Sylvia's Journal

I sequestered myself all day in a cold room, looking out over the even colder looking Charles River, with a wheelchair expert.  It was a meeting of a subject matter expert with a process/adult learning expert during which I learned about this extraordinary effort that has been put forth on all continents and by many agencies (including the American government) and individuals to make sure that people who cannot move around on their own, get a wheel chair.

In reality it is much more complicated than that – because many people don’t have wheelchairs, or have wheelchairs that are no good, kludged together with plastic chairs, bicycle wheels and wire, or who have developed terrible sores and postures that will be hard to correct. I know of one such case from close up.

People with wheelchairs, old or new, need service, which is more often than not unavailable.  WHO put together a team of experts that pulled together an impressive looking training curriculum that looks finished and complete but it isn’t: one missing piece is helping future trainers to master the resource materials and learn how to teach. That has become my task.

And so, today, I learned from a wheelchair master trainer how I can complement what is already there. I have my marching orders and introductions for more conversations. It is funny how the terms of my engagement are no different than they were yesterday, and yet, they are now full of meaning.

I am immersing myself in complexity, that is, the science of complexity. Reading Quinn Patton’s book on developmental evaluation made me understand why we are having such a difficult time measuring the impact of our work – teaching people to act more like leaders, in the context they work in, is not about ‘do this and then that will happen. I am learning about Mt Fuji solution and getting at the right size for a shovel, rugged landscapes and why diversity is important to find the best solutions, and dancing landscape which is about arriving at a conclusion after much data gathering and analysis to find out that everything has changed in the meantime.  To explain all this is complicated (not complex). I have to do a lot more reading and watching before I can do this better.

I spent several hours of our long weekend watching a lecture series, starring the professor of my Model Thinking course. If only a very small percentage of the 40,000 Coursera participants (in Model Thinking) bought the video set, at 50 dollars apiece, then the business model of these free courses becomes obvious. I liked my professor and I am more likely to buy his publications than those of hundreds of others.

The video course goes over some territory that is already familiar but there was plenty of new stuff: the explore-exploit distinction that gave me some ideas for our Learning Organization task team at work, or the notion of complexity as created by a series of dials: by increasing diversity, connectedness, interdependence and adaptability you get complexity, but if you increase these too much you get chaos. And why would we want complexity? Because it allows for emergence – for us emergence is about innovations, new stuff, new connections, new ideas; and I learned that for slime molds emergence means survival.

I am doing all this exploring and thinking in preparation of my new role at work of leading a team to articulate a view point and curating knowledge about leadership. So many people have already done that elsewhere, where to start?

I impulsively booked a weekend, next week, at an immense old and creaky hotel in the White Mountains – it is ski weekend time, even though I have one leg in an orthopedic boot and a recovering hand fracture on the other side. I also haven’t skied for 6 years. Whether I will actually put on (cross country) skis or remains to be seen. I would have to ski with my hand splinted which makes it hard to put on a glove, but un-splinted is a little too risky, since falling is rather likely.  Maybe I will simply sit by the fire inside, with my embroidery, knitting, and a stack of books, learning more about complexity.

We watched Obama channel MLK and share his vision for American – something he has been trying to work towards for the last 4 years, as countless others claimed to have worked for. The reason none of them can realize the vision is, indeed, because of the complexity of our world – if the slime molds are complex, imagine the United States of America.

It is becoming increasingly difficult to find (or make?) the time to write. I have slid from every day writing to every other day to letting several days pass. It is not because there was nothing to write about, and more because of the energy that goes into other things. The weekend invasion, the early commute, the long days, the clunky orthopedic boot, the recovering hand – they all seem to conspire against writing, somehow. I hope it is a temporary dip because I do find something in writing that I can’t find elsewhere.

The trip to Washington was followed by a whirlwind weekend with a house full of guests. Sita’s old babysitter from Staten Island trained into South Station about the same time I landed at Logan. I was picked up by a limo while Goldie was picked up by Axel. We drove, unknowingly, in convoy and arrived home at the same time. Sita, Jim and baby Faro arrived a few hours later. Goldie was of course beside herself to see her baby’s baby. Faro was constantly in someone’s arms, smothered in kisses and not the least bothered by all the fuss. He just kept smiling. The next day we had a procession of grandparents and Faro had private time with each of his opa’s and oma’s and grampies and grannies, all 6 of them.

Saturday was also a food fest, as we entertained one set of grandparents at lunch and another during dinner. Except those looking after Faro, everyone got into the kitchen, responsible for dishes, cocktails and what not. The evening meal was an enormous spread of things to put in or on tacos: fish, meat, TVP, pork, vegetables, beans, sauces. One of the gramps had never eaten a taco in his life. He will be disappointed with lesser endowed tables.

Friday night, triggered by the new Ayurveda cookbook we got for Christmas, we tried to determine our doshas, using the checklist from the Ayurveda Institute. It created some hilarity around body or other characteristics that we could only imagine were literal translations from Sanskrit

Sunday everyone left, one by one, and then we left to joining old friends who had come up from Virginia for a funeral. Faro made a cameo appearance and then calm returned.

Monday started a fast and furious workweek that has continued until now, with only night time and a visit to the acupuncturist for total relaxation. Acupuncture is intense, I believe, when you have a treatment only once every few years. The last time was during a Kabul break, also intense.  I can’t convince Axel to go back, exactly because of the intensity he so well remembers; why torture yourself?

It is a good question but I have many good experiences with acupuncture and the discomforts come with the territory and are worth the effort. The focus of attention was of course my troubled extremities. I also learned some things that are quite in line what we learned from our Ayurveda book, such as avoiding ginger for a while and eat more cooling foods. I signed up for 5 sessions and paid for them up front.

The pace of work is picking up. It is work that doesn’t require travel. I am light years away from where I was last year.  My NONPROJ status, as I am labeled on our personnel database, is turning out to be an asset rather than a liability. I have my hand in many initiatives and interact with many more parts of MSH than I have ever done. I am discovering wonderful colleagues both at HQ and by phone in the field, and re-connecting with those from years past.

I am involved in all sorts of design work, whether for events, meetings, conference or projects and realize that this is where I am at my best – talking with people, creating new viewpoints out of many different viewpoints, looking for patterns, synthesizing inputs, and finding simplicity, as Oliver Wendell Holmes put it so well,  on the other side of complexity. I think it is the creativity, the starting with a blank slate that is most attractive to me, as well as the chance to follow my curiosity (‘gee, what do others think about this?’). It is all most satisfying.

I had hoped to visit with some of my DC friends but the days are full with task-related conversations and the evenings/nights with writing.  The few slots I had available as free time are being filled in one by one.

I am also learning about new technical areas and topics I knew nothing about, such as pharmacy outlets, midwife led birth centers, behavior change communication and training for rehab staff who help those with mobility challenges to get the right wheelchair, including fitting, maintenance and the fabrication of support cushions.

Today I received my first two Coursera certificates. I earned a 87.8% on the Model Thinking, not bad given that I hadn’t used my math and calculus for about 45 years. For the organizational analysis I received a 91.3%. I am not entirely sure how it was calculated but I clearly got rewarded for faithfully watching all the lectures and doing all the quizzes and exams. I had taken both courses quite seriously and am a bit wiser for it. My next course starts in 20 days, about the fundamentals of online education.

Work piled upon work today, requiring phone meeting after phone meeting with brief spurts of writing in between.  I clocked 9 hours and was so (pre)occupied that I was able to ignore all sorts of activities in the house. In particularly I managed to stay away from something I usually love to do, an assembly job that Steve completed for me.  He assembled the new guest bed that Axel and I bought during our once-a-year IKEA expedition (it takes us that long to recover from the experience).  We are now nearly ready for an invasion over the weekend: a first meeting of Sita’s little boy with his mother’s erstwhile baby sitter Goldie (formerly from Brooklyn, now Staten Island).

The weekend was, except for the IKEA expedition, quite relaxing with good food, friends and movies: Les Miserables which left its music score inside my head for two days and nights in a row now, and the Dictator, both with Sacha Baron Cohen playing his usual no holds barred roles.

The New Year’s first workweek has been completed, only 51 left to go. Every day it got a little colder. On Thursday morning when I got up at 4:30 AM it was 6°F which is -14°C. The remote starter that Sinterklaas gave me has not been installed yet.  I dashed out as fast as I could, turned on the ignition, put the heat on high blast, and dashed back into our warm house. A week from now I can stay inside and just press a clicker. I can’t wait.

Yesterday I had a marathon workday starting at 6:20 AM and ending at 6:20 PM exactly, just in time to pick Axel up at North Station. We were invited for dinner at the house of a friend in Cambridge who is off to Afghanistan for a year. She will live in Jalalabad which I think is a little too close to the Pakistani border, and wild places full off angry, bearded and turbaned men with guns. But a year will go fast, we know , and she will also be let out regularly  as per USAID regulations. The dinner was a joyful reunion of old MSH hands and Afghanistan aficionados. I realized that I was the only one still at MSH.

Today I completed two writing/revision assignments, standing at my desk, hopping from one foot to the other, the one in the  orthopedic boot that has to be angled at the right way, and the other foot with the damaged nerves underneath. Maybe a standup desk is not such a good idea right now.

Axel’s gravlax was fully cooked tonight, after days of turning and marinating. He invited some friends to help us eat it, accompanied by roasted herbed potatoes and a salad, and of course a small glass of aquavit, with gingerbread cookies for dessert .  With the snow still outside and temperatures still below zero ( Celsius) we could have pretended to be somewhere in northern Scandinavia .

After dinner Tessa gave our guests a full account of her and Steve’s road trip. It is an account of long rides across states, cold nights and rainy days in the car or a tent,  but also visits to Waring alumns and to national parks, beautiful places further west. I realize how much there is to explore in this country, and that one could probably spend weeks in just one or two states, like Utah and Colorado, to take in all these natural wonders.

It is 2013. It was a quiet and uneventful slide into the new year. We left a party with friends in Ipswich  around 11:15 PM, after singing Auld Lang Syne and pretending that the ball had already dropped on Times Square. At midnight we were home and received and gave wishes for a happy new year to each other and our daughters, by mouth, by text and by phone.

The Christmas tree, which never got decorated, has been put outside. Tessa felt very sorry for the poor tree as it never got dressed up, the only reward for being hacked down in the prime of its life. I’m happy that we have the space in our small living room back.

I was also happy to close  the chapter of these last two weeks of December, with too many doctors’ visits, diagnostic tests and inconclusive results. According to the hand doctor I am halfway through the healing process of my hand. I have to loosen up my fingers by squeezing a sponge under hot tap water. I only have to wear my splint when I go outside when there is a risk of falling. But the orthopedic boot will stay on for a while longer. It is serving me well.

Today I talked with some of my siblings, a tradition usually undertaken at 6 PM on New Year’s Eve, patiently waiting for phone lines to clear. My mother was the first one I used to call. I remember feeling sorry for her being home alone on this night that used to have an importance I can no longer understand. Now it’s just an ordinary evening, only extraordinary because of its following day off.

People ask me what 2013 will be all about. I think it will be about my new role in the organization, the role I’m still trying to fill in, requiring several conversations with my superiors.. It is an exciting, challenging and a bit daunting opportunity. I assume it is promotion, but that has not been made explicit yet.

I finally baked the gingerbread Christmas cookies that I had hoped to have made before Christmas, when everyone was here. We were just much too busy. Tessa did help with the frosting today, a shiny white-lemony coating for which she found many other uses. And now I have all these lovely (and tasty) cookies and I don’t quite know what to do with them. I think most people are done with cookies by now.

We are having turkey-rice-vegetable soup for dinner, the last left over. And then it is early to bed because tomorrow it is back to work. Happy new year to all.