Connecting with Your Work
Connect your passion, purpose--and yes, your fears--to the work you do everyday
What has brought you to the work you do? Whether you are shifting course to something new, or seeking to deepen your current commitment, this 21-day seminar provides you with the tools to retreat, go deep, explore, and return to what matters to you most--without ever leaving home.
Using journaling, mindfulness, and creative writing ideas, I lead you through lessons I have had to learn myself. The result will be a new perspective on your work, a strengthened commitment, and significantly stronger writing voice for communicating why you are here.
Who should sign up.
This course is primarily for people who must use writing in their work life, somehow, but this is not necessarily "just" a course for writers. Whatever your work and whatever your passion, if you feel a widening gap between the two, or if you feel your former passion for work waning--or if you are actively contemplating a change of course--I can help.
If you are focused on improving your writing voice, specifically, you will get the most out of this course. Yet I have structured these lessons to be useful to just about anyone who wants to clarify and deepen the connection between their life's purpose and the way they make a living.
What we do.
The 21-day e-course is a daily reminder with exercises and resources for focusing on connecting life and work, one day at a time. You'll receive encouragement, specific prompts for writing and creating, reading suggestions, and ways to interact with other people taking our course (if you choose).
Week One focuses on preparing, visualizing, and embarking on your work to connect with your purpose. We confront your fears, channel your hopes, create a "bucket list"...and then we pick up that bucket and walk into the woods.
Week Two is designed to help you actively explore, experiment, stretch into new territory, and chart a new course. We've got your back during this tough week with daily reminders that you can do it--and that if it were easy, you'd have done it by now.
Week Three brings all the threads together, helps you make some hard choices, and supports you in taking the tangible, definable next steps toward a more passionate, engaged approach to your work. You will also find that your writing voice has improved, as we will take you through the basics of establishing your public and online writing persona and tone. If you work for an organization, you will better understand how to be more authentically yourself within the working culture of your job. If you are an independent, you will understand better how to make your unique voice heard across many contexts.
Extras.
An optional "Connecting Commons" is available for participants who complete the first two weeks of the course. For no extra charge, the CC members receive additional prompts and ideas--from me and from one another--throughout the end of the course and beyond.
Coming by April 1, 2016: For residents of the Washington, DC-Baltimore greater region, up to three optional in-person workshops are available for an additional cost. Each of these workshops is designed to culminate a week's worth of work in the course. You can take all three or opt into just one or two--and you do not need to take any of them to benefit from the course. (see ELB,OW Room: Connecting Our Work Together).
You will be part of The Cooler Minds network, and will continue to receive updates on our creative workshops, silence and mindfulness meet-ups, retreats and pilgrimage walks.
Your Instructor
If you want to live and express yourself more vividly every day, connect more deeply with your passions, and escape the constraints of your life without ever leaving home, follow me.
In a 30-year career as an independent writer and teacher, I have learned hard lessons about how to stay connected and passionate in the midst of obligation, frustration, and sometimes sorrow. As a creative writer, I have faced and illuminated grief and love (as well as some geeky curiosities like the the quantum impact of Green Stamps and the inner life of Samuel Pepys). I have published short stories and essays in Modern Loss, Creative Nonfiction, TOSKA, Defunct, welter, and The Antietam Review. My columns on grief and family life appeared online at Beliefnet from 1999 through 2003. I co-founded the literary blog, Dead Housekeeping, in 2015 with Meredith Counts and a talented group of contributing editors.
As a public policy writer, I also understand the day-to-day demands of writing for a living. I have worked with the Metropolitan Institute at Virginia Tech, National Vacant Properties Campaign, Center for Community Progress, Smart Growth America, the Ford Foundation, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the National Trust for Historic Preservation, the American Institute of Architects, and The National Building Museum. My areas of expertise include social justice in the context of post-industrial cities and transitioning economies, sustainable transportation, and the built environment.
I am particularly interested in the meeting points and dividing lines between creative and practical writing, grief and creativity, silence and voice.