I have been writing a Weekly Wide-Awake for many years. On my personal website and several newsletter and social media platforms. In writing classes, “business school,” and with more designers and developers than I can count. I have struggled to know what I want to say, wrestled the demon of why I need to say it, silenced the feeling others say everything so much more eloquently, and fought through the sludge that none of this even matters. 

In the spirit of saying what I want and need to say and paying attention to the beauty of the world and sharing a bit of it, I am re-launching Weekly Wide-Awake. It will be a weekly stroll through intentionality, sense-making, attention, and imagination. It will reflect the writer I am becoming, the community of creativity I explore, and the loving world in which I want to participate and build and eventually leave.

It is spring and we have work to do. I live in Atlanta and the magnolia trees are about to burst. Blooming is serious work. One of my favorite writers and thinkers, 

Anand Giridharadas talks about our work right now being an assignment. Weekly Wide-Awake is my assignment. It is my assignment — borrowing from a Navajo story — to feed the good wolf. It is my assignment to get in shape — a calisthenics of paying attention. It is my assignment to call out the good wherever and whenever I see it and amplify it with every fiber of being. It is my assignment to establish social proof that there are more of us that are guided by love than not. 

I am giving myself the editorial space and permission to start (again) exactly where I am. Meaning, it might/will have different structure over time. Today, it is a collection of writing exercises, a brief essay I recently wrote, a series entitled “Taking a Walk,” and the transcript of a gratitude conversation I conducted a few years ago. (Thank goodness gratitude is an evergreen — ever important — topic.)