime, not a quarter – but whether on my morning walk, in my driveway, at the market, on my evening walk, there it would be, a single penny.

The first few times, I figured it was just a coincidence. “What a hoot! I found one of these yesterday, too!”

But after several weeks of finding pennies nearly every day – and after one long walk in which I found six of them, one after another – I began to mention it to others. Some of them remarked that yeah, they find stuff all the time, too. Most of them, though, replied with almost the identical retort: “Gee it’s too bad you’re not finding $20 bills.”

But I knew this wasn’t about the value of the penny, or about finding stuff in general. There was something going on, even if it was only going on in my own mind – in the fact that I was noticing, that I was meaning-making out of the sheer coincidence that pennies were appearing, some shiny and new, some crushed by cars, old and barely legible.

It was also last spring that I finally got to meet Zach Braiker face to face. Zach and I have known each other on line and on skype for several years, but finally, Dimitri and I got to spend a whole day with Zach and his lovely-in-every-way partner, Purnima.

We talked about everything and anything, mostly just life and fun. We went to Cosanti, the mystical place where I have a bad habit of falling in love. We went to lunch and investigated the Musical Instrument Museum. We talked about everything but work, a fact that was magical all on its own.

And then, at the end of the day, Zach did ask about work. We talked about feeling overwhelmed, as we are in start-up and that is always overwhelming. Zach told us, “There are so many people like me, who love what you’re doing – we want to be part of this! Find ways for us to help. And then find others who also think it would be an honor to be part of this.” And then we went back to just enjoying the day and each other.

The next day, sitting in my corner at Crave, I thought about Zach’s advice. I thought about the fact that sometimes it is hard to remember that there are resources all around us, just waiting to be tapped.

I thought about the book series Lizzie and I loved when she was a kid – the Dragon series by Patricia Wrede. I thought about the king who had the ability to see strands of magic everywhere he went, so that when he needed that magic, all he had to do was reach up and take hold of the strands that were already all around him. It’s not that the strands were only there for him – they were always there, all the time. It’s just that he was able to see them.

And that’s when it hit me. The pennies! The pennies were a reminder that an abundance of resources is all around us, if only we would see it. The pennies were those strands of magic!

That was a year ago.

Shortly after that realization, the pennies disappeared as quickly as they came. I guess whether they were really “suddenly appearing” or I just happened to have been noticing them, it was the lesson that mattered – a lesson we are continually reminded of as we work to get Creating the Future off the ground. We already have everything we need to do this work; we just need to see it.

That lesson, reinforced time and again, is what led to our deciding we need to teach this. We need to show that this is not magic or a matter of faith. It is a simple matter of practical fact. We all already have what we need to move from frustration to abundance.

And all of that is back story.

Because last week, we taught a workshop here at home in Tucson. A longer version of the 30 minute webinar we’re about to do next week, we taught about finding the abundant resources that are already all around us, waiting for us to reach up and grab them like the king grabbing strands of magic in the forest.

The message resonated. People had aha after aha, which they shared with each other, embedding what they learned so they could be sure to immediately put it into practice.

But at the end of the workshop, packing up our easels and flip charts and supplies to get it all to the car in one trip, my mind wasn’t on the great thing we had just done. Instead my mind was racing, listing the 9 million things we still had to get done that day. The wind picked up, almost carrying me away on the sail of the flip chart I was wrestling across the parking lot. With each step, I felt myself getting more tense, feeling overwhelmed, and then…

There it was.

Beat up, yet shining against the gravel parking lot.

A penny.

I took a deep breath. I smiled. And I bent down to thank that shiny little orb for the reminder.

In our teaching and our work at Creating the Future, we talk a lot about the power of NOT starting meetings with brainstorming (which is always about ideas for what to do), but instead identifying a shared vision for what we want life to be like when we’re done.

No matter how simple the issue is, we have found huge power in looking at the issue at hand, and asking, “What would it make possible if this problem were no longer a problem? What is on the other side of this being a problem?”

The answer to that question is always a being question. We would be happy. We would be more productive. We would be secure, capable, joyful, calm.

From there, we walk backwards to create the path of cause-and-effect that quickly shows us what to do.

When we work in this way, we consistently find answers that are energizing, and that even people who had been in conflict find common ground surprisingly quickly.

There is a simple reason for that.

When we talk about how we want things to be, we all want the same thing. We share that vision.

When we talk about what to do, though, each of us takes that personally, because each of us, individually, will be doing that work. And each of us brings our baggage to how we feel about doing that!

“Do more? Are you kidding? I can’t get done what I already have on my plate!”

“Really? Scrap what I’ve been working on for 2 months, and now do something different? What a waste of my time!”

“And who do they think will do all that? You know Harry is just going to palm it off on me. He never does anything, but you know he’ll take the credit for all the work I’ll do…”

When we start a meeting with a conversation about “What should we do?” those angry or fearful or overwhelmed thoughts are part of what everyone is thinking. Doing is all about me.

But when we start the conversation at the vision for what we all want life to be like, it’s all about all of us. We will all be happy and calm. We will all have all the resources we need and feel secure.

As with everything in life, context creates our reality. There is joy and calm and grace in finding my place within the context of our place. I can easily see where I will fit into that picture, along with everyone else.

ME is a lonely place without the context of WE. And that joyful context of we can be found simply by starting with a vision for how we want things to be.

It is time.

It is time for those of us who want to live in communities rooted in peace and compassion to take powerful action to create those communities, to create that world.

It is time for us to take a stand – not AGAINST weapons and fear-mongering and environmental hazard and political and corporate abuse – but take a powerful stand FOR the world we want.

It is time for the most powerful voices not to be those of tribalism and scarcity, but the powerful voice of standing for what our humanity makes possible.

It is time to move beyond the fear and greed and reactivity that we share with the animal world. My dog can react in fear. My dog can fight or flee. The ability to hold a gun or detonate a bomb is no different than the ability to bare teeth.

It is time to take a powerful stand for what makes us human…

To take a stand for our uniquely human sense of connectedness to something bigger than ourselves – something we cannot see or touch but that we know is not only there, but is more important and more powerful than our individual lives.

To take a stand for our capacity to consciously de-program our instincts and re-program new instincts – free will.

To take a stand for our ability to imagine things that do not currently exist – to invent, to create something from nothing but our imaginations, to envision the future, to envision what is possible.

To take a stand for our combined capacity for empathy, compassion, logic and reason, imagination.

It is time to move beyond the ridiculous notion that this is our “softer side.” It is time for us to see that our humanity is our power. 

It is time to move beyond the ridiculous notion that such a world is utopian. It is time for us to know – unequivocally, without reservation and with absolute authority – that the reason we sense such a world is possible is because it is.

It is time to move beyond reacting to what we don’t want in the world – ending poverty or war. It is time to create the world we do want.

It is time to move beyond lamenting and hand-wringing and watching the news in despair. It is time to stop leaving it to others, reading inspirational blog posts and wishing there were something more we can do.

Each and every one of us is being called to move this world beyond fear.

Each and every one of us is being called to Stand Up – to take positive, proactive, powerful steps to BE the world we want. To advocate for societal systems that reflect our humanity as our day-to-day reality. To move our leaders beyond assumptions that are rooted in a scarcity that simply does not exist. To vote and speak and write letters, advocating for what our humanity makes possible. To volunteer and participate with those who are working towards what is possible – those who are moving beyond reacting to what is wrong.

Each of us is being called to powerfully move our own lives towards the compassion we want to see in others. To move beyond condemning and blaming and stereotyping and to move towards finding common ground.

Each and every one of us is being called to be the humans we have the potential to be.

Right now. It is time.

At the beginning of this year, this blog transitioned from being Creating the Future’s blog, to become what it is now: Hildy’s blog – a place where I can explore and rejoice and share what tickles me personally.

As for Creating the Future… well we now have six blogs (and one on the way), as well as a small and growing cadre of blog authors. And so, herewith, a round-up of the great stuff you’ll find at Creating the Future’s blogs. (And remember – if you like what you see there, subscribe to that blog. After this post, this will go back to being “Hildy’s blog.”)

Community Focus
To build healthy communities, that is where all our efforts need to focus. Here are a few of the posts you’ll find at our Community Focus to Create the Future blog.

Making Your Community More Resilient

Great Organizational Answers Come from Community Questions

Leadership
If you think you’ve heard it all when it comes to leadership, think again. Because this blog is all about the types of Leadership that create the future of our communities!

Leading from the Middle: Bringing Out the Best in Everyone

Boards that Value Learning

Philanthropy
From redefining fundraising and partnering to redefining how foundations and social investors do their work, we can’t create the future unless we redefine how that work is resourced. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg of what you’ll find at our Philanthropy that Creates the Future blog.

Redefining Partnership – What Do We Mean When We Say Partner?

Philanthropy’s Highest Potential is to Disappear

Do We Really Want Donations?

The Support is Mutual

Demonstrating What’s Possible
As a living laboratory, Creating the Future is also a living demonstration project – doing all its work out in the open, so we can all learn together. Our Walking the Talk to Create the Future blog is where we do all that work – from sharing what our board is considering to sharing prospective new programs – and a whole lot more.

Full Frontal Engagement
What if our board meetings and our planning sessions and our internal trainings and everything else we do were done online, allowing others to watch and/or participate?

Sharing What We Learn: Our Intellectual Property Policies

Minutes of all our board meetings
(These are not your father’s minutes – these are detailed descriptions of our board’s conversations, again so others can learn from those discussions)

Consulting
If consultants are going to help organizations create the future of their communities, it will take rethinking what those consultants teach – and how they teach it. And we think this is so important, we actually have two blogs where that happens!

The first is our Consulting to Create the Future blog. Posts there include

Getting People to Change

The Problem with Being the Expert

Our second blog about consulting is directly related to the twitter chat for consultants and coaches to community benefit groups – the NPCons chat, a program of Creating the Future to facilitate learning among consultants. The blog for that chat houses not only the blog posts describing that month’s chat topics, but a complete archive of all past chats.

If you think one couldn’t possibly learn in only 140 characters, these chat archives may change your mind. Participants insist this is the best professional development they get every month (and the secret is that they learn from each others’ wisdom and exploration!). Find the NPCons blog here. 

If any of these blogs intrigue you, please subscribe to them directly.

Updates like this one will continue for the next month or so, but more often, you will begin to see posts that are just my own ramblings and explorations and are neither sanctioned by nor necessarily representative of the views of Creating the Future. (And in the next week or so, the name of this blog will officially change to reflect that change.)

Photo Credit: Author Unknown, per Wikimedia Commons

I would rather have a root canal. I would rather have a flat tire on the way to an important meeting. I would rather a million other angst-inducing experiences than having to step this far outside my emotional boundaries.

I have no gut to rely on outside those boundaries. Every decision looks like every other one. With no experience to guide me, I might sense what is hugely ridiculous, but I can’t tell what’s smart from what’s less smart, or even moderately dumb. My instincts are of no use. I am naked in every imaginable way.

And then I realize – everyone feels this. Everyone in our lives who we tell to “buck up and just do X” feels this. They, too, have no gut to rely on, no touchstones for their decisions. They, too, feel the sheer panic that I am feeling right now.

Suddenly, compassion swells. I know what kindness is.

I know that when I am trying to help others, that maybe the greatest gift might be to simply show them a first baby step, to begin to stretch the boundaries of their comfort zone ever so slightly, and to patiently wait while they step into it, try it on for size, play around in there. Perhaps the greatest gift is not showing them how to step outside that comfort zone, but how to begin to expand it, how to slowly create the path as they walk it.

Which makes me immensely grateful for this thing I have to do today, that I have absolutely no choice about, but that will push me to a place that, if nothing else, will be fertile ground for my compassion to grow.

Thank goodness and hallelujah – the U.S. Presidential Election is almost over.

And while this has been the most dismaying election season I can recall ever in my life, I have found a glimmer of hope. I have found a cause I want to begin assisting in whatever way I can, as soon as the dust settles on this election. I’ve already started reaching out, and intend to do so with greater intent as soon as folks wake up from a long-deserved rest.

Here is what I want to help make happen:

• Increase voter turnout
• Ensure fair and equitable access to voting
• Eliminate the electoral college
• Eliminate corporate personhood
• Get money out of politics once and for all

Yeah, it’s a full-size dream platter. Thing is, it’s doable. First, it’s doable because it’s not physically impossible, so it must be possible. From there, we just need to think strategically, which is to say, we need to reverse engineer this.

So then what would it take (for example) to eliminate corporate personhood? Clearly it would take a constitutional amendment stating the obvious – that only people are people (hard to believe we are even having this discussion, right?).

A constitutional amendment would mean that either 2/3 of both houses of Congress would have to propose the amendment OR that 2/3 of the state legislatures would have to call on Congress to hold a Constitutional Convention. Given the current debacle that is the US Congress, let’s assume for this example that it might be easier to get the state legislatures of 34 states to make that demand.

Once Congress blesses the amendment, it then goes back out to the states for approval, where 3/4 of the state legislatures (38 states) must ratify it.

Rather than arguing the likelihood of any of that, let’s ask this question:

What conditions / circumstances / environment would lead to ratification not only being possible, but being overwhelmingly likely?

Clearly there would need to be overwhelming and unswerving popular support for establishing in our constitution that only people are people. For ratification to happen, the overwhelming majority of voters (which, for the time being, are still limited to humans…) in the overwhelming majority of states would need to demand it.

So then, what conditions would lead to the people demanding such an amendment?

One easy answer is “solid education about every aspect of the issue.”

And a precursor to people learning enough that they are moved to take action would be that the education comes from people they trust – organically, in living rooms, in discussions among colleagues and friends and family.

Which seems to suggest that a first step might be a national effort towards community organizing, in every single community in the nation. Which does indeed seem rather do-able…

So those are the thoughts that are carrying me through this last day of campaign BS. There is something we can do to trip the levers that will trip other levers that will create the result we want – a government that lives up to the promise of being of the people, by the people, for the people.

If we really want this, then as soon as this circus is over, it’s time to join with people who are already walking this path – folks like the Election Protection Coalition. It’s time to stop crying in our collective beers and get to work.

Thanks to Wikimedia Commons for the 1963 Civil Rights photo. 

What if all the people who care about your community were to gather  together, sharing everything they have to make it the most amazing place it could be?

What if everyone who cared about our planet were to gather together, sharing everything they have, to ensure our global home is healthy and strong in all ways – that we are able to live well individually and collectively?

What if everyone who cares about creating an amazing future for our world got together and said, “Hey let’s do this!”?

I’m not talking about “partnering” or “collaborating” – that sounds so small and exclusive, like you and I might get together privately and see what we can do, just us two.

I’m talking about what might be possible if ALL of us who want a better world were to offer what we have, to put it into the pot to create a rich, multi-layered, surprising and delicious stone soup to create the world we want.

What would be possible if we stopped thinking small? And especially if we stopped thinking about fairness – about bringing our own stuff only after we see what everyone else brings. What would be possible if we just GIVE – and then give more?

Just those words alone send a feeling of creativity through my veins! 

That feeling that happens when we are giving so freely that everything we have just pours forth without our even thinking about it.  

That feeling that happens when everyone else around us is also giving freely, receiving freely, and then giving again, sharing the gifts we all have and often don’t even realize we have.

Imagine being energized as hell to build something amazing out of that, and to watch that new thing come alive, birthed of all our individual gifts and passions and energies combined!

So then here’s what I’m wondering…

What if we just showed up with our selves and our stuff. Our connections. Our knowledge. Our material possessions. Our talents, our treasures, our time.

What if we each put our stuff into that pot and stirred to create the world we want?

Which makes me wonder one more thing…

What talents, gifts, strengths, passions have you always wished someone would find useful?

What do you love to do, that you could add to the pot – writing or knitting or gardening or playing basketball? Connecting or playing with kids or jewelry making or remodeling houses? Are you passionate about math, or science or languages? History or neuroscience or accounting or golf or…?

What will you bring to the party, right here now?

What will you add to the soup?

Because I’m so ready to get going. Let’s start cooking up the world we want!

Soup Images by mhaller1979, yearofeats, and Hu Totya via Wikimedia Commons

Ok, so it wasn’t a vacation – not by a long stretch. But I’ve finally caught my breath enough to share the results of this year’s sabbatical.

Do This
I’m feeling the need to start by saying, “If you’ve thought about taking time off to figure stuff out or to work on a project, do it.”

Most people think they can’t do this, and the truth is we can find a way. It doesn’t mean giving up your full time job; it means rearranging the part of your life when you’re not at that full time job. (As you’ll read here, there was no way I could step fully away from Creating the Future. Being in start-up mode, there is no one else to do stuff!)

What it does mean is deciding you will focus. And then making room to focus – in part by telling the rest of the world, “I am focusing. Here are the dates during which that focus will occur. During those dates, have as few expectations of me as possible. I will not return your calls or emails. Act as if I am not here.”

And then it takes doing it. Which is what I did for 10 weeks this year. And here are the results…

Two Huge Projects
I had two big projects in mind for this year’s sabbatical, and both got tremendous boosts. The first is a brand new thought construct for me – what I’ve been calling the Continuum of Potential. I’ll be writing more about that over the coming months, to share with you what I’ve learned.

The Continuum is a way I’ve found for explaining why some people seem ready to create the future of everything they see, and others seem stuck in one place and unable to budge. The Continuum allows us to better understand how others are experiencing life, and to encourage their potential with compassion (rather than frustration and judgment and “Why won’t they just _____!?”)

This is a thought construct I’ve been researching and developing and working with on my own for about 2 years. For my first steps outside that bubble – the first steps towards sharing what I was discovering in a way that others could use – I chose to teach a webinar for Creating the Future’s immersion graduates. This allowed me to put my toe into explaining and sharing a fairly complex construct, in a safe environment with people who speak the same language as me – a good test of my ability to move those thoughts out into the world.

So I brain-dumped the concept into a massive outline, then scripted and recorded a 1-hour video class, outlined and wrote a workbook to accompany the class, and then scheduled Q&A / practice sessions. Truly, that amount of work alone would have been a great result of this sabbatical.

Except that there was another huge project beckoning – writing Creating the Future’s theory of change, so we can post it to the website, and so it can become my next book, the sequel to The Pollyanna Principles.

Those of you who have followed my writing process for a while will recognize that crafting these two huge efforts meant not one outline on my plate glass windows, but one for the Continuum of Potential – and then removing that one to replace it with the outline for the book! (Confession: many of the post-its for the book are still on that window, here at the end of October. My goal is to have them all in the computer by November 1…)

The outline for the book became the outline for the keynote I gave in Idaho at the end of September, barely two weeks after emerging back into the world. What a gift it  was to have the immediate opportunity to whittle my huge brain-dumped outline down to its essence, to share in a 50 minute talk with a room full of 300 blank slates – folks who knew nothing of this work. If I could make the concepts accessible to them in that short amount of time, I would know I was well on my way. (The good news from the evaluations: It appears I succeeded!!)

From there, we have begun turning that work into an Infographic (see that full size here), to begin to explain not only the theory of change, but what Creating the Future is doing to put that theory into action. All that from a few weeks of focused work (and a few dozen post-it pads!).

(And to those who are anxious for that next book, I am first turning these thoughts into a short e-book. I don’t want you to have to wait the year it will likely take me to write that whole book!  I do promise, though, it’s all on its way.)

But wait, there’s more…
Having 10 weeks when no one expected anything of me allowed me to do more than just those two projects. It allowed me to focus on some smaller projects that had not been getting the attention they needed.

I began the quiet phase of a monthly giving campaign for Creating the Future – something you’ll be seeing more about soon.

I recruited and then trained a brand new position for Creating the Future – the board’s Recording Secretaries (we had 2 candidates so amazing we chose them both!). What a gift that has been!!

I had time to plan our first official immersion course for on-the-ground changemakers, working with the Girl Scouts of Southern Arizona to co-sponsor a session for Arizona orgs focused on empowering women and girls.

There was the normal stuff that couldn’t just be abandoned – board meetings to prepare for, the #NPCons chat, the Making Change podcast interviews. And the bookkeeping and other mundane stuff that comes with being a start-up org (i.e. doing it all ourselves until we get funded to hire staff).

There was also the stuff of life – stuff that just happens. A trip to spend time with my childhood best friend and her family, following the sudden loss of the man who has been, since I was 12 years old, my second dad.

In between all that, I sewed. I read. I gardened. I got new glasses.

And I conceived an idea not yet fully developed but soon to be Creating the Future’s next big thing – the thought that all the plans this start-up is about to develop for our own growth, we will do live online, allowing the whole world to watch and participate and learn…

And you guys helped make that happen!
When I first started this sabbatical, I asked for your support. I asked you to send love, to send books, to send wishes and encouragement – and to send gifts.

You sent all that and more. I have to say the best gift ever was from Crystal at the Idaho Nonprofit Center, who at six months pregnant, sent me her baby girl’s sonogram. How’s THAT for encouragement to create an amazing future?! When I finally got to Idaho in September, the first thing I wanted to do was rub her belly and say hello to that little one!!

My sabbatical is now one month behind me. I’m excited to be back in the saddle, excited to be moving forward with all kinds of things for Creating the Future, and excited to keep writing the book that was birthed on my plate glass windows.

And I’m excited and grateful that you all are alongside me as we all head down that road hand-in-hand.