If you’re reading this, I’ve succeeded. Yay for me – It means I’ve conquered the mountain that is navigating the backend of my blasted website. If in fact I’ve succeeded at posting my musings of the day and some accompanying pictures, I couldn’t be happier. This dreamer lives to see another day – well, I was hoping to live either way – but it’s the dreamer in me that wrote this piece and hoped to share it – thus we’re both pleased.
Yay for you also, I hope. And welcome. I’m so honoured you’ve decided to gift me your time by reading my stories.
Please ignore the rest of the website. It’s “under development” where it will remain until such a time that yours truly finds someone passionate about websites. I am not and likely never will be. But I know such beautiful people exist, the ones who get giddy putting the magic together. If you are one such person and would like to help improve the user experience for other visitors, awesome – but no pressure. So long as I can post blogs, which I’ve just demonstrated I can do (Ha, ha again) I am happy as a clam. Also, if you chose to help, for now I have the means to compensate your efforts with occasional dinners (post COVID) and my deepest thanks. When we hit it big my friend, which isn’t at all the end goal here so don’t hold your breath, I will compensate you fairly.
So here goes.
If you like what you read below, this is where I will be posting future chapters. – I am calling them chapters – a generous name I know, but it’ll help me keep things organized. I have no idea where the story is headed; we’ll discover it together, so if that’s the kind of thing you enjoy, you’re in good company.
Lastly, this style of writing is called stream of consciousness, whatever the mind thinks the hands type up. Virginia Woolf is a master of this art. It means the writing is, well, rather raw and can be both unrefined and disjointed – much like the mind.
I haven’t spent substantial time going back to the beginning to edit grammar, spelling, tenses; I’m not going to either. The stream of consciousness style, I think, is beautiful just as it is. I liken it to having a narrator for one’s own life. Here, that is the role I will play, narrator, but also, occasionally protagonist.
Thus, what you can expect is some of the following….
- Writing that has not been copy edited in the least. Perfection is the enemy of achievement, and I have dozens of stories in my “to be edited” folders which are likely never to see the light of day because I simply can’t find the time to come back and edit them. The trick here is to write and publish, write and publish.
- Editing takes almost twice as long as writing, in my humble opinion. It is meticulous work that requires a highly detailed person – which I am, by the way – but, again, in this instance, perfection is not what we are after. Thus, I will not be putting to use those skills, because if I do, see point #1.
- If you find mistakes – well done you – yours is a sharp eye. If you’d like to offer your editing services to me – I can compensate you the same as I’ve offered to compensate anyone interested in working on the website – see first paragraph. No pressure though, errors are part of the process, they don’t bother me, and I’d like to turn things around rather quickly, again, preventing inertia or doubt from kicking in.
- I do my best writing between the hours of 5 – 7 am, so if and when new pieces are ready, let’s aim for at least once per week, of various lengths. Today’s piece is absurdly long, they won’t all be, some days I imagine, they’ll be shorter, depending on where my mind is at. But, I’ll try to have them published in the mornings, in time for your mid-morning coffee, and when I do, I’ll send out a tweet – which is probably how you got here today!
- To be abundantly clear, I’m speaking here for myself, as a person, and not in any of the “official capacities” I currently hold. I reference my work because, well, it is more than a job for me, I love what I do, and it is very much part of every bit of my life. That said, here, I speak for me and me alone.
- Lastly, if you want to send feedback, here’s my personal email address…. dorotka3@gmail.com Be kind, I am shit nervous ( sorry, I will occasionally curse), but if I don’t do this now, when, tell me when will be a better day? Exactly, there is no better day.
Welcome again my friend. Here comes the story….
It is the first day of the year in which I will turn 40.
Millennials will begin to cross this milestone in 2021.
There is so much on my mind I wish I could share, thus this writing.
Most days, I wake up before 5 am. Quietly I walk down stairs, turn on the kettle, make a travel mug of coffee, and comfortably seat myself, legs crossed, on my couch.
For the first 2 hours of nearly every morning, I either read or write, sometimes both.
In six months, when I turn 40, I will be 4 years younger than my mother was when she died. I can admit her death forever changed me, so much so, that I’ve been living to this deadline.
I don’t take time for granted.
I’ve had private life insurance since my mid-twenties (ask yourself, what 25 year old buys a Term to 75 plan), except one that has the lived experience of being left with little after the death of a parent. My son was born and I immediately arranged for insurance. I wanted to make sure it would be sufficient to take care of my children. My mother didn’t have sufficient life insurance when she died.
I have a book of recipes, everything my children have enjoyed in their lives, written out with instructions. I’ve added to it for over a decade, as we discover new dishes that become part of our favourites list. My mother didn’t pass along any recipes – I had to ask aunties, learn through trial and error, from my two older sisters who remembered bits and pieces, from Polish recipe books. I wanted to make sure they could keep eating the food of their childhoods in case I was ever gone.
I’ve written dozens of letters to my children by hand and mailed them to one of my sisters. She is keeping them safe for when I am no longer here. In those letters I tell them about myself, my thoughts, my dreams, what my life’s been like. My mother didn’t know she’d become so ill so quickly, and when the cancer took hold of her body, maybe she didn’t have the time or the strength to share much with us. Either way, well into my adult life I didn’t feel like I knew my mother the person. This has been very hard for me. Much remains a mystery, so much so, I continue to look for, but now I understand it is a journey that isn’t likely to ever end.
I’ve lived in such a way, I hope, to show my children an honest effort of how one pursues their dreams. Before my mother died, she asked me to promise I’d go to university and study something practical. Until that time, I was 16 when she died; I had said time and again that I would be a writer. I had, continue to have, boxes of writing – poems, short stories, fiction, non-fiction, reflective pieces on books I’ve read, play scripts, journals of my day to day life. She feared a writer’s life would be a beggar’s life. So I made the promise to choose a career that would “put bread on the table” and shelved my dreams.
Funny thing about dreams is that one can put them aside, consciously, but I don’t believe they dissipate. Nor do I think dreams can be shelved, they’re clever that way, they’ll find a way to stay with us until such a time that we can honour them. Mine, like a wonderful pot of long cooking stew, have taken on an ever richer taste and aroma, patiently waiting to be discovered and enjoyed.
A couple years ago [I’m well aware of the fact that I have left behind my list of things I’ve done my mother didn’t or couldn’t do, this is how the story goes, you need to be patient, because I write as my heart speaks].
Anyways, a couple years ago I had a bit of an epiphany. I was in my office at work and thought I ought to examine how I spend my time – my productivity. I looked at my calendar from the past month, and added up the hours spent on administration / routine management tasks versus program design, strategy, blue sky thinking – how to do what we do in a more impactful way versus sharing the stories of those we serve, sharing our own stories, public education and community engagement. The latter of the three was a mere 10%, yet it was probably the source of 90% of my happiness. I did the other two things well, luckily that 10% provided enough fuel to push me through administration, and was the source of inspiration for the next smallest area of focus, the strategizing, which was about 20% percent. Sorry, this is all mixed up in the paragraph. Let me list it below.
70% – management (administration / day to day operations / routine tasks / supervision / function areas)
20% – leadership (program design / strategy / blue sky thinking)
10% – dreaming (telling stories)
Ten percent of my time was dedicated to the work that brought me greatest joy.
That realization (I still have the original paper on which I did the math) and that A ha! moment, set me on a journey that’s brought me to today.
Let me explain.
Firstly, during this self-review, I affirmed to myself that I love leadership, absolutely love it to my core, but I do not love administration. They are not the same thing. Leadership is not management and management is not leadership. Leadership is the 20% I talked about above, management is the 70%. Many Executive Directors, in smaller or medium sized organizations, are often both – the visionary and the implementer. The duality can be quite exhausting, management suffocates the visionary, and vision overwhelms the manager. So, we try to live in balance as best as we can and for as long as we can.
However, I’ve learned over time, that this equation – the percentage distribution – isn’t true in all settings. Larger organizations, maybe more visionary organizations, are sufficiently resourced to have senior managers overseeing day to day operations, and leaders are asked to and encouraged to dwell within the leadership space. Maybe it’s more of a half and half split there. This sounded good to me, way, way better, so I thought, I need to look at my experience, my education, and consider where I might need to gain additional skills so that I can be positioned, one day, way off in the future, for a role, that would utilize more of the leader in me.
I did that, asked mentors, researched options, signed up for courses, and sought to enrich my basket of offerings. This is evidenced in my resume by the Queen’s Executive Education Program, the courses with Asper, the increased Board roles, locally and nationally, the deepening of my community leadership and volunteer activities. It all came along rather smoothly, because these activities are born in the 20% space – strategy, design, blue sky thinking. The work of doing them all, the execution isn’t the strategizing, obviously, but creating a blueprint is; which makes following this awesome, custom blueprint a real delight.
In time, and I knew it might take several years; I would work towards achieving that balance beyond the current role I was in. I am a patient change maker, it doesn’t put me off that things take time, I play the long game – so long as I know I have a piece on the game board and I’ve moved my intentions into actions.
Until that longer term dream was realized, I still had to address the imbalance of the day, which was taking a toll on me. I was burning out. It wasn’t the organizations fault, that’s the thing, it was me. Had I kept to the management and occasionally dabbled in the leadership, and mostly ignored the dreaming, it would have been more doable. But I couldn’t, I didn’t know how to be anything else but exactly who I am. Dreamer first, Leader second, Manager last. Work required me to reverse the order, but it was like asking a bird not to fly, it goes against its very nature.
So, while I meticulously prepared for the next leg of my journey, I knew I needed help with the one I was presently in. And having discovered where my joie de vivre stemmed from, the smallest part of my present reality, I also knew I needed to find a way to feed my soul so it didn’t risk being buried under the demands of the day.
Thankfully, the stars aligned to make that possible. Given how quickly our organization had grown, year over year, we had sufficient resources and were now of a size that justified increased administrative support. I set out to hire just that. You see, and I didn’t quite know this until that time, but there are people in the world, one such person is my Executive Assistant, who, in her own words, “loves being the person behind ‘the person’.” Brilliant, this is absolutely brilliant.
For these irreplaceable souls, whose 10% – the source of their life’s meaning (I might be over dramatizing here, sorry) – comes from mastering the schedule, activities, tasks, work order of others, being the backbone of an organization is fulfillment. These incredible people derive joy from well done reports, masterfully prepared meeting packages, detailed but succinct meeting minutes. They are as vital a piece of the puzzle as anyone else, because it is their efforts that help to make the world work.
Hiring her meant there was a person to help keep the “visionary” in me in check while scheduling time for the “manager”. This ensured the tasks of day to day operations kept moving ahead. She corralled my dreaming mind and helped, slowly, bring about increased balance.
The extra support meant the 70% of management work ran more efficiently. This was important because I needed to make mental space for a new venture. Non-profit leadership never fits in a 9 to 5 day, it isn’t possible in 40 hours a week, this I could accept, but I needed free time to dream new dreams, ones centered on my own story, without feeling I was taking away strategizing time from the community I was entrusted to serve.
Efficiency gave me the gift of time.
This made it possible to think about how I could increase the 10%, my joie de vivre, in another sphere of my life. It didn’t exist yet, that new sphere, but I could bring into existence.
Secondly, it became clear to me that the dream I had shelved was being realized every day, while I kept my promise to my mother, the world didn’t let me off the hook. By this time, you know, about two years ago, when I began the journey of transforming my life; I had already delivered over 300 unique speaking engagements. I had practiced over and over and mastered the art of storytelling as I shared the stories of the lives of the families at IRCOM. Not a week passed that I didn’t deliver multiple speeches, in boardrooms, classrooms, on factory floors, in places of worship, in council chambers, government offices, to the media and to the public alike. The dream of telling stories was very much alive.
I was a seasoned speaker, and not just that, on the “stage” is where I came alive, in large part because I think it is where I was honouring my life’s purpose. Albeit terrified, every time I began to speak, I felt free, happy; it wanted to do nothing else.
So the Leader in me set out to help the Dreamer. I found seminars through the Women’s Enterprise Centre on how to start a business. I wrote a business plan, researched the industry, came up with what I thought was a clever business name (that story is for a future chapter), registered a company, applied for and got national accreditation as a “professional speaker”, drew a map of a website, hired a hair stylist, makeup artist, and photographer to do headshots, met with mentors, studied far more accomplished public speakers – I did a deep dive into my dream.
I would build something, that independent of my day to day work, even if it was only possible once in a while, an evening here or there, would honour my dreams, my stories, my voice.
In 2020, I launched my public speaking company.
Ha! Timeout.
It’s all true, but here’s the thing – do you remember 2020 – the year of that stupid pandemic during which every event, every conference, every gathering, every reason for an audience to be together in one place and perhaps in need of a keynote speaker was cancelled?
Yup, 2020 was the year I launched my public speaking company. The year there was no public.
I laugh now; it was so absurd, yet beautiful and couldn’t be more perfect in its imperfection.
Of course I did. Of course mine was not going to the path of least resistance. It was consistent with my life, but it’s okay, I was built to overcome whatever challenges were set before me.
“A bad day for your ego is a great day for your soul.” – Jillian Michael
Yup, 2020 was a really bad day for my ego for sure.
But there is nothing like failure, scratch that, obstacles and setbacks to purify ones intentions. I feel like my intentions have been sandblasted raw. They couldn’t be any purer.
Anyway, on June 3rd, 2020 – my 39th birthday, my website quietly went live. It wasn’t a “soft launch” – this is industry speak I’ve learned, for releasing something new to a select number of key informants, for their feedback, before the grand reveal. There wasn’t a grand reveal either.
The launch wasn’t anything except that someone in the website development company pressed something and now it was on the big World Wide Web.
Ta-dah!
Silence. Worse yet, and as I feared, there were glitches almost immediately. Also, the content was all wrong. Why was it wrong, you ask? Because it was written by yours truly. It was dreamy, too long, too vague, it wasn’t clear what the purpose of the site was, what “services” I could offer, why someone would hire me? The list goes on and on.
NB: I am NOT a content writer, or a website developer, or a programmer, or a marketer, etc. I know this is all obvious, but I am saying it anyway, just in case.
I also realized that the layout was cumbersome, there would need to be changes made and rather quickly. Changes were needed, you know, in case a massive audience arrived to look at it – LOL. (crazy sarcasm here, obviously).
There was no audience.
It went live with the same thundering applause as when a butterfly leaves its pupa. No one notices, do they, except the butterfly of course. I use the butterfly as my metaphor quite deliberately, because in Polish the word pupa means bum, yes, your derriere, your behind. I had taken what I anticipated would be a momentous step forward into my life – and it was – but it would take so much more to take flight. In fact, it would take far, far more, starting with getting my head out of my pupa. LOL.
Rome wasn’t built in a day, the “Dorota Blumczynska – dreamer, public speaker, published author extraordinaire” dream – yikes – it would take a lifetime.
Exhale.
END – for now.
The lessons that have been and continue to be learned will be found in this book; the lessons of a dreamer who is not yet a master. The stories of a butterfly that just squeezed out of its pupa, painfully forcing the water in its wings out, shedding the weight of its present reality, so that one day, once it is free to do so, I might take flight.
I’ll come back to the list regarding my mother……
I’ll come back to how I’ve made progress on developing my leadership profile…..
I’ll come back to how I’m keeping the dream alive……
Stay with me. For now, I’ve been writing for hours and I need to quickly get dressed. The first sunrise of the first day of the first month of the year in which I will change my life is going to happen in 20 minutes and I need to get out there.
My eight year old daughter and I ran eastward. It’s about a 12 minute stroll to the bridge from our house; we didn’t have that much time.
“I’m tired” she said, five hundred feet from the destination.
“I know honey, the last few steps, the last hill are always the hardest. But look, we’re almost there.”
“Why do you want to see the sun rise?”
“I think the rising sun listens to dreamers. If we tell it our hopes, it’s set the universe in motion to make them a reality.” She was used to my deep, philosophical answers.
We took some pictures from the spots along the bridge where she thought the view was the best.
“Can we go walk on the river?”
“Sure, but I don’t have great boots like yours, let’s try to find a path someone else already made.”
We walked down and onto the frozen water.
“This is so cool” she excited said, almost in the middle of the wide river.
“I know. See, under the right conditions, anyone can walk on water.” She didn’t catch the biblical reference, it wasn’t important; she understood that what we were doing was something that appeared impossible.
“B,E,E,T, Beet That”, she read the graffiti under the bridge. “I’d like to beat that post.”
“Let’s not. We need to respect other people’s work and it took a lot of work to build that post, this entire bridge.”
We looked up and yelled, hello, hello, delighting in the echo.
“This is awesome,” she exclaimed.
“Yup, it sure is” I answered, smiling, so happy we were there together.
We started heading back home, still a ways away.
“I’m tired,” she said again.
“We haven’t eaten breakfast; our bodies don’t have any fuel.”
“Can I eat the snow?”
“Well, yes, snow is water, and water gives life, but I’m not sure snow with deer pee will give you much energy.” We laughed.
“The snow’s not yellow, there is no pee.” She knew clean from dirty snow.
“Maybe deer pee isn’t yellow. Pee is yellow from vitamin C, where would deer get vitamin C in the middle of winter?” I asked her.
“They eat berries don’t they? Where do we get vitamin C from?
“Citrus fruit, some fresh vegetables, I’m not sure dry grass has vitamin C.”
“Hmmmm,” she didn’t say more. We let the subject go.
A few steps later, she sat back on the ground again, “Mama, I’m tired.”
“I’m so happy you came with me on the walk. This is the best day of the year for me.” She didn’t catch the January 1st joke, oh well.
“My birthday will be the best day of my year. Unless, there’s still COVID,” she complained.
“Let’s not worry about that now. If we worry about it now and on your birthday, we’re double worrying, and there’s no sense in that.”
She slowly got back up and we resumed our walk. I was a few steps ahead of her, occasionally glancing back. Then came her little voice again, sounding wearier.
“Mama, I’m tired, you know I have all these layers on, it’s hard to walk.” She was sitting in the snow again.
“If we stop now, we’ll never get home honey. We have to keep going. Do you want a piggy back ride?”
“Yah, but I’m very heavy” she said uncertain.
“Maybe, but I’m very strong” and I bent down so she could climb onto me.
I rose with her on my back. Yikes, she was right, she was heavy. Almost nine, she has the build of a rugby player, incredibly strong. I could feel my knees shake a bit, I might have over-estimated my strength.
I could tell by her voice she was smiling, “mama, I haven’t had a piggy back in a year.
“Really, are you sure. When is the last time you had a piggy back?” I was curious to hear her answer.
“When I was seven, in 2019.”
“So no piggy backs in 2020, hmmm, that’s okay, that was a silly year. Lucky you’re getting one now.”
“Yah, before I get too old.”
“Oh, we’re never too old for a piggy back ride honey. See, the body might age, but the mind doesn’t have to.”
“How do you keep the mind from getting old,” she asked.
“Oh, by being curious, going out into the world, being inquisitive.”
“What is inquisitive?”
“Inquisitive, from inquiry, to inquire, to ask questions.”
“Just like I did now?”
“Exactly, you were being inquisitive.”
Our chit chatting continued all the way home, although I had to let her off my back well before that. I also didn’t have any fuel.
This was the absolute best way I could have imagined starting this year.
