Semper Gumby

In my first-ever job interview at the brand-new US Department of Homeland Security (DHS), my soon-to-be director came in to the interview 45 minutes late in a whirlwind of activity and fuss. He introduced himself, sat down, pounded the table, and said, “My first question is… ARE YOU FLEXIBLE?”

He went on to explain that the department was new, chaotic, and maybe not a place for a person used to very old bureaucracies like the one I was working in at the time (the US Department of the Interior — DOI). Would I be able to roll with it? Because if I could, I could help shape the nascent DHS from its very early years. I opted in.

My next job was at FEMA, also in DHS, and it was so chaotic there that my boss always declared “Semper Gumby!” In other words, “Always Flexible!”

I share those stories as a prelude to a personal update related to my continuing persistent flexibility. Because you never know when someone else needs to hear what you're struggling or succeeding with... and when it might help.

I have a tendency to push myself until I'm raw trying to do some good thing for this country. I did it when I was with the USDA Forest Service. I did it when I was with DOI. I did it at DHS. I've done it the past few years.

Every once in a while it gets me and I have to just stop, and completely reset.

Last week that happened. I hit a point of overwhelm, and it had physical impacts for me.

I won't get into specifics because that's not needed to make the point. Also I really hate talking about health details online because inevitably people will give you unsolicited advice. Leaving out specifics helps mitigate that.

I'm okay. I had the tools to deal with what happened that scared me. But I had to pull away from being online for a few days.

I had to pull away from building what I've been trying to build.

Mostly, I've had to accept some hard realities that what I'd wanted to pull off this fall with Shift the Country isn't going to happen.

It's okay that it isn't.

I can be pissed off and angry and frustrated as much as I want... but it's not going to change a bunch of the challenges that we've run into and just not been able to get past this fast. I would like to be able to blow through stuff, but that doesn't always work. There's only so much time, and there's only so much capability.

It's okay.

Okay maybe it's not okay — but it's what's happening.

Here's what's really good.

I've had someone back this non-profit for enough months that we've been able to get officially established, and to put all of the pieces and parts in place that can help us genuinely and truly operate to work on action and areas that we don't see getting addressed otherwise that we can help with. Particularly in rural parts of this country.

We've had a little bit of other funding come in from regular monthly or annual donors through Patreon and Substack.

That is helping. We've gotten donations through our website as well. That's a good start.

The thing is, the vision for this nonprofit has always been for the long game.

We have deep problems in this country and we need different approaches to deal with them than what's been tried before.

We're not magically creating some new ingenious thing with this organization.

We HAVE put some established strategies together in different ways (these 5 Things, two of which are still being rewritten — Semper Gumby) that can be used to help us collectively build a real and sustainable ground game to help shift this country.

So okay. It is what it is.

We are set up to start building that in very real ways. So we'll be working on that and also support this election as much as we can.

I suspect that things are going to get really intense really fast up in this country, and I think our nascent org can bring some support for that. We will see how this goes.

On the personal side, I took a couple of days to deal with the health stuff, and then I totally lucked out and had family in town. And then got to spend time with some of my other local non-bloodline family that I haven't seen very much at all for several months. I got to hang out with my people at fires two nights in a row. I got to go on a short, unexpected shopping excursion that was kind of hilarious. And today I'm meeting a friend for lunch.

Then I will dig back in to whatever we can pull off over the next few weeks... and we will just see what that ends up looking like.

We can only do what we can do. Physics limits time. Technology, policies, resources or lack thereof, and lots of other things challenge how much you can do with project management over a certain period of time.

You can do what you can do. You can pull your hair out or scream and cry or just be sad or be angry or whatever... but you can simultaneously accept what has unfolded and work with the cards in front of you.

That's resilience, that's acceptance, and that's flexibility.

We're all going to need a hell of a lot of it for whatever's coming.

Things are not going to get easier up in this country. They're going to get more intense — as I already mentioned.

That's just what we're doing. And it's what we're doing for the foreseeable future.

Hiding from it and pretending it's not what's coming isn't going to help.

Working on tools and capacities that can help us navigate this new time can help.

I will continue to do what I can in that regard. And I think we've built a framework that we can collectively apply to have impacts in the real world. Just maybe for a different election than we were shooting for.

That's okay. The point is to help the country. We can. And we damn well will.

Keep the faith. We've got good people. We've got a democracy, and we CAN keep it.

Believing that we can and that we will is going to be so incredibly super critical. So keep that faith. Keep that belief.

Don't forget to breathe. Don't forget to eat. Look after some humans. Look after yourself.

Find some courage, and spread it. That shift is catchy.

Onward.