The High Priestess—staying quiet and still to listen to intuition and inner knowing, not sharing all knowledge immediately, guarding some to yourself

“A period of passive withdrawal can enrich our lives by allowing things inside to awaken.”—Seventy-Eight Degrees of Wisdom, Rachel Pollack

Updates From the Captain’s (b)Log

On the advice of a meditation teacher I like (Matthew Hepburn), I have a reminder set on my phone each morning that asks me

What will you be grateful for today?

Instead of reflecting on gratitude at the end of the day, this sets me up for a proactive mindset of appreciation to head into the day.

Recently, a lot of the things I’ve been attentively grateful for could be grouped in the larger category of “ease”. I’m appreciating the aspects of my life where I have ease, especially in a time that feels anything but easy. Sometimes those are things I’m very aware of (like the fact that I can work on the porch or by the pool). And sometimes, focusing on my gratitude for ease helps me identify it where I wasn’t noticing it already (like the fact that taking on pet/house sitting gigs has lessened my anxieties about money).

Ease doesn’t come to me naturally. Gentle striving is one of the things on my map for 2026, my Year of Attunement, and as I figure out how to offer work that people want and that feels valuable, I’m doing my best to not turn that into the kind of career-ambition, hard-charging drive that catches so many of us up in its capitalist clutches.

Part of what that’s letting me do is lean into the work that feels most called for in this moment, even as it’s new and unproven. In the way that “pivot” seemed to be the unofficial work word of 2020, the word “uncertainty” has been coming up over and over again in just about all of my conversations.

So, in the name of ease, and—interestingly, although not directly inspired by—in keeping with the spirit of the tarot High Priestess, I’ve been working on the messaging of my work around uncertainty. I’m clarifying and refining my Wayfinder Uncertainty Coaching to offer to organizations after running a pilot of it for individuals at the start of the year.

That’s not the bit that’s full of ease, believe me. My lovely SCORE mentor, Sue, has got me working out a pitch deck and a go-to-market strategy and all sorts of other Business Things that have been helpful and clarifying for me.

The clarifying is the part that’s ease-minded. I’ve mentioned before that I’m ready to stop throwing spaghetti against the wall in my business, and that instead of trying lots of new things once, I’m aiming to focus in on fewer things in repeated, sustainable ways.

And even though there’s not currently a defined pathway for uncertainty coaching, there is a need for it. So I’ll put my “do the good work” energy into forging that path.

Dispatches from the Helm

Keeping the spirit of my Year of Attunement going, I’m refreshing the format of this here newsletter, which you may already have noticed. The pressure of not writing regularly has been mounting for me, and on the advice of some CARE members, I had a back-and-forth with Claude AI about developing a more streamlined and sustainable writing process.

While Claude (or any other AI tool) will never be writing this newsletter to you, it was indeed very helpful to use it to build this new format and creating a corresponding schedule that I can put on my calendar of how to gather, draft, publish, and send this newsletter your way.

You all were very helpful by answering my single-question survey about what you’re curious to see when you open this newsletter. Your feedback was almost exactly split 50/50 between wanting “honest reflections on what meaningful work looks like” and “ideas and tools I can use in my own work”, plus some interest in the eclectic mix of my writing.

So here’s what monthly issues of Mutiny Against the Mundane (the title of this here newsletter, in case you didn’t catch that) will contain from here on out:

• Updates from the Captain’s (b)Log: reflections on doing meaningful work with a rogueishly piratical refusal to accept the status quo

• Dispatches from the Helm: a recent concrete highlight from my work that can hopefully help you in yours

• Flotsam & Jetsam: one random bit of fun (could be pics of Lila the dog, a recent podcast fun fact, a tidbit from one of my many strange areas of nerdy interest, or something else)

• Small Treasures: a resource recommendation or creative prompt for you

• Peer Pitch: space to recommend someone else’s thing—maybe yours

• On the Horizon: something coming up next for me that I’m excited to share with you

Hopefully this will make writing to you more manageable for me, and reading these more interesting and helpful for you.

Flotsam & Jetsam

One of my friend groups has a tradition of New Year’s predictive text games to see how the coming year will turn out. A couple years ago we all typed into our phones “In these uncertain times” and then used the text suggestions to complete the sentence.

I’m bringing that game back. Mine says:

“In these uncertain times we are not only in the midst of the crisis but in the midst and in the midst as well”.

I mean… accurate.

Feel free to reply and tell me what yours says.

Small Treasures

If you’d like a guidebook to remind you that you can indeed survive and thrive during difficult times, do yourself a favor and read Francis Weller’s In the Absence of the Ordinary. What a lovely collection of reflective essays on how to live through times like the strange ones we’re in.

And I made you a whole bookshelf of sources to help you navigate the uncertainty of this moment: Wayfinding through Uncertainty.

Peer Pitch

No one submitted anything this time, but if you want to join the mutiny next month, you can submit your Peer Pitch right over this way.

In the absence of a pitch, I’ll say that Oliver Burkeman’s The Imperfectionistnewsletter is one that I always make time for in my own inbox. A paradoxically uplifting highlight from his most recent issue:

"if radical insecurity is just how life is, then by definition, you’re already coping with it. Do you worry that you might not have what it takes to deal with the world, if things get really uncertain in the years to come? I think you can afford to unclench a bit. With every bit of work you accomplish, every act of friendship you undertake, every instance of parenting you carry off well, you’re already proving that you do."

On the Horizon

On June 24, I’ll be leading a half-day workshop for the New England Museum Association’s Education Professional Affinity Group. It’s called Find Your Way Through Uncertainty, and it’s going to be a fun, experiential taste of the Wayfinder Uncertainty Coaching work I do. Everyone will have a chance to experience a couple of the modalities I offer that can help coexist with uncertainty. It’s open to museum educators who are both NEMA members and non-members.

I’m excited to be able to offer an affordable taster version of this work for folks who can’t/don’t want to engage with the full process.

Perhaps July’s missive will contain updates on how that goes.

In the meantime, if it’s hot where you are, soak up some sun, eat some ice cream (or other cold treats of your choice), and find a way to give yourself just a little bit of ease.

Gently striving with you,