A Personal Note After A Few Weeks Of Quiet
Life + "Character-Building Opportunities" In A Time Of Transformation
“Character Building Opportunities”
When we first started putting the board together for this nonprofit way back in 2020, I talked to potential board members about what this work would be like — because we’d be creating a new nonprofit in a time of great challenge, instability, and transformation.
“It’s going to be messy,” I said, “We’re going to need to be flexible… and resilient. Life stuff is going to come up for all of us and it’s going to be tricky to keep this thing going through whatever chaos is coming. And we won’t know what that is ‘til it hits.” And so on.
Uh, yeah.
I’d like it if we didn’t need to be quite so damn flexible and resilient already… but I suspect there’s actually way more need for that coming — and not less.
It’s like “character-building” in life. We might all prefer way less character-building “opportunities,” but that’s not often how life works out. So, uh, America… I think we’re about to build some pretty serious additional character. Although I’m sure that’s not news for anyone reading this.
There is the saying, “May you live in interesting times.”
Yeah: done. We’re there.
Despite all my yapping about getting resilient, our growing nascent nonprofit coalition/team doesn’t have nearly enough resilience in place yet to keep this effort humming along when I’m down for the count… and I have indeed been a little out-of-service. We don’t yet have a lot of depth or resilience here quite yet in terms of a large volunteer corps helping with writing, etc.; we don’t have staff yet since we’re still at the beginning and I’m also the one doing the fundraising.
As such, when I go out-of-service things on the public front (like this newsletter) get awfully quiet. A bright spot: we have had several volunteers/moderators keeping the lights and discussions going in our Facebook group, so that’s been really neat.
Behind The Scenes
In very good news, we (the work of this nonprofit) have been pretty active behind the scenes in lots of volunteer conversations and some neat progress. But, there’s a lot of struggle, too. We’re not quite where we need to be in terms of traction, momentum, volunteer activity, funding, outreach, and all that kind of stuff.
We are so very, very close. But not quite where we need to be to be sustainable, and then to grow an actual movement. Close, though. And making progress.
Behind the scenes, I’ve been struggling because we haven’t brought in nearly enough money yet this year for this thing to be sustainable where I can work at it full time... even though I’ve been working at it way more than full time (fund tracker here; actual amount is about $1,400 more than what shows).
I’m not writing this to garner sympathy and donations. I’m writing this because it’s true, and because I need to practice telling it like it is. Also also, we do need donations, and I need to get better at asking for them. So if you are in a position to help out, we could really, really use it:
Behind the scenes I’ve been struggling because we don’t quite have the level of volunteer engagement we need to get things humming along better. We need volunteers in about 8 areas for what we’d like to pull off this fall; I need to tweak the volunteer sign-up thingy to account for that (versus what’s on there now). I need to write a post here with the updates once they’re made to our database.
Most critically, we need to actually get groups of volunteers together to start working on things together. Right now, I talk to many individual volunteers behind the scenes… but we need more teamwork to get the dream to work. Stuff like that.
Also, despite having lots of volunteers signed up, we’re getting almost no response when we actually try to get volunteers together. So that could mean a few things, but it adds more “character-building opportunities” and “challenges” to figure out what we could change to get different engagement (tech, event approaches, outreach approaches, messaging clarity and resonance, etc).
Behind the scenes, in late spring and early summer I scheduled countless webinars and events to grow engagement and to help recruit volunteers. I played with the schedule and marketing a bit to see what brought in participation and interest. We were able to run a few social media ads with specific ad support from a backer, but we did not have enough cash to bring in big enough participation numbers once we found ad combinations that seemed to resonate. We met some great people, but we’re going to need way more.
The lists go on, but you get the idea. This is tough. It’s tough… but it is also doable.
It is very, very difficult to create something out of nothing… outside the political establishment, outside of DC, without startup funding, and without wealthy (known!) connections.
It’s tough but it is also doable.
I wouldn’t keep at it if I wasn’t 100% convinced that we’re working in gap areas that other groups are still not yet addressing. It’s very meta, very strategic, and very big-picture… and we’re very close to getting enough traction to be sustainable.
How have we made it this far?
I have sheer, bloody force of will and stupid perseverance — combined with some of all of you helping at just the right moments, too. It’s been a team effort, for sure.
Anyway, it’s a lot… and some days I have to cut myself some slack. In recent weeks, I’ve backed off from writing here more often to move some of these other things forward — and also just to deal with some life stuff.
It is no small feat to try to keep the lights (and tech) on while also working to build momentum, while talking with volunteers, while problem-solving, while trying to do proper fundraising, while brainstorming next steps, and while trying to figure out the best action in any given moment.
It’s all part of the flexibility and resilience we need to keep this nonprofit going and to grow it… but sometimes it’s a little more “character-building opportunity” than a person really wants to experience. I’m getting better at asking for help. -Ish. The ramping-shift-up plan is constantly changing based on what works and what doesn’t. Our volunteer team is growing. Whenever we get an audience with a new group, we find that people want what we’re growing. We just need to get a bit bigger audience and a few more resources. And then, of course — to go all out with the work, with better messaging, with more content, and mostly with more action. One thing at a time.
You can see how I get overwhelmed. I want to just go at this at a dead run. That, of course, is not sustainable or practical.
Oh! And then there’s real life, too.
Personal Resilience… And Stuff
You have to have personal wherewithal to keep going through tough stuff… and my personal wherewithal sort of bottomed-out this summer. I didn’t know that was going to happen, but here we are six weeks or so later and I see that I’ve hit some rough spots.
Most recently, I had covid.
Yep! It’s still a thing! You’d never know it to hear from our state government (Iowa), but here we are. So I lost about two solid weeks of productivity from covid (my second round) — first from absolutely ridiculous nausea; then from being the sickest I’ve ever been; then from urgent care and then the ER due to low oxygen; then from days on Paxlovid; then from another urgent care run; and then from a ridiculous need to sleep even though I seemed to be getting back to “normal”-ish. None of this was helped by hardly eating… and that hasn’t been helped by losing my sense of smell/taste which is more jarring and unsettling than I’d have expected. It’s just weird.
So, yeah. Covid. And I’m not like a salaried employee. When I’m not working on this, money doesn’t come in (except for a cadre of intrepid, awesome monthly supporters here on Substack and also on Patreon) because when I’m sick I’m not doing anything to encourage money coming in in any way. So that’s problematic.
But then there’s also been other life stuff.
There’s family stuff happening that’s not my story to tell, but which is a big part of life.
I’ve had a couple of dating developments that have ended up being pretty complicated, and tough to process. You build connections with people and then, you know, life stuff happens and sometimes it’s just really hard. And then when a relationship doesn’t work… you’re back to the dating pool minefield of dead fish, motorcycles, and missing communication skills. It’s a high-stakes, low-scenery, choose-your-own-adventure rollercoaster and you never know where you’ll end up after you throw the dice.
Then there’s just other random stuff. One weekend after a lovely dinner with friends I ran smack-dab into an unexpected trauma reminder from when I was a teenager. It was like traveling through a time warp; including with all the senses. That happened on one of those surreal dystopian days when the Canadian wildfire smoke was super heavy around central Iowa. The strangeness of the smoke combined with local fog during prime lightning-bug season was beyond surreal; after the trauma-time-jump it was all a little much. I tried to write about it here on Substack the next day… and ended up remembering after hours of writing about it why I don’t write about my own trauma experiences. All of it is too damn interconnected with so much other trauma. Sheesh. As it is I can’t tell a short story. I’m better off not even telling the trauma stories. Nope.
Once I remembered that I’d figured that out before and I could stop trying to write about it, I was better. At least partly — although it still took me several days to recover from the breathtaking surprise of the trauma-time-jump experience that I unwittingly happened upon.
Plus: ADHD
Somewhere in all that, I finally took the time to read up on ADHD and figured out that yeah… ADHD appears to have been a factor for most of my five decades on the planet. My current doctor has encouraged me to get a formal ADHD evaluation for about a year and a half. I’ve put it off due to other health priorities.
I fully recognize that me reading about it in detail finally is not a diagnosis, but I also recognize that reading about the details of other people experiencing what I just thought was part of normal life but isn’t hit like a ton of bricks. ADHD explains so much of hours and hours and hours and hours of frustration and exasperation over… decades. So yes I will go through the formal diagnosis process. But that could take months or years given the state of mental health in the US, and I can start learning more now that will be helpful.
Girls and women are historically underdiagnosed. Even with that frustrating knowledge, I struggle to imagine anyone on my journey through my teens and twenties who would have been in a position to figure it out and get me some services or something to help. It wasn’t a thing that was done, really, as I came of age.
I find it super cool now that there are so many resources available about this. But I also find it super frustrating that maybe I could have had access to some of these resources and tools and coping mechanisms maybe years earlier. I’m not sure how, exactly. But there’s frustration, and I’m sure there will be more grieving. It’s part of processing.
The thing is… I finally took the time to read up on ADHD because I kept hitting walls of overwhelm and focus trouble trying to figure out how to navigate the next best steps for creating something out of nothing with this nonprofit. Some days are very, very hard with this work — and my motley crew of advisors are not always available to help me work through the trickiest bits. Some days I just hit a wall and freeze.
The day I did the deep-dive reading on ADHD was a tough one. There will be a lot of emotion about all this. That being said, since I’ve figured out about the ADHD I’ve basically been sick with covid… so some of the ADHD processing and paradigm-shifting is by now well underway. It’s going to take a while, but perhaps now I’ll have (and get) some better tools for dealing with ADHD. That being said, one of my least favourite things on the interwebs is unsolicited health advice, so I would ask for not having that here if possible. I am interested in hearing from others on how they navigate ADHD, though, for sure. That’s a whole different thing than medical advice, and certainly part of building connection and community in its own way.
Finally, ADHD explains some of the unusual-ness of, well, my entire life. I’ve always had highly unique jobs. I’ve always sort of made my own way and my own rules and usually — in some way — my own schedule. Overall, I am more than a little bit abby-normal in the intensity of my life. The work here at Shift the Country is almost certainly a product of the hyperfocus of ADHD as well as some of its other “features.” Yet the ADHD makes that very work very tough sometimes, too.
Why am I sharing all this?
Well, lots of good reasons for doing so.
The Power of Stories & Vulnerability
One of those reasons is because telling our own stories can be helpful in so many ways. They don’t have to be stories of all the things. Like for me I know there are some stories I don’t tell (like an array of traumatic things, as noted above). But they can be stories of some of the things. And you never know which part of your story will resonate for someone else in any given moment.
We’re going to need to get better at that — all of us. Vulnerability builds connection. Sharing builds connection. Stories highlight and underscore and celebrate and process our humanity.
So with that, I’m going to endeavor to tell more of my own stories and struggles. Like some of the behind-the-scenes here above. We’ll see how this goes, because there are some vulnerabilities I do not like getting into. And I don’t necessarily have to.
Bigger Leaps
I do need to get into some stuff. I need to get way more uncomfortable. I need to be on video. I need to take bigger leaps. I need to reach out individually to dozens of groups and hundreds of people. I need to write a post with a giant list of all the ideas people could try to start getting shift to happen, and then make a video of the same stuff. We can do more with the Facebook group, where we are already have very neat stuff happening. I need to write more here on this platform. We need more writers, too. Eventually here we need a podcast. We need more of our stuff on social media. We probably need to be on more social media channels.
There are about a million things. Once again, you can see how I start spinning up… but have to pull it back to “manageable.” Whatever “manageable” means.
So. Over the next few weeks, hopefully we’ll be publishing a whole lot more content here and wherever. Hopefully it’s more than just me doing that, too.
We’ll see if we can actually pull that off. My big plans and ideas don’t always work.
But they come close. And we adjust and learn and grow and go at it again.
That’s how we’re going to get this shift done. One day at a time, one effort at a time, and adding more and more people in all the time.
Thank you for whatever you have done to support this work and to help us get this far. Thank you for reading or for skimming this post.
I hope you and yours are doing okay. There’s so much going on up in this country, and we will really need to be looking after each other more and more as shift intensifies. This world-transformation stuff is real, and it’s underway. We’re going to need each other as we go through. That’s a lot of what this Shift the Country work can help with. We’ll be more resilient and better able to make change during the transformation if we can help each other through it, too. Me included — and you included. All of us.
Okay. Be well, be safe, and try not to get dead.
Onward.