Patterns and potholes
Working with the seasons for a change.
Welcome to Tomorrow’s Edge. And happy new year!
Whatever your to-do list and ritual plans for this Tuesday were, I hope you spent some time in your softest pants, relaxed into your most comfortable chair, and put 2024 to bed in your own way.
I wrapped up my annual reflection, mopped the kitchen floor, slid into some PJs, and said to my partner, “I regret to inform you that I’m not doing anything else today.”
Of course marking the turning year is rarely as simple as refusal. But returning stuff to the hardware store really will wait. Sorting clothes from my recent move, that’ll wait too. There’s no outstanding task or rite that will now be timestamped 2024, including this note to you. Every other undone thing that could wait, will.
I felt hibernation energy hit my body-mind-spirit before Thanksgiving, as the cold and dark started creeping across the mid-Atlantic and I ran out of the reserves I usually use to push through. My last organization slowed down around November so that staff could take owed time off before losing their leave balances at the year’s end. I expect former colleagues to start ramping up again when they return to work next week. But it’s still winter for me, not spring, and the pattern of working against the seasons rather than with them doesn’t work for me anymore.
I’ve been trained to work and rest in a regular rhythm all my life thanks to a family tradition of Sabbath observance. When I clock out on Friday afternoons, I don’t stop working because my work is done. I stop because I’m done. Work worth doing strains the limits of the clock and the timesheet. Every week, we give our best to the part of the work that has our name on it, and then we lay it down for a day whether it’s finished or not.
During that day, common tasks paused, I sink into stories, trends, and timelines larger and longer than my own life and point of view. The day crowns the previous week; each one also ends with a blessing for the work to come. Any incomplete tasks and unanswered questions slide onto the next week’s to-do list. We’ll pick them up again on the other side.
It’s not that work is unimportant so we can drop it at whim. It’s that work’s important enough for us to scope and pace it sustainably. What’s worth doing is worth doing in a way that keeps people whole, that wraps workers in healthy and psychologically safe conditions, and that resists, withdraws consent from, and replaces work cultures that extract labor without nourishing, gnaw at our self-worth, and leave us stressed and sweating with dread on Sunday afternoons.
We’re not machines. We’re not enslaved. We get to rest, work, and rest again, in that order.
Because of this tradition, I get a reminder every seven days that my life is more than work and my value exceeds what I can produce. I have limits, I vary, and I fail, just as truly as I blast through obstacles, relish consistency, and accomplish plenty. My combination of limits and miracles is what it means for me to be human, and I’m learning not to rebel against it.
These days I can’t always predict which part of my humanity will show up, and it’s very unsettling! But the uncertainty nudges me a little more every day toward humility, curiosity, and community. It invites me to float with life’s river rather than grip it tight or try to corral it with my hands. This is a season of Let The Current Carry Me. I cannot do it all, and I do not want to. For all of that knowing, as disorienting as it has been recently, I’m grateful.
My people aren’t float-with-the-river people. I come from swim-across-oceans, work-til-you’re-82, fight-upstream-for-the-common-good types. I… we… need the discipline and counter-practice of Sabbath and sabbatical seasons, especially now.
I’m starting this year 2025 with some of the same questions I started 2024 with:
What does it mean to thrive?
How can democracy—shared decision-making, voice and belonging for all—become accessible to everyone, not just to people with power and wealth?
What kinds of stories help us practice being community to each other, in some cases for the first time?
Unlike last year, though, I won’t be exploring those questions through a job, an organization, or any single religious perspective. You’ll find me exploring them through Building a Moral Economy, and on the river of life, floating.
I’ll have learned some things by March-ish, and I’ll share.
In the meantime, maybe you’ve heard this one:
“I walk down the street. There is a deep hole in the sidewalk. I fall in. I am lost... I am helpless. It isn't my fault. It takes forever to find a way out. I walk down the same street. There is a deep hole in the sidewalk. I pretend I don't see it. I fall in again. I can't believe I am in the same place. But, it isn't my fault. It still takes me a long time to get out. I walk down the same street. There is a deep hole in the sidewalk. I see it is there. I still fall in. It's a habit. My eyes are open. I know where I am. It is my fault. I get out immediately. I walk down the same street. There is a deep hole in the sidewalk. I walk around it. I walk down another street.”
―Portia Nelson, There's a Hole in My Sidewalk: The Romance of Self-Discovery
Wisdom doesn’t just recognize patterns. It doesn’t even clock those patterns and draw an insight about them. Wisdom will note a pattern, draw an insight, then act on that knowledge to make a different choice. It’s putting what we know to use that makes us wise.
I’m exploring my patterns and making new choices this year. What patterns will you work with in 2025? If you don’t have your answer already, today is only Day 1 of a new year and it can be Day 1 of the rest of your life if you want it to be. There’s still time not just to see patterns or process them but also to choose differently, learn what effect those choices have in your life, and choose again as you will.
There’s still time, friends. Whether you’re hibernating to figure it out like me or working it out as you trudge through the cold, it’s still winter now.
Spring will come.
Five Things
The United States is scheduled to swear in its next president on Martin Luther King Day this year (January 20). My programming plans for that day have now changed, but it’ll still be a good day to reflect on:
Where this country’s headed and what we can learn from other countries facing similar challenges;
Where we keep getting tripped up (power, money, and violence are three recurring characters); and
How those of us living life outside of positions of formal power can influence what happens next.
Five notes helping me think this all through:
What happened with voter turnout two months ago? “Since the start of the pandemic, people are looking at what their lives are right now and saying: I want something other than this… Offered full-fat and low-calorie versions of the same agenda, swing voters opt for the former and disaffected surge voters stay home.” —Anat Shenker-Osorio, “The Electoral Problem for Democrats: It’s the Neoliberalism”
What do we owe people we don’t even know? “We have to dismantle this facile discourse around community as some kind of genie that will just appear from a lamp to save us. I know we have to extend our gaze beyond the people we see and interact with everyday to consider those we might never meet.” —Raksha Vasudevan, “Against Community”
How did the Movement for Black Lives encourage civic participation… and why are some former organizers and genocide protesters dropping out now? “The kind of revolution BLM offered, in other words, was our way out of existential despair. It still is. The problem is that now that our existential dread, the lack of accountability of our system, and the deadened hope of anti-Trump voters and young people has set in, we are in a worse and harder place when it comes to rekindling it… Until we face our existential dread with existential ecstasy and verve, we will also lose… As soon as we return to our revolutionary movements, the sooner we will get to freedom.” —Elad Nehorai, “The Deeper Reasons the Democrats Lost”
What’s there to be hopeful about? “We are not on the cusp of positive transformation, but that does not mean that all hope is lost or that we cannot breathe new worlds into being… Accept that, no matter how hard we fight, there are harms we will not halt. If that awareness brings tears to your eyes, then weep. Spend time with your grief, share it, and find comfort in your loved ones. Engage with the land and water, and feel your connection to the biosphere we must defend. Immerse yourself in art, music, and all that remains beautiful in this world. Humanity is flawed, but our capacity for kindness, connection, and transformation is real, too. Take solace in decency—it’s still there.” —Kelly Hayes, “Beyond the Blame: Fighting for Each Other in the Face of Fascism”
What else should we be doing? “We need to build up independent, class-conscious, multiracial organizations such as the Working Families Party, the Poor People’s Campaign, and their allies, not simply to enter the electoral arena but to effectively exercise the power to dispel ruling class lies about how our economy and society actually work. The only way out of this mess is learning to think like a class. It’s all of us or none.” —Robin D. G. Kelley, “Notes on Fighting Trumpism” (Boston Review)
Some housekeeping
I’ve seen several new direct subscriptions and follows on Substack in the last few weeks, but am not convinced all of those email addresses are human-operated.
So I’ve made some changes to the newsletter’s sign-up process and, going forward, will be watching open rates and unsubscribing list members I can’t reliably reach.
I keep this platform online to connect with real people and want you to get content that supports you. I’m not Meta: I’m not going to inflict AI on you, and this will only work if I keep the channel as clear of bots as I can.
Heads up and much love!
—Keisha