Someone is dancing us.
I am a person you can text in a crisis. I am never more calm then when all hell is breaking loose. It is one of the traits that I have sharpened and polished over years and years. It runs in my family, for good or for ill (mostly, though, for good).
And right now, all hell is breaking loose.
And so I am channeling my ability to be calm, to be useful, into work-work and community-work.
Alongside (virtually, because if you are not practicing physical distancing at every opportunity I do not know what to tell you right now) a handful of other folks, I’ve spent the past few days on a collaborative project to help newsrooms facing unprecedented conditions and uncertainty. There’s already a domain and a repo, so you know we mean it.
And I reminding myself to be grateful. Grateful that I have the opportunity and the resources for projects like this. Grateful to be in a newsroom — metaphorically, for the while — where I can enable and encourage the urgent and important work of excellent, committed, talented people.
Grateful that I am, so far, still well. And so are the people around me. For now.
Because none of us can quite know what is going to happen next, when everything is devolving so rapidly.
We have a duty of care to each other. We have a responsibility, each of us, for how we show up in this crisis. You do not have to be calm. But you do have to be ready, because we will all be called.
Attribution:
Someone is dancing us.
Will it be you? ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Dance, dance, as the hive collapses
Dance, dance, while the colony disassembles
Dance the occasion
Dance the gorgeous design ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~— from Dance, Dance, While the Hive Collapses by Tiffany Higgins