Braided

Airplanes are amazing portals, and I’m trying to make sense of their power. On the one hand, the trip from Wellington to Washington is a slog. 26 hours of airports and airplanes, turbulence, bad food, aching back, hours standing in line or smashed into too-small seats. On the other hand, it is a full-on miracle that I can just shuffle from place to place, walking from terminal to gate or sitting in a chair, and at the end of a relatively tiny amount of time find myself across an ocean and a continent, in another hemisphere, with access to a whole other life and whole other sets of relationships and work. And really, now that I’m 23 hours into this journey, I realise that it’s like a decompression chamber, the space that regulates the transition from one world to the next. It takes me at least this long to prepare to be in the US, to prepare to be back in NZ. I require this nowhere zone in order to make sense of the somewheres I’ve been.

I have made this journey back and forth across the Pacific again and again, perhaps 10 times in the last 5 years. And so the travel does not surprise me at all (although I’ll admit this one business class leg is pretty spectacular!). The beauty of the southwest US, the endless stretch of Pacific, the tears in my eyes with the first sight of either country, because both of them contain pieces of my heart—all of these are familiar to me. And on this trip I wasn’t going anywhere new or doing anything new and so I didn’t expect that the portal from one world to another would also rearrange my thinking in some new way. Why is it that my thinking would get more rearranged in 10 days in North America than it does in 10 days in New Zealand? I’m not sure. But here, on the plane ride home, I’m filled with the ways I am different and that I think my future may be different from doing the same sorts of things I have always done with people I’ve known and worked with for years.

The most nameable reason for this is the confluence of a variety of different forces which lead to my work being more integrated at the close of this trip than it has ever been before. For the last 15 or more years, I have struggled with the connections between the various parts of my life: the part of me that is a writer, the part that is a researcher, the part that is an organisational consultant, the part that thinks about teaching and learning in schools. Each of those parts has a little space in my life, but they have not lived together in those spaces, have not crossed from one stream to the next except in rare and lovely circumstances.

Suddenly all the pieces braid. It’s hard for me to even hold the way the parts have snaked together, disparate elements with almost nothing in common, held only in place through their connection to me somehow. I have never imagined such integration in my work and don’t even know quite what to do with it. Here, when my life is as dis-integrated as possible, when I feel the breadth and depth of the mighty pacific, the plains and mountains and deserts of this whole broad continent, here they have woven into a clear image, a braid, a integrated whole. My work in educational research at NZCER has expanded into organisational learning and transformational professional development for teachers. My work as an organisational consultant has expanded to be about long term transformational learning. My work as a writer is going to contain the lessons I’m learning in these other spaces. In every context, I will learn things that are useful for the other contexts. In every set of colleagues, I’ll be able to connect things said by another set of colleagues so that we can each hold on to the wisdom of each group, so that all of the people I think with will benefit from the others. My Kenning partners will, through me, add value to my NZCER work. The work I’m doing for clients with Keith will feed into Kenning, and all of it will find its way into a blog or book chapter somewhere. I have this strong eureka feeling about the whole thing, have this desire to talk to people about it until my throat is horse, to bow down at an altar, to offer orchids up to the gods.

Inside all of this delight about this lovely new integration, I have questions which surprise me. Who am I if it’s all integrated? The tornness of my work has been such a key feature in who I am that I hardly recognise my own emotions. And this from someone who has stopped using familiar spelling of words. Did I have to be so physically dis-integrated in order to become more integrated? While my work is integrated so that these different groups can learn and grow from one another, it’s still just me in the middle. I’m the only one who connects across these different spaces; I’m the only one who has conversations with these different people. This means that I find myself somehow at the centre of things rather than at the margins. Suddenly it’s important to folks at Kenning that I report back what I’m doing with Keith, important to the folks at NZCER that I write about the things I’m doing at Kenning. I’m so used to being the one in the background who kind of joins pieces pi n my own head; it’s strange ot be in the foreground and have to carry these pieces from place to place because of how valuable they are to the group. When you’ve set up house in the margins, suddenly the work at the centre becomes a little more public and, well, maybe more centred than feels comfortable.

So there’s no shortage of learning in this space for me, learning about the different strands in this braid, about the weight and heft of the braid itself, and about who I am in these new spaces. This wasn’t the work I was expecting to come out of these 10 days in North America, but this is what I’ve found here, amongst the cherry blossoms and the Harvard students. Now if I could only find the silver pin I lost here too….

PS Pictures today from my long weekend back in NZ. The first one is of Jeff, one of the two best bosses I've ever had, who is visiting for a few days on his sabbatical and showing my kids how to paint (more on this later I hope); sunset from my living room; the sea in front of our house.

Classy

What a funny travel day. Some number of hours ago I woke up at Jane’s house in Cambridge, ate yummy breakfast with her, and sat on her sofa and talked and talked. Then it was off to do a couple of errands, culminating with a trip to the Nerbury Street consignment shops I love so much (heaps of stores out of business on tony Newbury street, but the second hand stores seem to be feeling no pain). One pair of pants and a cushy purple cashmere sweater later (total= $40), we were off to the airport to get me there 2 hours ahead of my flight. But why oh why do we have to be there two hours early? Checked the bags, made it through security, bought lunch to eat on the plane and still I had 90 minutes to wait. So I watched the travellers and searched for a plug and tried to psyche myself up for work. And as I wandered around the full waiting area, I saw a very large woman in bright clothes with magenta hair, talking loudly on the phone and smacking her gum,. Perhaps even her size and sound would have escaped me until my eye lit on her forearm which was almost completely covered with a huge and hairy mole. Because I am not as good a person as I would like to be, I became aware of a wish that this woman would not be seated exactly next to me. I, who have often been the dreaded seat companion, baby in tow, knew this was unkind, and I tried to not think it, but the karma had been spent and, upon boarding, I found myself snuggled up next to the only person I had meant to avoid.

And snuggled we were, as she overtook her seat and came into mine. And there I wrestled with myself, feeling irritated because the loss of a couple of inches of my seat is actually a fairly large percentage given how tiny these seats are; feeling guilty because these are uncharitable thoughts and I am very lucky not to wrestle with my weight as she might and while my movement was restricted by the size of the seats and the size of my companion, she was wedged into the seat so tightly that she couldn’t even cross her legs. As she jiggled in her seat to the very loud music on her headphones, I tried to squash my tiny laptop in the only open space available and hope that the woman in front of me wouldn’t suddenly recline even more, further reducing the square inches available to me. And so I argued with myself in my mind over the course of the trip, my seatmate's arm pressed to mine, her leg hard up against my leg. I imagined how one might ask to be reseated under these circumstances. I watched the various ways I am not as nice a person as I’d like to be.

Finally, six-hour flight over, I had the merciful release of freedom of movement again in the wilds of the LAX airport. I dodged puddles walking from one terminal to the next in the drizzly fog (who ever heard of such weather in LA?) to get to the Air New Zealand terminal and the last step to home. There, I heard the most beautiful words, “Your upgrade has come through,” and I took from the hands of the angel behind the counter the business class ticket I had purchased with my many frequent flier miles.

This ticket is like crossing a portal into another world. My experience in the cattle class of the first flight, my body intimately pressed against the stranger next to me, my laptop screen dipped to a nearly-illegible angle, is a different world from this, my first foray into the world of the business class traveller. The pod from which I write, 10 hours into the flight, has walls on either side, keeping even my eyes from alighting on another passenger. I have woken from a 7.5 hour sleep which I mostly did on my stomach and side on these flat beds. This is as unlike air travel as anything I’ve ever experienced. The attendants trip over each other in the aisles, so eager are they to attend to our every need. I can watch any movie I like, keep my seat back reclined during take off and landing, and basically act like the queen of the world which, right this moment, I am.

Now I know that the ticket for this seat, should I have paid cash rather than frequent flier miles for it, is between five and ten TIMES the cost of the seats I have always ridden in before. And in some ways that makes sense as I’m taking up the room on this flight into which several very large women could squash themselves. And I feel ambivalent here too, thinking about the carbon miles that go into this luxurious ride, about the unequal and disturbing class distinctions that I am enacting—this time from the position of power. And I also know that the arguments I’m having with myself and my values in this seat are less passionate than the arguments I was having with myself and my values in the last seat. Why would I be less worried about my movement into the unfair upper class rather than my oppression by the size of my large neighbour? Mostly because I’ve been too busy eating lovely food, drinking fine Pinot Noir, and sleeping on my stomach for the last 10 hours. With so much to do, how can a girl fit in a push for social justice as well?

Finishing up

And now it's all behind me. I'm posting from LAX, about to board my plane to fly back back over the Pacific and back to the kids and the man and the dog and the beach and my friends and my job and and and.
But first, a picture or two from The Big Stage. The first two are pre-lecture, the last one is post-lecture. Now I just have to figure out what this whole thing means to me. Hmmm.

where in the world is jgb?

Working her tail off on a whole other side of the world. Two days in DC, 2 days in Montreal, now 4 days in Cambridge. There is so much to say that I'm speechless. Enjoy pictures from the only sunny day of the trip...

limbic connection

Tonight, cuddling in a big family pile on the couch, I asked Aidan what it was like to be loved as much as he is loved. He laughed and said, “It is so good in my limbic system!” This shows that we’re geeks here to talk about these things, but it’s also so true. What beautiful limbic systems we must have.

It has been one of those days where I wonder why on earth I’d ever leave New Zealand. I had a lovely day working on the leadership development programme I’m teaching right now and feeling the deep and abiding satisfaction of helping people come to a new place with their skills and relationships. Then it was to school to watch Naomi’s netball trials, Aidan playing in the schoolyard around us. It was too sparkling an autumn day to stay at home at the end of the practice, so we headed out to the big sweeping low-tide beach. The sun was hot and the wind was cold; there were goosebumps on my bare legs, but the sand was soft and warm underfoot. We walked to the stream because Aidan wanted to climb and build and play there. Once we arrived, Naomi, oh-so-grownup now, told me that she would neither climb nor play nor build, because she was too mature to do such things. But she said it with a lilt, teasing herself as much as she was teasing me. And when she passed by me 90 seconds later, her arms filled with driftwood, she explained that she was not building nor playing but rather creating a way to cross the stream. When I pointed out that she could perhaps use the bridge to cross the stream, she turned pointedly away from the big bridge span and returned to her driftwood piles. The rest of the time there was spent in the earnest construction of a bridge structure (as it has been every time we’ve been to the stream in the past two years) and the pealing laughter and adolescent shrieking when the bridge turned out to be less reliable than planned.

On the way home, Naomi kept the subtle mocking tone. Pulling my arm tight around her, she teased about the hideous puddle (the sea), the vast rubbish piles (the hills) and the annoying mud (sand) underneath us. We laughed about how ugly it was in the sparkling sun. She affected the humourless big girl who was finding everything boring and impossible, and then disintegrated into giggles. We chased each other through the shallow water, our mirror images laughing and splashing along with us.

So here is the great benefit of this mother-of-a-tween life. Naomi is big enough to be incredibly interesting, her ironic sense of humour making me laugh so hard tears poured down my face in the wind. And she’s small enough to still want my arm wrapped hard against her, still want to stop and hug me in the sunlight. She is aware enough of her own foibles to be playful with them, even as she is caught by them. She knows that her perfectionist tendencies are absurd, and she is still a perfectionist. She knows her jealousy of a friend is limiting, and still she is jealous. She is big enough to watch herself—and feel amused, dismayed, proud, frustrated, joyful. And I watch her and feel all those things too.

Today was just about joy, though, about a dog running in circles the stream, Naomi’s purple jandal flip-flopping in his mouth. It was about cuddling on the couch while a smelly wet dog left sandy dog prints all around us. It was about admiring my children so hard I thought my heart might burst. There are times when parenting seems a trial, when every sentence feels like a conflict, when every word is a limit that needs setting. And there are days like today, when each act of parenting feels like a gift, when I don’t even regret that I’ll never hold my sweet baby children in my arms again because holding my lanky articulate children is so uniquely satisfying.

May each of you, gentle readers, be filled with love for someone precious today. It’s really good in your limbic system.

Powerless

It is the long-awaited Friday of The Busy Week. I have taught things to university faculty, conservationists, and judges. My new job was announced at work in my absence. I have seen a dear friend launch her new CD and walked around a thermal lake edged by boiling mud. To say I am full-up would be an understatement.

Today was to be my wind-down day. It is the day when I could call my parents for a long talk while I cleaned a house made ragged by my busy period. It was a day when I could go through and answer the important but not urgent email that has been building up in my in-box. It was a day for sending invoices and tidying up. It was a day for regaining connection and regaining control.

When the power first went off this morning, I was mostly untroubled. The power sometimes goes out here, but never for very long. And while I can’t be on the phone or the internet while the power is out, I figured I could take a few minutes over breakfast and just sit and stare at the waves and listen to the surf. A bigger deal is that a colleague is coming to stay tonight, and very late last night when I got home from Melissa’s concert, I didn’t have time to email my future guests with directions to the house. They were to call in the morning, which now wasn’t going to be that helpful as the phones all require power. And I couldn’t email them, because I had no internet.

I called Michael to ask a quick question and mentioned that I hoped the power would come back really soon. “Oh yeah, today is the day it’s out from 9 until 3,” he told me. I can almost not describe the panic that welled up inside me as I realised that each of my plans was attached to the electric wire. I felt waves of sorrow. Not to hear my dad’s voice today? Not to clear out my inbox and write to the friends and colleagues who need my attention? Not even to blast my music and clean the house? I ached with frustration at my day’s plans now in ruins at my feet.

After solving the problem of the colleague who might think I was blowing her off, I sat down to collect myself. These are times in general when we are called to turn challenges into opportunities to be different than we were before. The financial crisis does this, and here this little micro challenge did it too. In many ways, it’s the same challenge. In a world of finite resources (with time being the most finite of all resources and money looking importantly finite), the loss of something we thought we had is devastating. Watching our retirement savings dwindle to negligible amounts this past year has been life altering even if I don’t know what the lessons are. Similarly, the passing of a day without any of the connections or accomplishments I’ve craved is somehow a void, a removal of a felt promise of time.

It wasn’t until I tried to reframe the day from a ruin to a fresh possibility that I recognised what my tunnel vision had done. I had not considered a walk on the beach. I had not considered finishing Twilight (which, ok, everyone is reading but is seriously compelling all the same). I had not considered a day in the garden or painting the cottage out back or or or. My eyes, focused on my plans, missed the possibilities.

The power is due back on in 45 minutes. I have scrubbed the house and kneaded bread dough for challah tonight and rearranged some furniture. I have unpacked from my trip and written this blog. I have taken a little nap. I have spent the day on these little bits of trivia and not felt the little twinge of responsibility saying that I should be doing something else all the time, accomplishing more, not wasting my time. I know that each of these activities would have given me pause on any other day. But today I can putter and knead and stare and dream. Somehow I’m powerless to be productive, which gives me a whole new set of powers. Who knew there was so much possibility for getting what you really need on a day when you don’t get what you wanted?

ps pictures today from the trip to Rotorua, and of us eating our first dinner on the new deck!

Work work balance

It is the start of a busy week in a very busy season. I’m on a train Saturday morning at first light. I’ve left my house before the sun to start a week that is representative of the weird corners of my life right now. Today I’m off to Christchurch, hoping that the skies, cloudy here, will be clear on the flight down so that I can catch a glimpse of mountains on this short flight, snow-capped from the first fall of early autumn snow.

Today I’ll present about Kegan’s theory today to a group of researchers who are thinking about knowledge. They want to understand the connections between New Zealand’s new curriculum, the way schools need to change to face the 21st century needs, and the way teachers make sense of diversity. And they think that Kegan will help them with that.

Monday I’ll head to work at NZCER and wrestle with large issues in the world and important issues in our organisation (for the blog we’re writing about helping to shift education into the 21st century, click here).

Tuesday I’ll facilitate at a meeting at an organisation where I’ve been doing lots of leadership development work. It’s an interesting request for them to have me come in for this meeting between the chief executive and some of his senior leaders. About half of those leaders have been through a quick programme with me (and Keith), and the organisation is wanting them to both use those leadership skills/habits/ways of thinking to change the way this meeting feels.. Wednesday Keith and I will do a one-day programme with the senior team in that same organisation (would be nicer if these went in the opposite direction, but such is life). And Thursday Keith and I will give a two-hour keynote workshop to the New Zealand District Court Judges about how they might think in new ways about their work and their growth.

So it’s a week where I teach about development to researchers, teach about development to leaders to help them develop, use developmental ideas to teach about leadership, and finally use all these ideas to help leaders begin to enact change in a real-time situation.

This is not just a to-do list of my week so you’ll understand the silence or write to me with sympathy. This is the braid of my work life that I’m trying to understand, the mix of my activities in proportions I’m trying to get right. I love each of these pieces, love the braiding of research, practice, and teaching. I relish the opportunity to touch them all in a single week, to test my own knowledge and have it bump up against these many varied situations, to have the proximity of these different ways of thinking about and working on the same basic problem (how do adults grow on the job?).

And at the same time, it’s such a disjointed and fragmented list. Half of the groups I’ll work with this week I’ll never see again; the other half I am getting so immersed in I can hardly see anything else. I’ll move from context to context, teaching the same thing more than once but in these different ways; I’ll be surprised if I don’t screw up the presentations, lose the one I’m doing now for the one I’m doing next, find myself blinking, doe-in-the-headlights wondering which group this was again.

I have been wrestling with this coherence problem my entire work life. I am not interested in doing one piece of this work—am not wanting to give up the research or the writing or the teaching or the consulting. But there isn’t one job with all those bits. And so I do a piece of this here, a piece of that there, and hope that in the end these little bits add up to something bigger than the sum of hundreds of day-long workshops. It’s so hard to see the pattern of my life as I’m weaving it. Enough of this shade? Too much of that one? And how does it contribute to the knowledge base in the world? How does it contribute to the lives of individuals? To the mission of organisations? I’m not sure, and maybe won’t ever know until it’s behind me. Seems a hard way to craft a work life, especially when you’ve only got the option to write a first draft of life, without being able to go back and edit and rewrite.

Today I’ll fly off into the grey clouds. Monday I’ll meet with Robyn and think about my work life at my day job. I am excited to be in the space I’m in here; it is a privilege and an honour to be with people in the many ways I have to do that. And in two weeks, I’ll get the vantage point on my life that only travel offers when I head to the US. Fasten your seatbelts. In a time like this, there is always the potential for unexpected turbulence.

ps The picture today is just a randomly beautiful sunset from last week. And I can't even describe how magnificent the plane ride home was. Seriously, this is the most beautiful place I have ever seen, and it's changingly beautiful again and again and again...