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PLAY YOUR GAME.

Not the game, YOUR game.

Everybody wants the outcome...the championship, money, career, relationship, the platform, the impact.

And while inspiration, coaches and best practices matter, at some point you have to stop studying everybody else's game long enough to learn your own.

That's the season I'm in.

I was a point guard.

My job wasn't simply to dribble well or memorize plays. I had to read the floor, recognize patterns, know my pace and capacity, anticipate movement and trust that feeling when the play needed to change, sometimes before I could fully explain why.

When I played, my intuition was my MVP...my Most Valuable Partner.

Basketball taught me that mastery isn't only technical, there's an inner practice happening simultaneously.

Athletes call it being in the zone.
Artists call it being in flow.
Wellness spaces call it grounding.
Some spiritual spaces call it catching the Holy Ghost.

Different vocabulary, familiar experience.

It's that place where the noise gets quieter, you tap back in and can read the floor again.

Basketball was one of the first places life taught me how to hear myself. It was a hell of a training ground because the game, the players and the scoreboard were always changing.

Sometimes the coach called one play while the experience on the court told you something else you misread completely.

I now know intuition doesn't mean you'll never make the wrong call, but when you've spent enough time learning yourself, you can recognize when you're out of rhythm and find your way back.

That's especially important right now.

Algorithms, experts, institutions, trends, timelines and endless “best practices” are constantly competing for our attention, our MVP.

Someone will always have another formula for what you should build, earn, want, prioritize or become.

Learn from them, ask for help, and build relationships that offer wisdom, accountability, inspiration and community, but don't outsource the final decision about your life.

Bruce Lee said it beautifully:

Absorb what is useful. Discard what is not. Add what is uniquely your own.

That's not a rejection of teachers, that's what it looks like to become your

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I recorded this video a few months ago while I was still trying to find language for what The Exit Strategy Network could be.

Earlier this year, I was exploring a potential Creator-in-Residence relationship with an international dating and matchmaking platform expanding in the U.S.

And the question I kept returning to wasn't really about dating technology, it was:

What happens after the match?

What good is creating greater access to connection if people haven't necessarily been given the tools, practices, environments or support to sustain healthy relationships once they find one?

At the time, I thought I was developing a proposition for someone else's company.

Months later, I realized I had been circling one of the central questions of my own work, and the question kept getting bigger.

As an educator, I have spent much of my career noticing the things people are expected to know how to navigate including relationships, work, money, identity, health, change, community without necessarily having spaces to learn, practice or make sense of them.

So my question has gradually shifted from:

How do we help people build healthier relationships?

to:

What are we actually preparing people for?

And now:

What kinds of media, learning experiences, communities and technology could help people become more equipped to navigate human life, not simply more efficient at consuming information about it?

I don't have all of the language yet and that's actually part of why I'm sharing this.

My own personal and professional transition has become a place where I'm testing ideas, revisiting assumptions and watching the work reveal itself in real time.

The Exit Strategy Network looks different to me today than it did when I recorded this.

But the question underneath it was already there.

And sometimes, I've learned, founding looks less like inventing the perfect idea and more like paying close enough attention to recognize the one that keeps following you.

I unpacked an earlier version of this thinking in my Thoughts Leadership corner 🔗 in bio!

The language continues to evolve...and so does the work.

#founder

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Sometimes an interview gives you an answer and other times it gives you a new question to consider.

When I met Katie at Union Station in Los Angeles, I asked:

What is a story you are currently rewriting about your life right now?

Her answer took us to the land.

She spoke about Black farmers, agriculture, the history and economic contribution tied to that work, and her desire for more of us to understand and preserve those stories.

I hear this conversation differently today than I did when I recorded it.

At the time, I was following my curiosity and asking strangers real human questions.

Now, as I more intentionally formalize my interdisciplinary artistic practice after transitioning from my role in education, I can see that these interviews have also been teaching me how I make meaning of my life not just what I create professionally.

I notice what’s happening around me. I pause before forcing a resolution. I interpret what an encounter/experience may be surfacing. I express what is becoming clearer. I encounter another person’s perspective. Then I reconsider what’s possible or what I thought I knew.

And sometimes what is shared changes what I know to look for (or do) next.

Nature has been doing something similar in my life. Walking, gardening, observing cycles, and learning not to demand immediate resolution have helped me reconsider my relationship with pace, progress, and the roles I thought I was supposed to play.

And perhaps that is the role for art and media. These aren't intended to simply tell us who we should be, but to preserve experiences, recover histories, complicate what we think we know, and help us see ourselves and one another more clearly.

Katie unknowingly gave me more than an interview that day.

She gave me another doorway into understanding my own process and next steps in my life's endeavors.

I wrote more about what this conversation taught me about land, storytelling, media, pace, and the way returning to an old conversation (or part of your journey) can reveal something new.

Read the full reflection on the Please, BARE With Me site

🔗 in bio

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The hardest part of choosing a nontraditional path is resisting the urge to make uncertainty mean you're doing something wrong. We're used to hearing people's stories backward…once every strange decision has acquired context, capital, and every detour has been assigned meaning.

Living a story forward is different.

You don't always know which experiment becomes important, which relationship becomes a bridge, which skill becomes a practice, which “wrong turn” becomes source material, or which season that looked like nothing was happening was actually rearranging everything.

I'm giving the present version of myself the grace we usually reserve for hindsight.

Keep walking. Keep noticing. Keep documenting.

The meaning of your vision doesn't arrive before the movement, it arrives because you decided to move.

I wrote the longer download I received during my morning walk that prompted this thought:

“There Is No Syllabus for This Part: A Morning Download on Self-Authorship, Old Rubrics & Learning to Trust a Path Still Being Paved” 🔗 in bio

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EXPOSED

/ik • spohzd/

1. Open to view, unconcealed

Synonyms | adj. made public
bare, defined, divulged, dug up, solved, unhidden, visible

Antonyms: guarded, hidden, blocked, unclear

Embarking on an adventure, an unraveling, an attempt to determine what's left at the center of me when all the layers of life have been shed.

Marinating in that space between not yet and no longer.

Because I am reminded I cannot heal what I don't reveal.

Because I'm being guided to model what it looks like to explore the dark and illuminating paths along the healing journey.

Because I am called to investigate and expose myself to myself, indulge in experiences that awaken my senses, promote connection, encourage self-betterment and ensure restoration.

Because it is time to architect a world, radical spaces designed for all, provoking us to find comfort in the discomfort of self-evolution, the words to liberate our hearts, and the commitment to connect to a deeper love for all of what life has to offer - including each other.

Because together, we can be uplifted and encouraged to dig into common, yet not so desirable lived experiences that are often difficult for us to discuss and change for our individual and collective growth.

Because this moment is an invitation for us all to acknowledge, forgive, celebrate, nurture, and empower ourselves as well as one another by honoring our individuality and our collective stories.

Exposed.

Bare.
Naked.

Peeled.
Open.

Unmasked.

I am visible.
I see me.
Finally,
Exposed.

Please, BARE With Me 🌱🌻🐛🦋
#MyArtMayCauseYouToFeel

#SimpleEyesSeeSurfaceThings
#PleaseBAREWithMe
#ItTakesAVillage
#intentionalliving
#revolutionary
#education
#LetItRest
#exposed
#create
#vote
#love
#live
#art

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A compatibility check, but for work 😅

I'm open to different professional pathways right now:

Aligned salaried roles, freelance projects, artist residencies, Creator-in-Residence partnerships, and creative collaborations.

BUT

I'm much clearer about the conditions that produce my best work. I value:

🎯 human questions

🎯 messy patterns

🎯 cross-disciplinary ideas

🎯 people who are actually invited to participate

🎯 stories and strategies that lead somewhere

🎯 metrics that matter without pretending humans don't

🎯 clear agreements

🎯 and room for what we learn to change what we make together.

If you're simply looking for content production, posting, or somebody to quietly execute a predetermined idea, I may not be your girl.

If you're genuinely trying to understand something about your teams, community, clients/customers, and want to turn that insight into meaningful media, learning resources, live or virtual experiences or a loyal community, now we're talking.

For slide 3 people, brands, organizations…my inbox is open. 😉

Need more info to gauge compatibility?!

Check my pinned post: Recognizing the Art in How I Had Always Worked + the companion blog 🔗 in bio!

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We talk a lot about what founders are building, but not nearly enough about the body doing the building.

I don't drink coffee, so when I need to wake myself up, a reset between calls, step away from the computer or shift my energy after sitting for too long, I move.

Every morning and most evenings, that looks like walking. Some days it's rowing and sometimes it's simply a little patch of grass, a few trees and ten movements I've come to use as a reset.

It doesn't take much time and it's enough movement to help me feel warmer, looser, more awake and back inside my body.

I'm learning that founder sustainability isn't only about strategy, capital, productivity or getting the next idea out into the world.

There is also a human being carrying all of that. Our mind is constantly making decisions, our nervous system is absorbing uncertainty, our spirit is searching for meaning, and our body is quite literally carrying us from one room, conversation, opportunity and season to the next.

Sometimes I do this before rowing or strength training. Sometimes first thing in the morning. Sometimes in the middle of a workday when I've been staring at a screen for too long.

I think of it less as a workout and more as recalibration. This is one version of my Founder Reset.

What helps you come back to yourself when your brain has been working overtime?

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I'm excited to see ASU formalize a creator degree, but there are people whose knowledge will never fit neatly inside an academic department.

They learned through life responsibility, career experimentation, necessity, culture, loss, recovery and years spent close to a problem.

Formal education can deepen that knowledge, but it should not be the only thing that makes us recognize it.

The opportunity now is to create more places where lived and professional experience can be developed, protected, applied and compensated. And for the impact professionals in transition, that's why @theexitstrategynetwork exists.

I'm not only building the platform to support impact professionals and host organizations exploring Creator-in-Residence pathways, but formalizing the curriculum to ensure ethical partnerships using this model.

Psst, I'm the first case study. Stay close as the teacher doubles as the student in real time!

#education #pivot #founder #careergrowth #transition

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