I started to work with a somatic experiencing practitioner (Lu Hawkins) for therapy early in the year and then later took some courses with Strozzi Institute for embodied learning/leadership over the summer and fall. My work with Lu has been focused inward and has brought me to a whole new level of acceptance of myself, with a lot of self-love and trust. As I made progress with her, I started to look for other applications of this work. That’s when I found Strozzi, where they blend a number of lineages (including somatics, psychology, and aikido) and focus on not just the personal, but also groups, organizations, and society. I felt like the picture just kept getting bigger and bigger for me.

Early in the year I was also learning a lot about exercise and health, in what I thought of as a totally separate interest about working out and dealing with pain. I certainly didn’t consider it related to my therapy work. I took a course called Empowered Performance by Katie St. Clair. I learned a lot that was different from your typical personal trainer education. It dove into looking at why our body is moving and compensating in certain ways and how to account for that in training. I had signed up simply because it sounded different and interesting, but I had no idea what is was really about.

Over the year as I learned more about somatics and explored movement and things like pain and sleep, I’ve been slowly knitting together my own mishmash of somatic understanding and a new personal philosophy about how I am in, and move through, the world. The common thread that kept speaking to me in all of my explorations is that we are a whole, holistic being and we move through life as best we can, using everything within us. In that process we have to mold ourselves for survival. We are incredible organisms that are incredibly malleable. We adapt, we compensate. And along the way we can find ourselves in a shape or a pattern that doesn’t actually let us thrive anymore. Those adaptations and compensations were necessary at some point, but they no longer serve us. Most people will try to “remove” these “problems” by, frankly, not being very nice to themselves. Somatics would have us understand our whole shape—physical, mental, emotional—and recognize the value of how we have survived and perhaps even thrived in the past. Then we can build a new shape/pattern/movement that serves us better for where we are now and where we want to be, and move forward into that new space. I initially learned about this in therapy for dealing with emotional trauma, but I can see that this applies to everything in life. Aside from personal or social traumas that may be clear to us, it can also apply to how you move your body when running, or the way you draw a picture or write a novel, or show up for work.

So I guess at this point my general philosophy is being present with my full self, listening to and trusting all of me, and then gently, graciously building new patterns that serve me on the road I wish to walk. It may sound trite or woo-woo or simplistic to some, but really diving into the meaning of this, and working at it, instead of just thinking about it academically has profoundly changed me.

If you want to learn more about somatics, here are some books to read about trauma and the body. (Note that trauma means a lot of different things to a lot of people. Most of us have experienced something traumatic in our lives that still effects us. Whether others would find it traumatic or not is irrelevant. And further, I would say that the last two years have inflicted all kinds of personal and communal trauma on everyone.)

• Waking the Tiger: Healing Trauma
• The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma
• Lifting Heavy Things: Healing Trauma One Rep at a Time

A good book for looking at somatics from a larger, social perspective is “The Politics of Trauma: Somatics, Healing, and Social Justice“. And to explore somatic work with racism “My Grandmother’s Hands: Racialized Trauma and the Pathway to Mending Our Hearts and Bodies” is a good place to start.

Why a personal trainer?

For a little context, I’ve been working out regularly for 2 years. I’ve mostly worked out at home following various programs (mostly FitnessBlender and some FitBit and Garmin plans). In the summer of 2020 (while COVID-19 was very low here in Denmark) I joined a functional fitness gym (aka non-branded CrossFit), mostly because I wanted to lift weights and I wanted to have someone there to make sure my form was good and I wasn’t completely messing up the exercises. While that worked to some degree, and I did enjoy my classes, between COVID-19 precautions and the fact that I didn’t get to steer the specific exercises I wanted to do, I decided I needed to find another solution. I wanted to be able to work out at home, with the equipment that I already have, and get instruction on the specific things I wanted to be able to do. Related to that thought, I also felt that I was just “working out” and not really getting anywhere. I have some personal exercise goals that I’d like to achieve, but I’ve had a hard time staying focused on making progress towards long-term goals.

This is a pretty clear case for a personal trainer, and then I had one more thing that was niggling at me that pushed me over the edge, related to my nutrition. I’d finally dialed in a good way of eating that I liked and helped me lose some of the body fat I’d been wanting to drop. I’d finally gotten to a place where my body fat was comfortably below 30% and I didn’t feel the need to keep losing a lot of fat/weight. But I wasn’t sure how to adjust my nutrition in a way to a) not wreck the work I’d done and b) support my goals to gain strength and muscle.

So to sum up, I wanted customized workouts, at home with my equipment, working toward specific exercise and nutrition goals. All of this combined made me start looking around at my options for some online help.

How did I find someone?

Now my only experience so far with personal trainers was when I joined a gym maybe 15 years ago. The gym offered personal trainer sessions, which sounded like a great idea. I signed up, and while my trainer was very fit and very enthusiastic, he almost killed me on the first day. I actually almost passed out in the locker room and had other people worried about me. I recovered enough to walk out the door after a while, but let’s just say I didn’t do that again. It wasn’t a great experience for trust.

This time around I wanted to be sure I’d have someone who wasn’t going to give me a cookie-cutter workout that didn’t suit me. Since I’ve been into fitness generally for the last 2 years now, and I’d been looking more into specific things, like kettlebells, I’d started following a variety of people on social media. Through following folks I could get a sense of their fitness philosophy and I gravitated towards women who were realistic and science-based about health and fitness goals.

Once I decided to get a personal trainer, I could see that some folks I followed offered personal training and I looked around for others to follow so I could get a feel for them. Then I reached out to set up an interview to see if they seemed like a good match for me. I wanted to see what questions they asked me and how they were going to figure out what I needed. Did they really hear me, and my challenges? I found what I was looking for from someone I followed on Instagram, Hannah Hutson (@getupwithhannah).

What did we do?

Once Hannah and I agreed to work together, we got right down to it. I told her my goals and the areas I was struggling with. She had me track my food for a week or so to get an idea of what and how much I was consuming, and she set up my first weeks of exercise programming. She also set me up with a tracking spreadsheet (for things like nutrition and sleep) and a daily log. We would check in once a week, but I also had access to her any time I had questions or needed her to update workouts through a messaging app called Voxer.

Since this is all custom, she created workouts each week for the equipment I had and where I would be. We recently bought a lake house here in Denmark and we move back and forth between that and the city apartment pretty regularly. I have different equipment in the 2 locations. Hannah would swap out my exercises as I moved around. She would also update my workouts based on how I did with what was assigned and how I was feeling. This was great because my program exactly matched my life any given week. I could also video myself doing any of my exercises, share that with her and then she could give me form feedback. This was a big deal for me, because I’m always worried about not doing an exercise properly, especially with something new like kettlebells. Getting specific form feedback was awesome and gave me a lot of confidence.

About half way through my 3 month contract with her, I noticed that Fridays were tough for me. I was working out 4 days a week (which is what I requested at the start) and I was just feeling uninspired by the end of the week. She suggested I try dropping down to 3 days a week, skipping Fridays, and see how that felt. She redid my workouts for the new schedule and I found I really liked it. I’d been working out in so many programs that insist on 4-5 days a week that I didn’t really have a feel for 3 days of workouts. Hannah knew that 3 days was good enough for me and that it would be better for me to have energy for all of them instead of pushing myself harder than necessary. She’s a big fan of proper rest.

On the nutrition front, one of the first things she said to me is “you need to eat more”. I’d been running on a calorie deficit for about 4-5 months when we started. She gradually increased my nutrition goals each week until she got me up to the levels she wanted to see. In addition to an overall calorie increase of about 200 calories, she also upped my water intake and protein requirements. It was made with small changes each week so I could work on it slowly. Believe it or not, it can be hard to suddenly start eating more. Some days I just didn’t want to eat that much, especially for breakfast. So we went slowly, and then one week suddenly my metabolism kicked in hard. I was hungry and I was busting out my workouts. When we started the program, I would feel worn out and sometimes even light-headed after my workouts. I didn’t have enough fuel in me to push hard. By about week 4, I had a lot more energy to really push my workouts and I was feeling much more energetic overall.

What I think of the experience

I said at the beginning of this post that this had a big impact on me. Over 3 months, I gained confidence, focus, and strength. I could see and feel the progress on my goals. My body feels great and I learned a lot about why that is. My nutrition changes were huge because I was too afraid to mess with it and I needed expert advice to guide me through the change. My fitness changes were great because she kept me on target towards my specific goals, while mixing my workouts up so I didn’t get bored and so I could use the equipment I had available any given day.

Hannah has a fitness philosophy that really resonates with me. She’s focused on taking care of your body, not punishing it, and she very much wants to share her knowledge. I learned so much in my time with her that I feel very confident moving ahead on my own for a while. I’m not going to lie, this was a very expensive spend on my self, and so I needed to wrap up after 3 months. That said, it was time and money well spent because the progress I made physically and mentally in the last few months was lightning compared to where I was.

I realize I’m privileged to be able to afford something like this. If you do happen to have an opportunity to get one-on-one coaching and you really want to work on your health and fitness, I highly recommend it. My biggest recommendation is to get to know some trainers before you choose one. Follow them on social media to see where they’re coming from and then interview them to really see if you will have a good working relationship with them. Do you feel like they understand your goals and challenges? Do you feel like you will be able to actually learn from them?

If anyone has questions about what it’s like to work with a trainer or how to find someone, feel free to give me a shout.

The Why

There are a few things that have helped me get on track and stay there. The most important though is that I found a very strong reason why I wanted to make these changes: I want to be able to be physically active and energetic as I age. Seriously, that’s it, but it works for me. Every time I’m looking at a workout I do not want to do or an unhealthy decision, I tell myself, “In 10, 20 years you will thank yourself for this small discomfort now.” I know the work I’m doing now will pay off in my well being down the road. I want to keep enjoying an active life for a very long time.

One event that really brought this to light for me was four years ago when my wife and I decided to start hiking. I used to love hiking and hadn’t done it in a long time. I was generally out of shape at the time, having been mostly sitting on my butt for years and eating and drinking whatever I wanted. Wow, on that first trip out I was miserable after a few kilometers. But I really wanted to hike because being out in nature feels so good to me and aside form the physical discomfort it was a lot of fun, so I figured I should start trying to sort out how to make it less painful. That began my off and on efforts with exercise and over time I found more and more things that I wanted to do. I also saw the effects of aging and poor health in family and friends, and the struggles that could have been mitigated with earlier healthy choices and prevention. That slowly solidified this feeling of why for me and then eventually the process itself became enjoyable in and of itself.

Everyone has their own why—or they don’t and they can’t stick with the change they think they want—but this is what drives me.

The How

I knew I wanted my body to feel better and be more capable of the things I wanted. Back then, one of the big things holding me back from a lot of physical activity was my bad knee. I had been diagnosed with chondromalacia patellae in my 30s and told to never run or use my knee a lot in a bent position. So I spent the next two decades assuming I couldn’t do a lot with it, and it would hurt whenever I did “overuse” it, including going for long hikes or doing beginner workouts with squats and lunges. I had a pretty big mental block about what I could and could not do. I really wanted to figure this out though, so after much encouragement (prodding) from my wife, I decided to go to a physical therapist and see what the current situation with my knee really was and how I could be more confident when using it. That changed everything for me. I strengthened my neglected leg and the pain reduced significantly, and more importantly I learned how to read my body’s pain more clearly and figure out when I could push it and when I should back off. Best money I’ve ever spent on my health. With this new confidence, I felt I could begin to really explore what my body could do.

Gaining that confidence to forge ahead with exercise set me up to start trying a number of things to get more fit. I started working out off and on. I’d work out for a month or so, feel better and then chill for a few months. My hiking got a lot more enjoyable and I felt good about not letting myself sink into a worse physical state, and at least keeping things on an even keel. Over time my newfound physical confidence made me want to take better care of my body generally. Well, to take better care of me, as a whole. It was an important mental shift.

The What

The switch that happened 2 years ago was that I decided to get serious about making a long-term change to healthier habits. I liked that I was feeling more fit and capable, but I knew that the older I got the harder it would be to keep pushing into new territory without having a sustainable routine in place. I needed to make this a long-term part of my daily life if I was going to keep it up for decades to come. At the beginning of 2019 I set out to try out a new habit per month. The idea was to try it out and if I liked it and stuck, great. If not, that was OK too. I tried all kinds of things that year: exercise, meditation, journaling, etc. Not everything stuck, but exercise, journaling and alcohol reduction are the ones that have really stayed around over the years. I also started playing around with finding a sustainable way of eating healthily that felt good. That’s been a longer road to sort out and didn’t really get dialed in until this past year. So at this point, I exercise 3-5 days/week, journal every day, and eat a healthy diet, and it’s all just part of my life. I don’t find it a burden or feel like I’m denying myself something. I feel like I’m really caring for myself.

I have a lot more to say about what I’ve done over the last 2 years and what my new goals are for the future. In particular, I’ve definitely had ups and downs, especially as a middle-aged woman starting perimenopause. I’d like to dive into each of the main 3 categories where I’ve made changes: exercise, nutrition, and mental health. We’ll see if I can get more blog posts written soon. I’m not going to push myself on it though, so I make no promises. If you are interested in hearing more or have specific questions though, let me know.

The real takeaway for me is discovering lesbian fiction, regardless of the romance part. I mean, I’ve known that lesbian fiction is out there, but in my mainline consumption of mostly sci-fi and fantasy fiction I hadn’t run into any on the regular and didn’t give it much thought, because well that’s what it’s like to be a minority in some aspect of society. Then I got a recommendation for some historical fiction that opened up my reading list considerably. So for folks who may be interested in checking out some lesbian fiction, I figured I’d share some of what I’ve read and what drew me in.

Historical fiction

Last year I asked Twitter for book recommendations as I was heading out for vacation. I got a bunch of good stuff, but my favorite of the list was the Alpennia series by Heather Rose Jones. It is a set in a fictional European country and has a magic/supernatural system, but it is very much well-researched historical writing for Europe in the 19th century. I dove into it without even fully reading the summary, so I wasn’t sure what I was in for. What I discovered was a sword-fighting woman and a lesbian love story set in a time where both were difficult territory to navigate. The book is great writing and story either way, and I would have loved it without the lesbian part as well, but with that pleasant surprise I realized that I’d found something I didn’t know I was missing—representation. The love stories in the series are sweet and real, and while important, they don’t necessarily drive the plot. I should also point out that while there are love stories, there are no sex scenes. I refer to these as love stories versus the more widely used “romance”, which to me means the romance drives the plot and that it most likely contains sex scenes.

Character-driven sci-fi

After reading up what I could of Heather’s books I began my search for more fiction with lesbians. I pretty quickly discovered The Lesbian Review site which provides book (and movie) reviews for lesbian fiction. I was like a kid in a candy shop. Of course I immediately started to track down the recommended sci-fi books and discovered The Caphenon, which is the first of the extensive Chronicles of Alsea series by Fletcher Delancey. I basically fell in love with this series, the world of Alsea, and the rich characters. It’s just great sci-fi writing and dives into the complexities of people (whether they are human or Alsean), ethics, politics, and relationships. It reminds me of another epic sci-fi series that I love, The Vorkosigan Saga by Lois McMaster Bujold because it is so wonderfully character-driven, just this time it has women as the main leads and a universe where the whole hangup over gay, straight, or whatever just doesn’t exist. Do your thing with whoever you want. It even has an asexual main character (in Outcaste). On the romance front, first you should know that the Alseans are similar to humans but they don’t have exactly the same, um, equipment, so the sex scenes are a bit different while still essentially being lesbian. And there are sex scenes, though not in all of the books. You don’t actually hit explicit sex until book 3, Without a Front: The Warrior’s Challenge. That said, again these stories aren’t based on the love stories or the sex. That is just one part of the bigger picture of who these characters are and their history. When I finished the books written so far (at that time Outcaste had just been released) I had a pretty big sad and stopped reading for a few weeks because nothing else I started captured me like Alsea had. I missed the characters and the world so much, I wanted to crawl into those books and never leave. (By the way, Fletcher is still writing the series so it isn’t completely over yet.) These books are strong sci-fi with a romance aspect to some of them, but again, not “romance” novels.

Romance in my head

I’ve traversed a lot of lesbian fiction ground over the last year, with many good reads, great reads, and of course a bunch not so great. One more author that definitely captured my attention though is E.J. Noyes. She fits firmly in the romance category with the love story being front and center of her books, but her character development and the way she tackles the fullness of humans is noteworthy. It turns the books into an exploration of human relationships which also happen to have good sex scenes. The first book she published, and the first I read, is Ask, Tell, which is about U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan during the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” era. The follow up to that book is Ask Me Again, which dives into PTSD from events in the first book. It’s intense and told very well. Most of her books deal with people who have dealt with some serious issues in their lives and try to figure out how to both heal and weave that into a relationship. One thing that I think makes these books stand out and had such an effect on me is that they are written in first person, which is unusual. That drives some people crazy, but I find it very effective. And oh boy, every time Sabine says to herself “Stop it Sabine.” I feel that echoing in my own head. Been there. I guess that is why I am drawn to these stories because there are aspects to them that I feel from my own experiences and sometimes it feels like she’s writing out my own thoughts.

So those are a few of my favorites and they span quite a range, both topically and in levels of romance and/or sex, but they all feature complex women in well-written stories. There are a ton more authors and books (romance and not) that I’ve also very much enjoyed recently and perhaps as I go along, I’ll share more thoughts on the way. If you’re not into the genres I am or are looking to explore more on your own, I highly recommend checking out The Lesbian Review to get you started.

The decision

When we finally decided that she would hike the trail this year, we both began planning, albeit in different ways. When I say we decided, I do mean that. This is something that effects both of us, and while of course Camilla made the final decision, we walked into this together. I won’t speak for her or her decision—you can read that yourself in her blog—but I do want to talk about my decision and how it’s effected me so far. The first time she mentioned the idea I thought it was a passing fancy that would never manifest in my life. I played along with the thought experiment. After a while though it became clear that she was really drawn to the idea and she struggled to figure out how to make it a reality. I shifted gears to figure out how to support her making a final decision, knowing that whatever that decision was I’d be on the hook to follow through all the way with her. At the time it sounded so healthy and happy and far away. It was an easy commitment to make. I don’t regret a single second of it, but it has certainly been harder than I thought at the time.

For a little more context, I should also say that we’ve been married for 8 years (our anniversary is actually coming up in 2 weeks) and we’re in a really good relationship (it’s actually kind of ridiculous how awesome it is). I’m not at all worried that she’s going to cheat on me or leave me on the trail, and I don’t feel like she is doing this to get away from me. She has lots of reasons for going on the trail, but I’m not one of them. I’m one of the things that made it a hard decision to go, and I feel that deeply. So we’re good on that front and it really is more about how we can loosen the strong bond we have to give her space to explore this need and me space to see what that will mean for me too. I know this isn’t everyone’s experience in these circumstances and I feel lucky that I’m not dealing with layers of relationship problems through this.

Preparation

A few months after we decided, the reality of it started to hit me and I realized I needed to prepare myself. As she was researching the logistics and testing out a variety of equipment, I started to figure out my own plan. I was going to “lose” my best friend, my ballast, my solid ground for 6 months. Shit. While we are able to communicate just about daily, that is mostly just her sending a text that says something like “Long day. Time for sleep. Love you!”. We very occasionally get to chat for a few minutes on WhatsApp. We talk on the phone once a week or so. So she’s not “gone” but I don’t get my daily debrief over dinner, supportive hugs, or victory dances and high fives that define the rhythm of living with someone invested in your life. All of the little random things you want to say or laugh about just get backed up and then forgotten, unshared. It’s all the little counter-balances and gentle corrections that make navigating life more steady. It’s harder than it may sound, especially when you’ve had that rhythm for so long. I spent a lot of time thinking about what I most need and get from her and then how I could mitigate that loss. Here are the three things I did to prepare. These are certainly specific to me and my life, but perhaps this can helpful for others in the same or similar scenario.

1. Friends

I tend to be extremely withdrawn when I’m hurting in any way, so I knew that I would want to just disappear into my apartment and never come out again. I can get myself into a dark place and I knew I would need to interact with people to get out of my own head. I started talking with my closest friends about my fears and what I was going to need from them. I needed to be honest with myself and them. My biggest ask from the other people in my life was to pull me out of my shell kicking and screaming if they didn’t hear from me for a while (like 2-ish weeks max). For my friends in Copenhagen, they can show up at my apartment and drag me out somewhere. For others, it’s as simple as checking in regularly and asking how I’m doing and if I need anything. (Some people even literally have a schedule for this. <3) I’ll also admit that going to my friends with this kind of request made me realize that I need to spend more time taking care of my friendships. I can be a very “out of sight, out of mind” kind of person and have always put most of my focus on my significant other. This has made me really evaluate what friendship means and what I need to give to keep those relationships strong and healthy as well. I don’t want to take my friends for granted and this is a big personal focus for me this year. This void has created a great opportunity to deepen and broaden my friendships. I would say this is one of the biggest heartfelt lessons from this experience for me.

2. Habits

One big thing I wanted to make sure to deliberately address is self-care. It’s easy to let things go when my routines are off or I’m not feeling top of my game. Camilla and I encourage and support each other in this area and I knew I’d need something a little more rock solid this year. I ended up deciding to give myself a challenge to add a new positive habit each month. That way I could try something out for one month and I would be in a good pattern at the end so if I wanted to incorporate it permanently, I could just keep rolling. I decided to focus on adding positive things instead of removing negative things. I need all the positivity I can and removing bad habits is a lot harder to do in general. I also wanted to be clear about choosing things that would be long-term habits, instead projects with finite goals. The idea was to build a set of habits that are good for me, relatively easy to maintain, and would stick around throughout the year to give me touchpoints to build my own rhythm and routines around. I wanted to get these started before Camilla took off, so that I would have some habits well-established by then. So far this year I have worked on the following habits, and I’m happy to say that so far, they have all stuck.

• Jan: Exercise at least 5 days a week
• Feb: Meditate at least 10 minutes a day
• Mar: Floss my teeth every day
• Apr: Write in a journal every day

I think the most important aspects of this for me are making the habit goal 1) something I actually really do want to do for whatever reason and 2) giving myself fallbacks. Fallbacks are critical for habits for me. The idea is to do something on a regular schedule no matter what and the longer you do that, the more likely it will become a no/low-effort habit. I don’t always have the motivation or time every single day so fallbacks are levels of simplifying the goal to a point that you have no excuse to not do it, and you’ll still build that regular routine momentum need. For example, with meditation, my goal is at least 10 minutes, but my fallbacks were 5 minutes, 2 minutes, a deep breath and count to 20. My simplest fallback for journaling was to open the journal and write the date. Yeah, so easy that you can’t excuse yourself from helping yourself a tiny bit every day.

3. Coach

I knew that in addition to my personal life, my professional life would be challenging this year (in a good way!). We have a number of new and exciting things we’re working on, but that can also be quite stressful. A lot of being a CEO involves a huge amount of emotional energy, especially when dealing with change and challenge. I knew I would be emotionally challenged with everything going on and I wanted to make sure that I also cared for my professional life. I generally have a growth goal to support my team better and grow our company in a healthy way. Getting an executive coach gave me support towards these goals. In addition to professional advice, my coach is also very aware of the details of my personal life as well. She understands how they overlap and effect each other, and she plainly sees my struggles. I can’t really share this professional vulnerability with many people. This is just the way it is as a CEO. Having someone who knows all the currents going on for me and that I can be vulnerable with has been a huge help. It makes me a more sane and emotionally stable CEO.

I will note that that a coach makes sense for me because I knew I would have professional challenges generally this year as well as fallout from Camilla being away. A therapist is also a totally good choice here if there are deeper issues that should probably be dealt with. This is part of you needing to be honest with yourself about your weaknesses and needs.

Does this work?

Yes. I’m really glad I’ve taken the time to plan and prepare for this time alone. I would be drowning by now without it. Having a friend check-in and remind me that I am not really alone always warms me through. My habits have given me some small handholds to create a routine that is geared towards taking care of myself and since they are built as habits, I tend to do them even when I’m feeling angry or lazy. My coach has definitely kept me on target when I hit rough patches. She keeps me focused on the work at hand, while also accounting for my struggles. She’s straight up told me to step away from work when it was clear I needed to catch my breath and get my shit together, while I felt compelled to forge ahead. Having someone give me “permission” to take the space I need so that I can be a better CEO is kind of amazing.

The most important thing is to really evaluate what you’re going to need before you get to day one of the hike. It can lead to some uncomfortable conversations—with yourself, your significant other, or other people in your life—but you need to prepare just as much as your hiker does, and it will probably take some time to get things into place. You deserve the care you need and you’re just as brave as anyone setting boot to trail. Take care of yourself!

For a quick catch-up, in 2016 I was very focused mostly on my company. For many years I worked at Lullabot, first as a consultant and eventually becoming the Director of Education, running Drupalize.Me, our online Drupal training site. In 2016 we split that site off into its own new company called Lullabot Education, sibling to Lullabot (we’ve recently changed the name to Osio Labs though). I became the CEO. Needless to say it was an eventful year with a lot of hard work from the whole team. While we had been operating as a department in Lullabot for years, that is a far cry from having to stand fully on our own two feet as a business. There were a lot of lessons, some happy and some hard. It was an intense year, and I think I can be forgiven for being mostly distracted by the business.

After getting a feel for the new business and having things settle, 2017 became a year of focusing on some non-work-related priorities that I really needed to address. I spent half of this year in classrooms and taking tests related to living in Denmark. I had been putting off continuing my Danish language skills and, more importantly, passing my language test that will make me eligible for permanent residency and, eventually, citizenship. Denmark is pretty awesome with supporting residents (not just citizens) with free education possibilities. I took free Danish courses (FVU for those who care) from the spring into the fall and finally passed my important test in October. That was 7 hours a week of class, plus homework and assignments. Shortly after I started FVU I also started with driving school. I’ve been driving for 30 years, but my U.S. license is not valid in Denmark and I had to actually go to driving school from the very start as if I’d never driven before. (It’s a long story as to why this was true for me and not others. Other people can now, as of a couple of years ago, trade their U.S. license with only a continuation test, but this did not apply to me.) So in addition to Danish class, I ended up in driving classes. Denmark’s driving school regulations are intense and expensive (I spent ~$2400 total before it was all said and done). I had to attend 12 hours of classroom and 12 hours of practical driving, plus two special 3-hour practical driving courses and an all-day first aid course. I’m happy to say that I passed my final driving test in December 2017, and I’ve accomplished both of those important goals. I had to get all of my Danish and driving classwork in around running a business and my not infrequent travel. It was a grueling 7 months. Much respect to people who are in school and working full-time jobs. I have no desire to do that again any time soon. Also in 2017, Camilla and I started spending our winters in Oaxaca, Mexico, which is an amazing place and has now become our home away from home from January through March. I’ve just started a new site all about Oaxaca as well.

2018 was a pretty fun year with the company since we have been working on expanding our market outside of Drupal. We learned a lot about market research, went to a lot of JavaScript events, and eventually decided to head into the Node.js world (with a little side of Gatsby.js). We’re still working on the new Node site (look for something this spring) and it occupied most of the end of last year for me, along with some other new markets we’re looking into. We also decided to make the big turn of changing the company name from Lullabot Education to Osio Labs. On the personal front, Camilla and I started doing a lot more hiking and backpacking, in Denmark, Sweden, and the U.S. (we had an amazing trip to the Sawtooths in Idaho). From all of that fun outdoor adventures, Camilla has decided to hike the Appalachian Trail this year. It’s about a 6-month trip and she’s starting in March. I’ll be writing more about that (hopefully) in future blog posts.

This year is shaping up to be a pretty exciting and challenging year for me—launching a new product, growing the company, lots of travel, and missing Camilla while she’s hiking—and I may just do some blogging to share the journey a bit.

On-boarding

Once I was elected, and the board confirmed the election results, Holly contacted me to let me know just before announcing it to the entire community. Shortly after that we scheduled a time to get on the phone, and I started getting access to a bunch of documents. I mean a whole bunch!

That first call with Holly was great for getting me oriented. She walked me through logistical things like board meetings, communication, necessary paperwork, and pointing me in the right direction with the documents to look at for various topics and back story. She also asked if I’d ever served on a board before, which I had not, and took time to explain what that means in terms of expectations for board members (things like publicly representing the board and identifying conflicts of interest). She also gave me a summary of the major topics from the last board retreat, which had occurred in January. She continued from there to summarize the big issues that the board was in the middle of discussing and working on, with an idea of what topics we were looking to tackle during the LA retreat in May. This was incredibly useful to prepare me for my first board meeting. I caught up on details by reading the minutes from the January retreat and this year’s monthly board meetings. I didn’t have many questions after my on-boarding and I felt prepared to dive into the conversations that were already ongoing.

One thing that I did right after that call was to set up times to chat one-on-one with the DA staff leadership team. I wanted to hear from each of them what they were working on, and understand what they needed to get from the board (and therefore me) to do their jobs better. It was a great introduction to the work that the staff takes on every day, and helped me clarify what I need to keep focused on to help them. It was also just awesome to get to know them a little more as people, which can be hard to do in our crazy, busy schedules.

Board Email

In addition to documents and phone calls, I was also added to the board email list. It is a pretty low traffic list, but I got to see a few conversations run through there prior to my first meeting. We had a thread to help clarify what info we needed to have for the meeting, and that board members should read reports ahead of time so we could get straight to things in the meeting itself. In addition to internal process things like that, this is also a place where members can raise issues they think we need to discuss or vote on in a meeting.

First Board Meeting

I was elected just a few weeks before the April board meeting, and I wasn’t required to attend that meeting since I was still getting up and running, but I wanted to dive in. Board members are expected to make all monthly board meetings, with at least 10 a year being the minimum to attend. The time is a set time, and so one thing I knew before I even nominated myself was that I would need to make space for this 2-hour call every month on a Wednesday night from 9pm–11pm (since I live in Denmark).

A few days before each board meeting we all receive a meeting packet which has the agenda, phone connection info, links to any presentations or documents we should review, and a list of the DA key performance indicators (KPIs). This board packet is publicly available as well, and you can check them out yourself and even listen in on the board meeting. I spent some time to read everything over and think about what I might want to bring up in the conversation during the meeting.

I didn’t have a whole lot to say as I was just trying to absorb as much as I could. We did however discuss releasing the election results, which I obviously had some thoughts about, having just come through the election process. This issue was a good example of how the DA works with community feedback. We have never released election data in the past, and we hadn’t made that an expectation for candidates, so when people asked for the data, we couldn’t just hand it out with considering a few things. I think we came up with a good solution to be able to release the data for this election, and we now have a plan in place to incorporate this in future elections. You can read more about this decision in Holly’s post 2015 At-Large Election Data Released.

The first part of every board meeting is public (as mentioned above). After the public section, we drop off the phone and meet on another phone line with just the board, Holly, and needed staff. This is a place for us to discuss things that are still in progress, or to handle internal board matters. On this particular call we discussed things like reviewing the Q1 financials and and giving updates on board members’ efforts to help raise funds for D8 Accelerate.

In my next post I’ll give a rundown of the board retreat and my board experience at DrupalCon LA. A lot of people have asked me how I feel about being on the board after the retreat, and I have to say that I’m very happy. I felt the level and direction of conversation was great. I’ll talk more about what that was, and why I’m so pleased, especially compared to my previous DA experience from many years ago.

I’m very aware that as one of the two At-large Directors on the board, I’ve been chosen to represent your voice; the voice of the Drupal community. Please feel free to reach out to me, here on my blog, through Twitter (add1sun), or my Drupal.org profile, to share your thoughts, ideas, and concerns.

Before you dive into the voting, you should probably review the candidates and sort out at least who are your top three picks. You can read individual nominations on the candidates listing page, and you can find recordings for three different “meet the candidates” sessions listed in the sidebar of that same page. Here is my profile, and this is the recorded session I took part in. Don’t forget that you can also ask candidates questions in the comments on our profiles. The reason you want to pick at least a few top candidates is due to the way the voting actually happens.

The DA uses the instant-runoff voting system, also known as the alternative voting system, which is a pretty neat way to do your voting. You can dive into the details of it by reading the Wikipedia article, or watching a quick YouTube video about how it works and comparing it to the more common voting system. The short of it is that instead of picking just one person you want to vote for, you get to rank the candidates in order of preference. Essentially you can pick “fall-back” votes if your first candidate ends up at the bottom of the pile.

For the DA elections, we have 23 candidates all running for one open position. When you get to the voting page, you’re going to see a list of all the candidates, and instead of just checking off one person in the list, you’ll be able to rank all of them. Now, you can rank every single person, but you don’t have to. You can select only one person if you want, or you could pick your top five. You get to choose how many people you rank, and in which order.

Once you’ve completed your ranking, then you just submit your vote, and we’ll find out the results after March 20th. If you change your mind before March 20th, you can also go back to the voting screen and change your vote. This is an important vote where you are selecting someone who will be representing your voice on the Drupal Association Board. Please get out and vote!

Drupal Association

The Drupal Association (then, technically Drupal VZW in Belgium) was created in 2006. It’s been through a lot of changes over the years to bring it to the organization it is today. I was a Permanent Member of the DA in the early days and, I’ll be honest, we were a bunch of well-intentioned people with very little idea of what we were doing. Running the DA is a big job, given that its mission is to support the huge Drupal community, which has only grown exponentially over the years. The DA today has a volunteer Board of Directors which focuses on strategy and oversight of the DA’s work. The DA also has paid staff, who work with community volunteers, to actually implement the solutions for the community’s needs. The two most prominent needs that most people are familiar with are maintaining the Drupal.org family of sites, and managing our DrupalCons. The DA is also the organization that let’s the community accept money, and then put it where it’s needed. This manifests itself in such projects as the Drupal Community Cultivation Grants and the Drupal 8 Accelerate program. As you can see they are doing vital work that keeps our community moving forward, giving people the time, energy, and money to focus on the things they love and want to do.

Board of Directors

The Drupal Association is a non-profit organization. The Board of Directors (Wikipedia definition) is a group of appointed and elected members who oversee the work that the DA is doing. This quote sums up the main tasks of a board:

“The board of directors is the governing body of a nonprofit organization. The responsibilities of the board include discussing and voting on the highest priority issues, setting organizational policies, and hiring and evaluating key staff. Board members are not required to know everything about nonprofit management, but they are expected to act prudently and in the best interests of the organization. They approve operating budgets, establish long-term plans, and carry out fundraising activities.”

Foundation Center

You can get a sense of what this means in a little more detail by looking at the list of Board Committees that they have. These are the main areas of oversight for the board, and consist of board members, DA staff, and community volunteers. Basically, the board needs to make sure the money is being managed properly, and to tackle the hard questions about running a non-profit and supporting a huge, diverse community.

The DA Board is comprised of 10 seats that are appointed directly by the board itself, and 2 at-large seats, which are open to anyone in the Drupal community, and are elected by the community. The board appoints most of the positions to ensure that they have a good breadth of experience and knowledge that is specific to the tasks of the board. The 2 at-large positions are to make sure that the larger community has a direct voice in who is part of making these decisions for them. That brings us to the current election.

At-large Board Elections

Over the last two weeks people from around the community have been nominating themselves. (That’s a requirement. You can’t nominate other people.) These are people who are volunteering for a two-year term to take on the tasks of the board. Every single one of them is stepping up to a huge task. Nominations closed yesterday, so we now have our final list of 24 people from 14 countries. (Which is fricking awesome!)

Over the next two weeks everyone—meaning you—should get familiar with the nominees so you can form an opinion about how you want to vote. We have three 2-hour “Meet the Candidates” sessions coming up next week, on Tuesday/Wednesday (Tuesday 17:00 CET – find your time), Wednesday/Thursday (Thursday 2:00 CET – find your time), and Thursday/Friday (Thursday 21:30 CET – find your time). At these on-line sessions each person will have 5 minutes to introduce themselves and why they are running. You’ll be able to ask us questions directly and get realtime answers. I’ll be attending the Tuesday and Thursday sessions. (I love the community dearly, but I also love to be asleep at 2am.) You can also feel free to leave questions in the comments for an individual’s candidate page. We’ll be monitoring these pages over the next few weeks to answer questions that come in.

Voting

The voting begins on March 9th and goes through March 20th. There are some basic restrictions on who can vote: “Voting is open to all individuals who have a Drupal.org account by the time nominations open and who have logged in at least once in the past year.” Nominations opened on February 9th, so you need a Drupal.org account opened prior to that. I’ll talk more about the voting process in another blog post as we get closer to election time. It’s pretty smart stuff.

Vote for Me!

I have to say that saying “vote for me” and writing up my nomination is a little uncomfortable. It feels too much like boasting and trying to say I’m better than everyone else. I really respect the other candidates, and I can’t really say “I’m better than them.” All I can honestly say is that I’m different from them, as they are each different from me. We all bring passion and a desire to serve the community in different ways. That said, I do feel like my experience matches well with the needs for a board member, and I’d be super stoked to be able to work on some tough issues at the board level. Either way, I’m not going to stop my community work, whether I’m on the board or not. My biggest hope from this election is to see the community participate. Take 30 minutes of your community time to learn what is happening, and take the time to vote. Engage in your, and our community’s, future. That is the greatest reward I can ask for.