Hello, I’ve missed you.
Back in May I took some time out. I was ill and burned out, I thought I would take a month off blogging, I ended up taking 4 months and now I’m tiptoeing back, it’s September now — how did that happen?
Why am I here?
On Friday I headed to One Team Gov Local, this is a monthly catch up for folk working in Local Government which Kit has expertly kept running via her team at LB Greenwich since she moved there. I was so happy to see familiar and friendly faces like Philippa and some new faces, and it’s so good to see that this continues in earnest since the OTG stuff has mostly disbanded within central government. I’m glad people still find it a useful space to come and chat and listen and learn together. I love to hear what people are doing, what they’re thinking, what they care about.
Immediately after this session I also had a catch up with an ex-colleague who now works at Westminster CC. I last spoke with them before May when I took time out and they were kind enough not to let me disappear, checking in on me to make sure our connection stayed intact while I wasn’t fully ‘available’. They said one thing which stuck with me when I explained how I had been, how I had been feeling:
“You’ve lost your cheerleaders.”
This didn’t immediately hit but it has stuck with me. I don’t think she is entirely wrong but I might recategorize it as “You’ve lost your network”.
If I could describe the last 6 months, or maybe a little bit more, maybe the past 9 months, I would use the word ‘internal’. Maybe this is down to being within a smaller organisation, or maybe it relates to the type of work I’ve been doing, but I feel like I’ve been looking inwards way more than I have been outwards. Its been a really interesting time for our team, working out how to work together, build a strategy, think about how things run, think about how we all work together and our roles and responsibilities.
The thing about that is, for better or worse, I need externality in order to calibrate. I need, if not validation (cheerleading), the insight and thoughts and opinions of people outside my usual circle who are willing to think deeply, ask questions and work through things. It doenst really matter if we are solving my problem, their problem or something bigger, these conversations help me to build my perspective.
In short: Leave me in a small pond and I don’t become a big fish, I shrink and hide under the nearest rock and catastrophize. I think I’d rather be a little fish in a well-stocked lake.
Working in central government provided me the opportunity to spend some of my time networking, getting out and about, hearing about people’s thoughts and opinions, their work, the things they care about. In fact it was an imperative, I knew I couldn’t know everything, so I worked to work out who I needed to know. It was freeing. And those connections in turn helped me to understand myself.
I miss this from being in government, I miss this so much from the mass exodus of Twitter or whatever it’s called at time of writing, I miss this so much from the Weeknotes crew and from One Team Government.
Being outside of government has made me wary of keeping up some connections, I feel like now I work in an external organisation (albeit a non-profit one) people will be thinking about what I’m trying to get out of them rather than being on a level playing field, but I really have no evidence that this is true. I also keep telling myself that connecting with people needs to be in service of the work — my current projects or thoughts and plans rather than being about how I help to formulate those plans in the first place. This has to change.
So I have a question, how do I get that back? It feels like there was something that brought a lot of people together at a certain time and that those stars have expanded away from one another into different and separate constellations. That makes me sad.
So I’m going to start a bit of a plan, and I’m writing it down to hold myself accountable:
- I will be on LinkedIn more. Even though its a hellsite of terrible opinions I see that quite a few people have started publishing there in lieu of a better option. I’ll connect and show up when I can. But if there is somewhere else you are all hanging out please shout because honestly for the most part, bleugh.
- I will reach out more and take a tip from my friend at Westminster CC’s book. She said she worked to maintain contact with me even when I wasn’t available because she admired me and wanted to hold that. There are people I admire who I have not done this with. I’m going to try and rebuild and maintain connections with some of those people.
- I’m going to start telling myself that this is the work — even when it is hard.
If you’d like to connect please connect or drop me a line here or on LinkedIn and I will work to find the time. Much love x
