Leadership: A Photoessay, Disrupted

Dear Friends,

What a long, strange trip it’s been.  And I haven’t even left yet.  And I won’t be, for a while anyway.

Today I hung up my boots as CEO of a wonderful organization where I was Employee #4 close to six years ago.  If you read my previous post you may remember that I did this in order to adventure mostly in solitude, yet connecting with people in ways I had not done before, and live more mindfully in the present.  Though Cadenza will remain at her mother ship until “TBD” and the Big Red Truck, Con Brio, will remain parked outside my former office as long as they'll let me, I’m pivoting to fulfill my goals in a different and necessary fashion until the storm passes.  Not only are borders and parks under “Cordon Sanitaire,” but my dusty medical skills are needed more urgently than my travel plans are, and my hospitalist husband needs my home cooking.  So - you will find me for the next few months providing telemedicine, volunteering for whatever is called for by the disaster response medical corps here in Philadelphia, and doing whatever is necessary for my household to get through to the other side of what is coming.  These are my true callings, and I took more than one oath to commit to them. 

When I wrote the first post of this blog, I had a whole series of very clever photo essays planned in my mind, illustrating the hopes and fears of my pre-departure period.  You see, in order to live more simply for a year, I had to purchase a veritable mountain of new stuff - some of which already made it onto Instagram.   I’ll eventually get around to Hopes and Fears, but for now I’m re-purposing my album of new stuff as an ode to much needed leadership in a time of crisis:

Visionary

Level Headed

Energetic. And Renewable.

Uplifting. 

Stable.

Supportive.

Responsive

Resilient

 Connected

Explanatory notes:  1) Binoculars, duh 2) Bluetooth level to assist with trailer parking on non level ground 3) 180 Watt portable solar panel “suitcase” to supplement my roof solar. 4) telescoping ladder 5) Stabilizer chock wedges between wheels to prevent front/back movement when parked. 6) Hiking poles, also relevantly shock-absorbing. 7) Result of my one-week course back in January 8). Extra credit if you got this one - it is the material that goes into my composting toilet’s “solids” container, i.e. it can take a lot of shit and doesn’t smell. 9) Five of the nine different two way communication channels backing each other up - four not shown (classified information), eight have unique subscriptions, one runs on love and dog food.

Finally, since I’ve been shouting from the rooftops (and everywhere I can) for the past two weeks, I'm adding a few reminders here too:

Wash your hands!  (Actually these are for washing your dishes but same genre)

Be prepared and help others

When in doubt, monitor your temperature

Practice good social distancing

Eradicate the bug

Wishing you all good health and love.   More to come in this space, all in the spirit of the great journey called life, regardless of the details.      XO,    Katherine