Our neighbor Gabby owns a fantastic yoga studio and healing center — Niyama — just up the road from us. It’s become a haven for Ixchel in particular, for yoga, therapeutic treatments, and Gabby’s regular temezcal — but it’s also a hub for neighborhood meetings and fiestas for the community at large. We got to attend our first Posada in Mexico last December at Niyama.

Gabby’s sister, Adriana, taught at Niyama for many years before striking out on her own last year to open her own studio, Kinam.

This past weekend, the three of us — Ixchel, Gabby, and I — were on our way to a film screening at Kinam. Gabby got to talking about Adri’s departure: the separation of two sisters who’d been a team for years, the simultaneous joy of watching her sister build something of her own and thrive, and the grief of not having Adri there as a regular presence in the Niyama business anymore. Happy tears kind of stuff.

(To be fair, Adri and her partner Luciano live next door to Niyama, and the two are still thick as thieves — because family and togetherness are everything in this part of the world.)

There’s a grief that moves through the growth of the things we create and build that I don’t think we’re always conscious of, or intentional about meeting when it arrives. At least not as feelings we label as “grief.”

It’s true for sisters who were running a business together and then suddenly weren’t. And I think it’s true for many founders of small businesses and other orgs.

Two things can be true. We can be joyful — genuinely, fully joyful — that we’ve taken something from vision to purpose, action, and tangible impact on other people or the planet. And we can hold space to grieve when what’s needed to drive the purpose forward has outgrown how much a founder can realistically hold.

That grief isn’t a problem to solve. It’s actually a sign that what you’ve built matters enough — to enough people — to go through these periods of skin-shedding and good grief.

Founders feel this in the letting go of work they once loved. In stopping being the person in every decision. In handing stewardship of something deeply personal to someone else. Many of the bags they’re setting down aren’t just tasks — they’re identity markers.

These moments are exciting thresholds to cross. They are liminal spaces that expand and contract, that want to be witnessed, that are ripe opportunities to celebrate the passing of things, create, and transition to the next iteration of something more fulfilled. Something is ending, and something is beginning.

Both are real, and both deserve to be seen — even when the change is good, even when you chose it, even when everything is clicking.

When Grief Goes Unwitnessed

When that grief goes unnamed — in founders I know, in orgs I’ve worked with, in myself — it doesn’t disappear. It finds other shapes. Friction that shouldn’t be there. A resentment nobody can trace to its source. A founder who keeps circling back to decisions they already delegated, not because they don’t trust their team, but because something in the transition never got witnessed. Systems get blamed for carrying emotional weight they were never designed to hold.

Maybe you’re the founder handing off operations they’ve held alone for three years.

Or you’re an org that’s outgrown the scrappy systems that have worked for you to this point, but are graduating and adulting those.

Or you’re a visionary or creator moving onward and upward from a version of the work that was intimate and small and entirely yours — something that had to change so it could become something worthy of you and the world.

All of it is worth grieving, even briefly, as sidecars of what you’re celebrating.

Something To Try

The practical things you can try (yes to practical things, even with topics like this):

• Name it. Out loud, to yourself first. *This is exciting, and it’s also a little awesomely heartbreaking.* Just as a true thing happening alongside the growth.

• Track the feelings. Take a slow breath or two while you think about whatever the change is that’s happening, the thing you’re letting go of. In what parts of your body does that feel active or charged? Let those feelings land in your body and feel them — without bypassing them on the way to the next thing.

• Write it. One sentence (or more) — what you’re releasing, what you’re stepping into. Put it somewhere you’ll see it for a few days.

• Consider: Share it. Tell one person. A partner, a peer, or a trusted collaborator. Grief witnessed in the collective is more potent than grief witnessed alone.

A practice of expansion like this that makes room for grief can create more sustainable systems and steadier people, trust me. Not because grief is “productive,” but because naming what’s actually happening keeps you honest about the transition you’re in.

You’re not solving grief. You’re honoring it. And that makes more room for joy, too.

What are you excited about right now? And what are you quietly mourning as it changes?

Hola! Im Jaimey, founder of Bearfuht Labs. I love to help impact-focused SMBs and nonprofit founders find more ease in your day to day. Right-sized ops and project systmes that helps you and your people focus on the work that matters.

If you’re in a growth season and the ops aren’t keeping up with the vision, that’s where I come in. Click the button below to book a no-strings discovery call and let’s chat!.

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One of the quiet, unspoken things I’ve loved about living in places like Nicaragua and Mexico — but about LATAM in general — is all of the small acts of collective care that happen every day, that weave together to make the social fabric here.

If you wander through a neighborhood, especially in the morning, you’ll invariably see homeowners or business owners cleaning the sidewalk and street in front of their building/home/business (at the neighborhood level, the two are pretty intertwined with each other, living and commerce. IYKYK).

Usually a bucket of soapy water, scrubbing the cement with that, and a broom. Clean bucket of water for the rinse.

And maybe this happens in a less frequent or concentrated way in bigger metros or on busy carreteras or arteries. Maybe it’s more common at the neighborhood level, but I’ve definitely witnessed it in more populous places like Managua, Oaxaca, Xalapa, etc.

I’m sure the U.S. is dotted with small towns where this kind of practice also happens, but those mostly live in outdated Norman Rockwell images somewhere in my neocortex. My “life experience” of street and sidewalk cleaning is that there are people and trucks/machines (city or private company) that do that work, including in my idyllic hometown of Petaluma, CA.

There are throughlines I love here. Strong work ethic. Modeling a pride of ownership and appearance. Maybe a little “obligation.”

But the biggest one is an embedded culture of care, of ‘We.’ It’s reciprocity with our neighbors and communities here that’s way more self-initiated and hands-on.

The sidewalk is interesting because it’s a threshold. It’s both public and private. It’s an edge space, a liminal space, a zone of connection — regardless of where you live.

(My Human Design / Artificial Shores environment profile loves this.)

Who’s responsible for it? In the States, with DWPs and HOAs, that’s more obvious. Here it’s more collective. The cities pick up garbage, but the people handle beautification at the small scale. Small actions/fractals impacting the whole.

There’s both upside and downside to having bureaucracy tending to the beauty of our collective and threshold spaces.

I love this as a model for how we can build healthier systems—ones that deliver outcomes, make money, *and* feel good to work in. Systems that nurture our teams as stewards of the impact we’re creating.

When Systems Replace Culture

Threshold spaces in our businesses are interesting because they’re both places where we can check the health of our orgs/systems, and they’re where collective care either lives—or doesn’t.

That might look like:

• Handoffs between team members

• The space between leadership’s vision and how work actually happens

• Interfaces between departments, roles, or tools

These are also places where things can be most fragile. Not because our system or the people working in it are flawed, but because we’re defining ‘who’s responsible?’ through an outdated lens.

Look, I’m not anti-systems. Quite the opposite. I’m a Saturn-loving architect of healthy business operations. I sell human-centric project plans to clients. Systems create essential scaffolding, containers, and clarity.

But I also think we *overbuild* (or “mis-build”) our systems. At a minimum, we don’t treat them like a living organism as much as we say we do.

Hot take, we ultimately design our systems and processes to not trust them.

In a healthy system, there’s an interesting yes/and tension: ‘I’m responsible for this part, but we’re collectively responsible for the whole.’ That tension lives in the thresholds and edges.

Systems that don’t prioritize collective care and stewardship over how we manage our work default to enforcement. Rigid policies. Out-of-touch hierarchies. Oversight (so much oversight). I’ve worked in/with enough corporations to know how riddled our current work systems are with “output over people.”

A More Commons Design for Our Ops

Design systems where distributed care is the default. Full stop. This doesn’t mean “no structure.” It means a structure that’s designed to nurture a pride of care and reciprocity as much as it does compliance with an SOP or completing a task by a deadline.

Name who tends each threshold.

Not ‘who owns this task’ but ‘who makes sure this handoff doesn’t break?’ Who tends the space between sales and delivery? Between project kickoff and project ownership? If the answer is ‘I don’t know,’ that’s where things fall apart.

Tiny acts, daily.

You don’t need a quarterly “handoff improvement initiative.” You need the 2-minute check-in before passing work forward. The quick “is this clear?” before closing a project. The weekly 10-minute standup asking “what fell through the cracks this week?” Small, repeatable care—not big interventions. (Bonus: AI tools can now help surface those cracks faster for small teams.)

Tend edges because someone’s tending yours.

When care is reciprocal, people take responsibility because they trust others are doing the same. When care is enforced, people do the minimum to check the box. Design your systems so that tending an edge—updating the handoff doc, clarifying ownership, checking in—isn’t “extra work.” It’s how work gets done.

Are You Defending Boundaries or Tending Edges?

Think about the last time something fell through the cracks in your organization. Where did it happen? Chances are, in one of those threshold spaces—a handoff, an interface, a gap between roles.

Here’s the question to ask: Is that space clearly someone’s responsibility, or is it assumed someone will handle it?

Edges invite care. They’re porous, connecting, tended. Good ops systems don’t just define roles—they make it easy, and expected, for people to tend their edges. Not because it’s policy, but because work has fluidity that needs attention.

Operations aren’t just about throughput and task management. They’re about building something people want to take care of.

If your business ops or project systems are feeling messy —handoffs stalling, unclear ownership, or work is falling through the cracks — let’s figure out what’s breaking and how to fix it.

Book one of my Audit + Action sessions. We’ll spend 90 minutes mapping what’s actually happening in your systems, identify where friction lives, and build a roadmap for the 1-3 fixes that will make the biggest difference—based on leverage and capacity, not urgency.

You’ll receive a full audit and action plan that tells you what to fix now, what to ignore, and what to revisit later.

Reply to this if you have any questions, or click here to book today.

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The house we rent and call home these days is a constant full-body and emotional deep breath and exhale (metaphorical and literal). It’s buffered by protected riparian forest on either side and behind the house. The back bedroom is a solarium; Ixchel’s studio and sanctum. Its glorious feature is a wall of windows and a deck attached to the back that looks out to this scene:

A few weeks ago, Ixchel started noticing, in their early evening reflections out there, a kaleidoscope of butterflies (Because of course a group of butterflies is called a kaleidoscope. ❤️ 🦋) coming in and settling on different branches in trees closer to the house.

An evening commute to settle in the twilight and nighttime safety of protected forest. It’s our version of the Monarchs migrating hundreds of miles every year.

They generally come in at dusk, maybe a minute or two later each day, as we get further and further from the deep time of Winter Solstice. By the morning, they’ve moved on to do their butterfly things.

The first time experiencing our own private kaleidoscope was pure Wonder — way beyond “oh, neat, butterflies.” It was a visceral call and response in my heart, throat, and facial muscles (probably from gasping and smiling). It was awe.

By the third, fourth, fifth evening, it became ritual; must-see programming, because chasing Wonder (alone and with each other) is one of the best things we can do for ourselves, especially in these especially shitty, dystopian times. Again, awe.

Now I plan my afternoons around their flocking as often as possible. The shared experience of two-to-many—witnessing it with Ixchel, sharing the experience with the mariposas—has become a necessary ritual of connection and restoration for me.

(Sometimes they don’t come. If it’s misty or rainy that day, maybe they don’t. Maybe they’re hunkering down someplace else. If that happens, we still get to witness evening birdsong, awesome trees, and stillness.)

It’s their natural, rooted intelligence, a particular flavor of the Art of Flocking, that has me deeply curious. That, plus a dopamine-rich ritual that’s emerged, dressed up as mystery and magic.

I was “this many years old today” during one of those first encounters when I learned from Ixchel that their migration muscle memory is generations and generations deep.

So it’s wild to me. Butterflies don’t live a long time—sometimes only a couple of weeks, sometimes a few months. But fleeting and short in the bigger scheme. So the ones that came in yesterday aren’t the same set from, say, two weeks ago.

And yet here they are. The kaleidoscope collectively remembers, even when no individual butterfly necessarily does. They find this exact cluster of trees, at this exact time of day, without a map, without a leader, their lessons of arriving a deep, collective memory thread that reaches from way back when and stretches into the future.

I love to try to connect dots and build oddly shaped bridges in my brain between life things — in this case, a devotion to what Earth has to teach us — and our messy but inspired human systems and organization. Between “Lessons of We” that I notice and work I’m called to do to help stoke more capacity awareness in our systems of work.

There’s a kajillion different tiny lesson threads you could pull on here. Instead of trying to force “here’s what kaleidoscopes of butterflies can teach small business founders and leaders,” what’s reflecting back and rippling outward are intuition, embodiment, and even ancestral lessons of belonging we might remember. I

Collective Memory > Individual Knowledge

In our companies, we talk about things like SOPs, “knowledge transfer,” and “information hygiene” all the time. Whatever the equivalent of that is in our community groups. And those things are important to help smooth out all of the ebbs and flows, and transitions of people in and out of a company, team, or collective.

What’s maybe missing in those for me is evidence of the muscle memory, the pattern recognition. Intuition and instinct aren’t always aligned with outcomes and objectives. But are they any less vital to healthy systems than empathy or understanding—soft skills we’ve decided are essential?

Anticipation as Ritual

The ritual isn’t just the butterflies arriving. It’s the visceral anticipation that’s become me showing up witness it. For awe and wonder.

How much of culture is just this? Showing up at the same time, organized or not, because some pattern invites us. Not mandated. Just: this is when we’re here, discovering why we’re here. Letting that influence our solo and collective experiences and the work we do—maybe a little bit more than we do.

I don’t have all the answers here. Just awe. Just gratitude.

Just: this is home, this is the time, we arrive together.

I’m planting seeds to return to—exploring why we flock, gather, organize, and experience Wonder and Flow in collectives, small and large. Maybe it becomes a series. Maybe a book. For this instance, it’s just watching those cool kaleidoscopes and asking: what can they teach us about belonging?

Happy 2026, Gregorian calendar lovers and planners!

I’m coming out of a favorite annual ritual I get to do with Ixchel — 13 Mystical/Magical Nights. I’m planning a separate reflection piece about that, but in a nutshell, I wrote down 13 intentions/wishes for 2026 — in a journal and on slips of paper. Since Winter Solstice, I’ve been burning one of those slips of paper to release the intention to the Universe. 12 Magical Nights, 12 intentions cast into smoke for the Universe to carry. Tomorrow, Jan 2, I’ll get to look at the 13th wish, which is mine to work on and manifest.

That’s one ritual I look forward to every year, with so much reverence.

The second one is ’s #My3Words challenge, which he’s been doing since 2006 — in which we pick three words to be lodestars for our creative, professional, and community work in the new year.

Reflecting on my 3 Words for 2025 and how they showed up for me this year…

Gallup: As in Simon, badass bass player for The Cure (vs. the polling company of the same name 😉). Simon has such a deep, signature tone and style that I fucking love. Gallup, as a lodestar for me, was about stepping more into my me-ness this year. Being more visible.

I think I did a decent job of that, algorithms be damned. I even convinced myself to fire up my dormant TikTok account and get on video here at the close of the year. It was probably the word that I met with the most resistance, but I’m introverted and skew toward being more socially awkward than not. I’ll take the showing up Wins.

Aperture: This was about widening perspectives in 2025, my own and for others, directly or indirectly. New ways of seeing and being. More than a dozen tech events produced this year contributed to that. But I also published more and tried to be useful and novel. But also writing and publishing more. Showing up, supporting, and sharing across LinkedIn, Bluesky (for photography), and Threads.

Aperture was also a commitment to a photography habit and practice, purely for cup-filling joy. A thing I practiced, with some fallow periods of retrograde. But I’ve renewed my devotion for 2026 by setting a Big Hairy Goal to become a serious practicing photographer.

Mycelial: Being a resource, a bridge, a connector. Bringing people together is the work and reward of event production, so check, check, and check in many ways. As 2025 got more and more dysfunctional, as I witnessed more small business owners, creators, and freelancers in states of stress from having to do everything alone, my curiosity toward collective work has really grown. The Mycelial for the new year that’s showing up in my 3 Words for 2026

I felt way more connected to these all year. I was more intentional about weaving them into my seasonal/lunar and weekly planning sessions, and these lodestar words felt purposeful and connected.

I like my word choices to be novel enough to keep me interested enough to use them as anchor points throughout the year. They’re personal to me, and I honestly don’t spend a lot of time sharing them with others (other than here as part of the ritual). So it’s OK if they feel a little esoteric to the outside observer.

These are mine for 2026 (for the Winter Solstice-to-Winter Solstice period) that I’m pretty stoked have surfaced for me as lodestar words for next year:

Quest

2026 is my Year of Yes. More surrender, curiosity, adventure, learning, and collaboration. More Flow. More deepening into our Mexico life and relationships with our neighbors and the greater community. Striving to treat every day as a Choose Your Own Adventure wherever I can. I think I understand the assignment, and I’m here for it.

This is also a nod to Questlove, whom I revere for his brilliant gifts of music knowledge and curation. A year of Quest and discovery needs a bigger soundtrack. I’m committing at least half of my listening time to new artists and new genres outside of my usual post-punk / shoegaze / swampy / prog rock / metal / trip hop / downtempo lanes. I want to learn from Questlove and how he hears and curates music, and get really good at that myself, for funsies.

Collectivo

2026 is primed to be the year of collectivism. The year of We. It’s the thing that I’m planning to spend most of my focus on this year. By the end of 2025, the number of social posts I saw from entrepreneurs, solopreneurs, small business owners, artists, and freelancers in a state of stress and exhaustion was heartbreaking. All mirroring some Sisyphus version of being isolated, doing their thing alone, dealing with ridiculous headwinds from a shitty, broken system.

We don’t have to do it alone. We shouldn’t have to, anyway. Here in Mexico, there are collectives of taxistas, agriculture/growers, manufacturing, etc. But the collectivo spirit also shows up in things like a shared retail space, occupied by several different small, independent businesses, and it works.

Let’s let 2026 be a year where we come together in weird, unexpected collectives to support each other’s success in business and life, grounded in systems of mutual aid and reciprocity. It’s the medicine we need when it’s a handful of yt men at the controls of our systems.

Provecho

One of my favorite living practices that people do in Mexico is to say “Buen Provecho” when you enter or leave a restaurant or cafe. (‘Provecho’ is the casual variation and adheres to Chris’s ‘rules’ for these 3 Words 😂)

That can be something as simple as a cup of coffee (Coatepec has amazing coffee), or a full, fancy meal.

How natural, generous, and wonderful an ecstatic it is, to show a simple kindness to another human — that you’re psyched for them that they’re about to enjoy a really good cafecito or meal. It’s a generous wishing for someone else’s pleasure, enjoyment, fulfillment.

It’s a mantra and blessing I’m carrying into 2026, literally and metaphorically speaking.

These are feeling LIT. Thanks to Chris for planting this ritual in my practice so many years ago. Here’s to a JOYFUL, hopeful, buoyant 2026 for each of us!

Hola! If you’re new here, I’m Jaimey, founder of Bearfuht Labs. I love to help impact-focused SMBs and nonprofits build regenerative business operations and project systems that breathe—so your team can focus on the work that matters instead of fighting broken systems.

If your operations feel overwhelming, your team is burned out, or you’re holding too many bags, let’s chat! DM me or visit bearfuht.com to book a free coffee chat.

I’ve sat down to write this reflection on resistance and our my relationship with it, probably six times now. On at least a couple of instances, I tapped out to go on wonderful and necessary wanders in Xalapa and Coatepec with Ixchel (because I’m very spontaneously suggestible like that 🤣).

There was a Mars square Saturn thing happening for a minute (action and focus, meet slow and methodical. Those tensions can let all kinds of shiny things in to distract me).

And then just me getting in my own way and bouncing out of the struggle phase of Flow instead of leaning into it. My own shit — usually some kind of cocktail of boredom, fuzzy focus, “should be doing this other thing (all the shoulds…sigh),” and feelings of low self-worth.

We all have moments (or achingly long periods) of resistance to things. And 2025 has given us a lot of reasons to put up walls and resist the fuck out of everything as protection or a coping mechanism.

It’s a relationship I’m continuing to deepen into — the surface symptoms and the deeper, shadowy sides of when I resist things, why I resist, and when/how resistance is useful/healthful, and when it’s not. It’s the medicine I need in this next chapter of life. I’m thinking about resistance most often through these lenses right now:

Resistance as Protection

We all throw up boundaries of resistance to protect ourselves, in times of danger (real or perceived), freeze, and flee.

I’m pretty Saturnian, by design and by nature. I’m introverted. I like structure and routine. My Saturn-Venus-Mercury stellium in my 8th house primes me for being able to transmute chaos into calm for others. It’s a thing I’ve built a reputation around.

There’s also a selfish reason for loving Saturnian things. For me, there’s an inherent feeling of safety in routine, a balm for when I don’t necessarily feel safe — in the face of whatever external circumstances might be happening. Maybe you can relate.

The truth is, even in my mid-50s, as an able-bodied, yt-cis-presenting dude, I’ve struggled with feeling safe consistently for most of my life. So routine and structure are Linus’s blankets I can return to, to “feel safer.”

I’ve learned to recognize the signs in my body when I don’t. A tightening in my solar plexus. Constriction in my heart center or throat. When things feel most chaotic, it’s the baseline daily routines I can come back to for safety. I can feel tense as fuck and stop to wash dishes in the kitchen…and get an almost instant softening of the body and relief.

But I can be very Gemini and live in the extremes of dichotomies. There are two nasty effects of my overdoing it and overindulging in my devotion to structure and routine.

First, too much resistance-manifested-as-rigidity keeps me small, and a smaller version of me is not as useful to impact I yearn to contribute to the world.

Second, when I indulge those routines to a fault, it’s usually at the expense of my family or my work. I get too rigid to the point where the tighening in my body makes it more difficult to accept what is, in the present now.

You probably have your own version of Resistance = Protection. Structure and routine certainly aren’t the only manifestations of it for me. But they’re the ones I’ve been witnessing and healing most often lately.

Resistance as Information

I just ended a full-time contract with an event client in October. Someone I’ve worked with before, have known for years, and who I worked with for the last 4 1/2 years. Nodding back to the themes of routine and safety, it was a regular, reliable income and resources for my family, even as a 1099 contract position.

To be honest, I’ve been blessed since I made the move to 1099 work more than 12 years ago, to basically have one full-time event “client” after another, giving us regular, reliable income.

But, probably the last two years of the gig were challenging. At that point (call it 2023), I’d been in the full-time event production business for 15+ years — 17+ by the time this contract wrapped up.

And — admission of truth — the pace and stress of full-time event organizing moved more easily through my body when I was 40 than it does now in my early-mid 50s.

Some of that is that it’s just gotten way more challenging for independent event producers. But a lot of it has just been cumulative fatigue.

So there was a natural atrophy that was already happening in the relationship with my chosen career, one that has brought me so much joy and stability for my family. And there was a point, by relationship, where I stopped really having any fun in that last gig, and it was just about the paycheck. I still showed up every day, but with resistance in my body, most every day. I knew it, and my client and friend knew it. We parted ways, amicably, and with much love.

(It’s probably a move I should have made two years prior, and I think I’ve learned from my last two long-term contract gigs that ~3 years might be my max capacity for a given engagement.)

Resistance can show up in our bodies when we’re at our expiration date with something. When there’s a thing — a project, a job, a relationship, whatever — that’s naturally waned. I think our job is to listen to that. It’s information. Sometimes making the jump is scary, but ultimately what we need to feel renewed and vital again. It’s not always information I’ve done a good job listening to, but I’m working on it.

Resistance as Liberation

Fast-forward to today (December 28, as I’m writing this). I’m now without a regular full-time gig for the past few weeks and have pivoted to full-time biz ops and project consulting / fractional work. Focusing on purpose-driven, growing SMBs and nonprofits. Taking the pieces of event work that I still love dearly and am good at, and putting them to use for making an impact in the world

For the first time, really ever, I’m in the driver’s seat of being responsible for finding a regular stream of clients. That’s been both wildly liberating and has really triggered all of my base safety alarm bells. It’s different muscles I’m learning to develop.

This liminal space has NOT been comfortable. I keep titrating between “keep going” and “fuck it, go find another FT job.” There’s resistance in my body looking down either path. So I’m yes/and-ing it for now. Build the consultancy. Be open to a singular FT role that will resource us and bring us ease.

But here’s what I keep coming back to. Bread crumbs of purpose.

I’ve witnessed way too many people this year — creators, solopreneurs, small, independent business owners, in particular, but also women, communities of color, and LGBTQIA+ — in states of trauma and stress because they feel alone. Because they are doing their thing all alone. Because the 2025 shit sandwich has stacked the deck against us all.

We don’t need to do it alone.

We can — and probably should — work in the cooperative, in the collective, more in 2026. This year has taught us that we should be forming mycelial networks between our small businesses. We saw tons of it in social media (for me, witnessing it in Threads) — small business owners turning out and amplifying each other. We can turn that energy into containers of mutual support for each other.

That’s a thing that shines light for me, that steers me back toward the path of scary entrepreneurship — even as my body tension stress levels are at an all-time high, in the absence of booked work for January and shrinking bank accounts.

Resistance as Rescue

I’m treating 2026 as a Year of Yes. I rely so much on comfort and safety inside my own structure that I stop living, and I get cranky.

There’s an analogy I love to live by here in Mexico (and in Nicaragua before that), and that is “if you’re waiting for there to be zero rain, you’ll never start living.” One way we experience the seasons is in terms of dry vs. wet. When it’s the thick of wet season, it’s…wet.

And when the heavier rains come, people pause their work, their errands, their goings on. They shelter. And when the rain lightens, everything resumes. But no one stops completely just because of the rain. If you wait for there to be zero rain during the rainy season to do anything, you’ll be pretty bummed for half the year.

There are no perfect conditions to do anything, really, including dancing with the things we resist.

So I’m leaning into saying Yes to more things, to getting uncomfortable, to surrender. Four things in particular that are pulling on me at a sacral level in 2026, which are also scary and uncomfortable as fuck in my body.

• Getting on video, fully in 2026. I’m introverted, socially awkward, and self-conscious as all get out. But I know the algo game prefers visual content, so off I go. I’ve already dipped into posting a few things this year, then went retrograde, and now I’m back at it.

• Learning how to become a better, committed entrepreneur and growing my consultancy, Bearfuht Labs, into its full being. Building and supporting human-centered, regenerative biz ops and project systems for/with SMBs and nonprofits. Making impact.

• As an extension (or orbiting planet) of that, initiating small collectivos of founders and freelancers, grounded in mutual reciprocity. Using privilege to help spark containers of collective care, collaboration, and prosperity for more people.

• Launching a podcast that explores how we deal with change and resistance, and creative and flow habits. Getting to surface others’ stories at these intersections, and also as a tool to deepen into and befriend my own relationship with resistance.

Scary, yes. But the good kind of scary - the kind that heals resistance to being seen, that practices self-love, that treats creativity and curiosity as essential instead of nice-to-have.

Here’s to 2026 as the year we befriend what we resist, and do massive things for ourselves and the collective on the other side. Thanks for listening!

Hola! Im Jaimey, founder of Bearfuht Labs. I love to help impact-focused SMBs and nonprofits build regenerative business operations and project systems that breathe—so your team can focus on the work that matters instead of fighting broken systems.

If your operations feel overwhelming, your team is burned out, or you’re the bottleneck on everything, let’s talk. DM me or visit bearfuht.com to book a free coffee chat.

I'm posting this Untethered Flow article on my birthday—not trolling for well wishes 😅 but birthdays and solar returns are natural points for inward reflection.

The last eight years of mine and Ixchel’s lives have been spent as guests and residents in LATAM. Eight years is a long time to be discovering that things you thought were just "how the world works" are just how one particular corner of the world works.

I’ve had a running LATAM gratitude and “growth” list going for a while, but I’ve been leaning more and more into the assumptions, behaviors, and deeply ingrained cultural programming I've had to shed along the way.

How We Got Here

Three years ago today, I was waking up in Antigua, Guatemala, midway through a 1,700-kilometer road trip to move myself, our German Shepherd Hugo, and a bunch of our shit to Oaxaca.

We were making the move from Nicaragua to Mexico—more residency options, zero dictators in power in Mexico. Ixchel had already flown ahead from Managua to Oaxaca (with a big assist from our youngest, Zee) and was waiting for us on the other side.

But our story starts earlier.

More than five years before that trek, Ixchel and I had decided to leave the U.S. We'd done our research and put Nicaragua at the top of our relocation wish list. In December 2016, we took a 3-week scouting trip to Matagalpa, Estelí, and Jinotega in the Northern Highlands.

I’ll never forget the drive from the Managua airport to Matagalpa, our first stop. In that two-hour ride, all of my white privilege came rushing into focus.

I grew up in suburban Northern California, so seeing cinder block homes with metal roofs (or more basic construction than that), people doing laundry outside by hand, and burning trash in the yard, that was…new.

And it marked the beginning of a long, humbling process of unlearning.

I’ve been hyper aware of what it means to be a 6'2" Gen X gringo here ever since. What I mean by that is: living *here* as a guest, with grace, siempre.

I’m also not blind to the patterns.

Migration from the U.S., Canada, and Europe into LATAM has exploded in the last few years, and it’s brought with it a very real wave of gentrification. Rising rents. Displacement. Tourists playing at local life without learning the language, without building relationships, without contributing much beyond dollars.

I think about that a lot. I wrestle with it.

I’ll always defend people choosing to leave countries where they don’t feel safe. But I’m not here to sell Mexico, or offer up LATAM as an escape hatch. This isn’t a “move abroad” piece. It’s a practice in being a guest, not a taker.

What I've Had to Unlearn

It probably took me a full year to really untether from the U.S. pace of life and soften my expectations about so many things. Here are a few important ones.

Time and Predictability are Illusions

Things rarely happen on the timeline you had in mind. Urgency means something different here. So does "on time."

Bureaucracy and infrastructure have a vibe—unpredictable but persistent. One day the internet’s solid, the next your power’s out for six hours. And somehow, you adjust.

Eventually, you stop trying to impose your timeline on everything. You learn to surrender. Life gets a little easier. Less stressful.

A lot of what we call "efficiency" back home is really just dressed-up, extractive productivity. Control in disguise.

If you show up with a Western, white privilege, expecting everything to move at the speed you’re used to, you’ll be frustrated. Let that shit go.

Relationships Over Transactions

I'm still working on this one, as a constant practice. I’m a Gen X only child, raised by two deeply private, hermit-like parents. I got good at being alone. Good at self-reliance.

But in Latin America, *relationships* aren’t optional. They’re the fabric and the connective tissue of most everything. The way anything and everything gets done.

People greet each other. They ask how you’re doing—and mean it. Even passing interactions come with eye contact and acknowledgment. Whether it's your barista, your neighbor, your taxista of the day, there’s an expectation of presence.

Small talk isn’t small. It’s oxygen.

That kind of everyday relational rhythm was new to me. And deeply needed.

When our beloved Xina—our adopted senior Rottweiler—was dying in April 2020, our vet Ricardo didn’t just do his job and leave. He stayed. Held space. Walked with us through her crossing with care. Let us cry. Gave us time.

Francisco, our handyman, dug her 1-meter cubed grave with only a digging bar, a shovel, and a lot of empathy and generosity.

Everywhere we’ve lived in LATAM, we’ve experienced that kind of care (landlords, vets, taxistas, shop owners and employees where we frequent). That kind of *withness.*

Not just being around people. Being *in it* with them.

Hustle Culture Worship Isn’t a Thing

LATAM is entrepreneurial as hell—but not in the U.S. "grind till you drop" way.

Burnout isn't glorified. Rest, family time, and long lunches are part of the rhythm. There's not the same obsession with productivity hacks. People work hard, but not at the expense of living. Quality over quantity.

The best work is iterative. The best ideas grow in layers. If you're waiting for perfection, you're probably holding back something that's already good enough.

Uncertainty Isn’t an Emergency

Uncertainty isn’t code for “DANGER, WILL ROBINSON.” It’s just... part of the day.

Plans still matter. But they flex. You learn to do the thing with the info you’ve got, and then adjust when the power cuts, or the road closes, or the rules change mid-process.

It’s not about passively waiting things out. It’s about staying in motion *while* knowing you’ll probably need to reroute.

It’s a skill. And once you stop expecting everything to be locked in, you stop feeling like the sky is falling every time something shifts.

Formality Doesn’t Mean Distance

Formality gets a bad rap in U.S. culture—like it’s a barrier to connection. But here, it’s often how you start.

“Buenos días.” “Con permiso.” “Licenciada.” These aren’t signs of distance. They’re part of a rhythm that builds trust. You start with respect. You build from there.

The warmth shows up too—it just doesn’t rush in waving jazz hands.

Rain Happens

Especially in wet season. If you wait for it to stop raining before you go anywhere, you might never leave the house, LOL.

It’s Not as Dangerous as They Want You to Think

If you’ve only ever heard about Mexico (or anywhere in LATAM) from U.S. media, you’d think it’s nonstop cartels and kidnappings. That narrative is tired—and intentionally misleading.

Is there violence here? Sure. Just like there is everywhere. But on the whole, Mexico is *objectively* safer than the U.S. by most measures. Especially if you’re not living in fear of mass shootings every time you go to the grocery store.

We feel safer here (less so by the end of our time in Nicaragua because Ortega = Dictator). Full stop.

You Are Not the Exception

Rugged individualism isn't a thing. Community support is built-in, and being self-sufficient to a fault is seen as odd.

Exceptionalism doesn't earn you favors. You're not special just because you come from the U.S. (or elsewhere). Hierarchy isn't absent—it's just navigated differently. Respect, formality, and knowing when to push or defer are key.

Living here has meant unlearning the reflex to center myself. It’s not about disappearing—it’s about decentering. Being part of something, not above it.

Still “Unlearning”

Eight years in, I still catch myself trying to force clarity where ambiguity is just part of the deal. I still bump into habits and assumptions that don’t quite belong here. And when I do, I try to pause. Reroute. Listen.

There’s no arrival. No moment when you suddenly “get” it all. Just deeper presence. A little more humility. Fewer freakouts when things don’t go to plan.

Some things that seem broken just need context. Some things don’t need fixing at all.

At this point, I don’t need to mark my LATAM anniversary publicly. But the unlearning? That’s ongoing. And honestly, it’s become one of the best parts.

Te quiero, Mexico. 🇲🇽 Te quiero, Nicaragua. 🇳🇮

Have you seen Petey the Seeing Eye Donkey yet?

He’s a two-year-old donkey living on a farm in the U.S. His best friend is Luna, a blind horse. Every day, Petey helps Luna out of the stables and into the pasture. He guides her away from hazards, waits for her when she hesitates, and keeps her moving safely through her world. It’s binge-worthy content.

His following across the socials is as big as his beautiful donkey heart. I have serious donkey goals in my 2nd Act of life, so Petey is a personal fave.

Petey on TikTok | Instagram | YouTube

Through Luna, Petey has found an almost singular, heart-full purpose—that seems to bring him joy.

(Donkeys are also social and do better paired with other donkeys or horses, so maybe that’s part of his bond with Luna. But the way he’s adapted to her reality with extra care and empathy, that’s what makes him special.)

Some people move through life the way Petey does. They find an immediate and undeniable connection to a curiosity that turns into a path. They just know.

A musician picks up a guitar and feels an instant pull. A scientist stares at the stars and knows, deep down, this is it. A social worker, doctor, or other type of healer feels the call through service.

But for a lot (or most) of us, it’s messier. The signs might be there (screaming at us in plain view, in some cases), but we hesitate. We ignore them. We intellectualize and tell ourselves, “That sounds fun, but I need to focus on this thing over here.”

I do it all the time. It shows up most often as busy work instead of making time for creative work or projects that are closer to “I’d love to do **that** with the rest of my life.” It’s me staying small in those moments.

Initiated Moments

This isn’t necessarily another guide on how to “uncover” your purpose. (Though if that’s where you are right now, has fantastic programs to help you unearth it.) This is an invitation to notice and welcome in the synchronicities that are already leading you toward your purpose — and being brave enough to stop resisting them.

Each of us has initiating moments, breadcrumbs leading us toward purpose. Ixchel describes them as Initiated Collective Purpose. Meaning, events in our lives moving us toward our purpose, that we’re meant to embody for the good of the collective.

You don’t need a full life map to begin. Sometimes all you need is to pause and name the moments that have drawn you into alignment with yourself at a body level. Turning points that felt more like remembering than deciding.

For me, those have included:

• Being at a really low point in my late teens/early 20’s, deciding to go back to school, and meeting Ixchel there, and gaining/growing into a chosen family I really needed

• My first “corporate” gig, working in specialty retail, where the Founders gave me a big ‘ol canvas on which to experiment with learning video production, L&D, and designing product and sales trainings on the job.

• Making the decision with Ixchel in 2016 (mostly initiated by her) to take a break from the U.S. and move to LATAM

• Adopting dogs (in Nicaragua and Mexico) and officially becoming a dog person (I’ve had cats throughout my life but when we adopted our GSD, Hugo in 2017, that changed everything in perspective).

These moments didn’t come packaged with clear instructions. But looking back, I can see how each one (and the other initiated moments of my life) showed up at the right time — each nudging me closer to what I’m here to do. That’s not always a straight, linear path.

Getting Out of Our Own Way

My 54th Solar Return is coming up in a few weeks. I’ve been sitting a lot lately in my desires for the unfolding of this second act. What I’ve said yes to. What I’ve resisted. What keeps circling back, quietly asking to be honored.

I know what resonates in my body when I speak my ICPs I’ve claimed, out loud:

• Make art and support artists

• Use my privilege to center, support, and amplify Queer, NB, Trans, and BIPOC creators

• Make friends with animals and plants

• Glow up more co-operative models of our future of work

And yet, hesitation, fear, and resistance to following through on those things pop up all the time in the form of my Ego. The inner wounded child negotiations with all the “shoulds” that echo from capitalism, survival instinct, and old identities I’ve outgrown.

(We literally have a donkey that lives across the road from us here in San Cristóbal—who I’ve been hearing for a year and a half, have wanted to meet, and somehow, I haven’t yet.)

We assume Purpose has to be obvious before we act. We second-guess what feels natural. We assume it has to be grand or official before we trust it.

We wait for clarity instead of recognizing that clarity often comes from paying attention to synchronicity, and from movement, not before it.

Petey didn’t sit around trying out different farm jobs before deciding on this one. He didn’t debate whether he was qualified. He just did what made sense in the moment, and his role became clear through doing it.

If you’re looking for direction, pay attention to what already holds meaning.

• What’s the work you do instinctively, even without recognition?

• If you designed a “perfect day,” what acts of joy would you fill it with?

• What bigger issues (in the world or in your community) get the hairs on the back of your neck standing up?

• What do people naturally come to you for?

• What patterns keep pulling you back, no matter how much you try to pivot?

You don’t have to find purpose so much as you really should stop ignoring it.

Side Note: Not Everyone is a Petey (And That’s Okay)

Now, let’s talk specialists and generalists for a moment, because this is kind of a larger love letter to both. I am a proud generalist

Petey has found his one clear role. That’s beautiful.

But some of us don’t.

Some of us are specialists. Others are translators, connectors, and pattern-seekers.

Some people have a singular purpose, their specialized gift to others.

Others puddle-hop, sample the universe, and reflect that into the world.

Both are valid.

The mistake? Thinking one is better than the other.

We often overcomplicate our search for Purpose when what we need is to notice what’s already been initiating us. Through quiet synchronicities, relationships, and repeated patterns, purpose shows up—and the real work is getting out of our own way so we can respond to it.

Whether you're a specialist with a clear lane or a generalist piecing together a mosaic life, there's no right way to ‘arrive.’ But there *is* a right time to stop ignoring what’s been calling you—and that time is now.

If you’ve been in a season of transition or questioning, this might be the moment to pause and ask: “What have I noticed that’s already been trying to lead me back to myself?”

On February 1, Ixchel and I hit our eighth anniversary of leaving the U.S. to explore and find home in LATAM. In years past, I’d post something to mark the occasion, but I let it pass quietly this year. Part of that is practical—I’ve trimmed my social media consumption to LinkedIn and Bluesky (good riddance, Meta apps).

But I think it’s also an affirmation that, at this point, I just feel like LATAM is home and I don’t necessarily need to validate or mark that anniversary out loud for my U.S. contacts or friends. I mark my “New Year” in multiple ways — Gregorian, birth, Mayan, and the day we arrived at the Managua airport with 10 large duffles and our kitty, Ysabella, for this new and unfolding adventure.

A couple of non-related-but-SO-related things have sparked this particular love letter to Latin America. I’m not consciously trying to tie this into leadership or strategy or any kind of professional lesson. But we’ll see where we land by the end of this. 😅

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In April 2020, just as COVID was taking over the world, we were saying goodbye to our beloved Xina.

Xina was a Rottweiler mix we adopted in late 2018. Her previous humans were leaving Nicaragua, as so many were in the wake of the 2018 uprisings and the militant crackdown that followed from the Ortega dictatorship. She was eight when she joined our pack, and she fit in immediately, like she’d always been there—making fast friends with Hugo, our German Shepherd, who was two at the time. She immediately bonded deeply with Ixchel, and she quickly became my office mate, choosing often to hang out at the foot of my desk most days.

By the time COVID was starting to take its grip on the world, Xina was already in a crisis of her own. Early in the year—February-ish—she got sick. A bite? Something she ate? We never knew 100%, but her health declined rapidly. By March, we were running every test our vet, Ricardo Matus, could offer with the limited resources available to him in Northern Nicaragua. By early April her suffering was too much and we had to help her cross the Rainbow Bridge.

We’ve been extraordinarily blessed with getting introduced to amazing veterinarians throughout our LATAM journey. At this point of Xina’s story, Ricardo had been our Vet for nearly 3 years in Matagalpa. He was fantastic. Like many vets down here, he did house calls, which made life infinitely easier having 3 dogs (nearly 200 pounds of pup!) and no car.

Xina was “the” dog that made me a dog person. She was one of those initiating experiences that Ixchel constantly challenges me to think about, chronicle, and grow from. Xina cracked my heart open in all the best ways. It gutted me when we had to let her go.

That day, Ricardo was everything we needed. He was more than our Vet, he was a friend, an empath to the nth degree. We’d been through this before with other pets, but the way he held space—walking us through the letting go with kindness and grace, giving us time, not rushing a thing—was extra special to me.

When Xina was gone, he didn’t just leave. He stepped back, letting us grieve in our own space, but still there, nearby. Present.

What’s more, Francisco, our long-time handyman/gardener/superhuman who worked for us and helped care for home and the Sacred Earth in the “property” surrounding us, was also there. That day, he dug Xina’s grave with the same quiet kindness and care. You can imagine how big of a hole that might have been for a 100+ pound Rottweiler, done completely with a digging bar and a shovel.

So many times in LATAM, we’ve found this. When we left Nicaragua to find a more “stable” home in Mexico, Ricardo was replaced by Georgita Ruiz and then Aniel Mendoza during our time in Oaxaca. Here in San Cristóbal, we have Beto close by, our neighbor and friend in this Barrio Los Alcanfores — introduced to us by our landlord, Paz. Counting blessings in dog kisses, house calls, and clean bills of health. Something I never for granted—the way community weaves itself into everything, even in something as simple as a vet visit.

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There’s something about presence—about truly being with people, not just around them—that Latin America does in a way we see the U.S. struggle to do, time and again.

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Last June, Mexico elected its first female president, Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo. In the short months since she’s done remarkable things. Not just continuing the work of her predecessor, AMLO, but pushing even further—including constitutional changes to strengthen social programs, advance climate policy, and formally recognize and create social nets for Indigenous communities. And when Trump’s second term opened with fresh threats against Mexico, she’s stood her ground. No hesitation. No fear.

Ixchel follows her closely, especially on TikTok. One day, I overheard a highlights reel playing—a compilation of Presidente Sheinbaum visiting pueblos over in Oaxaca (state). Not Oaxaca City, but the smaller communities around the state. Places that often get overlooked or forgotten. She’s done a bunch of these already, early into her administration, with great intention, inclusion, and care.

What struck me wasn’t just the visits themselves, but the way she moved through them. At most every stop, she got out of the car. Walked. Connected. Laughed. Celebrated. At each stop, she left with small gifts—huipiles, woven crowns, gifts of sustenance, and tokens of devotion — of being seen.

Contrast that with the U.S. Imagine a sitting president (or most any politician, really) stepping into a small town, unguarded, fully immersed, letting the community adorn them like that, unfettered. It’s unthinkable. And that’s the difference. Here there is no arm’s-length detachment, no calculated politician’s distance. Just presence.

___

Yesterday, Ixchel and I went to watch a series of short films — Reportajes de México en Resistencia — at Sendas Espacio Cultural, one of many beautiful cultural centers here in San Cristobal. In each one, themes of radical resistance. Of women rising up, finding courage in community, shaking “traditional” gender roles, and the grita of self-value and assurance. Of communities protecting the Earth and rejecting as the best path to prosperity. It was glorious.

For me, it brought body affirmations that 1) being in community is medicine and 2) I ultimately have goat, donkey, and dog life goals.

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The U.S. continues to define itself on its exceptionalism and rugged individualism (but I’m shouting for, rooting for, and supporting the Resistance up there!). Latin America is built on We.

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I’ve been thinking more and more about community lately. Maybe you have too. For me, community = personal growth. I can get Saturnian and set in my routines. I grew up as an only child with hermit-like parents. It’s a skin I’ve worn for a long time, one I continue to shed with each intentional act of curiosity and surrender.

Maybe you’re feeling the weight of what’s happening in the U.S. right now, already exhausted by the daily onslaught of overreach and fascism. Maybe you’re wondering how we hold together when everything is being intentionally engineered to erase women, our trans community, people of color—the list goes on and on.

And I don’t have an easy answer. But I feel this: survival is communal. It’s showing up, in the smallest of ways. Snowflakes can become an avalanche of collective care and vibrance.

We don’t have to do this alone. We were never meant to. And if there's any lesson in this, it’s that the smallest acts of presence and care—whether in a crisis, in leadership, or daily life—are what hold us together.

I LOVE the mercados here in LATAM. You can find so many things you need (and many times surprises and things you didn’t know you needed). This seller for fresh veggies and platanos. That one for grains and spices. Clothing and housewares over in that direction. Keep walking into the mercado middle for your meats and fish and queso fresco.

I love the larger markets, like the swirling labyrinth of our Mercado Viejo here in San Cristobal, because you never know who will pop up at the edges on any given visit. I count my blessings in the number of times I find the folks steaming fresh sweet potatoes on a small grill near the entrance.

Many sellers are pretty specific in the things they “do”/sell. Veggies, sweets, candles, and religious iconography for the home. Up with the sun and selling into the evening. Repeatable and dependable systems of resilience and sufficiency.

I love to bring fresh eyes to every visit. I especially love wandering the markets with Ixchel and seeing them through their eyes. They’re so good at slowing down in curiosity even more. Let your whole self immerse yourself in your wandering, and you’ll invariably see more “unique” vendors in the spaces between the familiar—opportunists.

That happened to me recently in Mercado Norte, an outdoor market close to our home that has a big flower mart in a loading dock area at its center. I go there weekly to buy fresh flowers for our apacheta (outdoor altar). As we were leaving, I spotted a booth with fresh chicken for sale, por kilo. Nothing out of the ordinary with that. There are pollerías in every mercado and every neighborhood in San Cris. But this one also sells new purses and handbags on the back wall of the booth..

And that’s it. Chicken and purses. I didn’t stop Victor (my awesome regular weekly errands taxi guy) to check it out because I didn’t need chicken or a purse. I don’t know if the idea is to put your chicken purchase in the handbag for easier carrying. It feels like they needed a third thing to make the chicken-purse connection make sense, but that was it.

The point was to “work with what you have” and “be inventive.” I don’t know if they sell more chicken than purses or vice versa, but I’m constantly enamored by the entrepreneurship here in LATAM (Me encanta el emprendimiento de LATAM).

Life untethered from American exceptionalism for 8 years and counting continues to reveal lessons to me, that we can take into our own systems, leadership, and beliefs — if we learn to listen to our neighbors.

Mercado Vendors Are Specialists, Except When They Aren’t

So many mercado vendors are specialists. Sun up to sun down they specifically sell fruit, or nuts and grains, or jewelry, or whatever. Repeatable and reliable. People have their favorite vendors they go to. I did, at the Mercado Zona Santa Rosa in Oaxaca, when we lived there. One or two produce sellers that I’d go to without fail — because their product was great and the people were even better.

But many vendors are generalists. You’ll find those spots where you’re able to pick up a bundle of apples, beans for the week, candles, and laundry soap in one place. My fresh chicken + purses example above, if you happen to need both. Generalist sellers are more experimental—by necessity or ingenuity.

Teams can thrive by being similarly curious, adaptable, and inventive. My favorite team dynamics are ones where each colleague has “the things they do” but aren’t necessarily locked into narrow roles. Dynamics that are fluid and inclusive enough that someone can step up when priorities shift and bring their curiosity and creativity to unexpected challenges. The best-laid workflows are flexible. They can pivot in an instant, and having a team of resourceful generalists is really, really useful.

As a team or company leader, you might try these things that help your specialists build their generalist skills and vice versa:

• Rotate responsibilities or set up short-term projects that let team members experiment with different roles aligned to their strengths (or where they want to go in their future. Not only does it keep things fresh, but it helps everyone build that challenge-to-skill muscle for adaptability and more Flow.

• Schedule quarterly “experimentation days” where team members can propose and test out wild ideas. Review the outcomes together to decide what’s worth scaling.

Constraints Are the Mother of Mercado Ingenuity

Mercados often thrive because of constraints, not despite them. Limited booth space or budget/inventory constraints often force vendors to innovate. Or sometimes it’s a surprise surplus of a “thing” that prompts a seller to experiment. I know a guy that has purses they’re trying to get rid of, so WHY NOT throw them up on the wall behind my pollería? 😅

Instead of seeing these limitations as obstacles, it’s for creativity. My favorite flower vendor also sells bundles of freshly gathered pine needles that families use to adorn their homes or altars. During Christmas time they were selling teeny mangers with moss-covered roofs.

Leaders can adopt the same mindset. When resources are tight or timelines feel impossible, treat those constraints as creative prompts. Invite your team to ask, “What can we do with what we already have?” or “What’s that thing over there that might make sense to add to our project/process/workflow/customer experience?”

The next time a project feels constrained or blocked, run a dedicated brainstorming session or two to “potential hidden opportunities”—ideas that work within current limits but shift the approach entirely. You can do that in person or virtually/async with your digital whiteboard tool of choice.

(PRO TIPS: Asana has integrations with tools like Zoom Whiteboard, Miro, Figma, and more. ClickUp has its own integrated whiteboard tool. But you do you in the systems you’re using.)

The mercados that have forever etched their place in my heart offer more than “stuff”; they’re models of resilience, creativity, and resourcefulness. They remind us that success isn’t about endless resources; it’s about getting good at being curious, taking risks with what you have, and doing that cooperatively.

As leaders, we often face uncertainty, shifting priorities, and moments where the plan veers into iffy. That’s where a “mercado mindset” can inspire you: adapt, experiment boldly, and trust in the alchemy of ingenuity.

So, next time your team feels stuck or stretched, look at your constraints as opportunities, your team’s quirks as strengths, and your experiments—wild or otherwise—as the lifeblood of growth.

Looking for help with your project or team workflows or optimization? Let’s chat? Send a reply back to this newsletter, drop a comment below, or email me at jaimeywb@gmail.com. And if you’re ever in Southern Mexico, give me and Ixchel a shout. We might even show up with a chicken in a handbag for you.

Happy start of the 2025 Gregorian year! As a planning and ideating nerd (Gemini Sun, heavy natal Saturn influences, 3/5 Generator with a Cross of Planning in my Human Design), I especially love this time of year of reflecting and setting intentions for the coming year.

There’s two rituals I’ve come to love and rely on in my Solar (annual) goal-setting and planning:

The first is ’s Boundless Vision program (which you can get as part of their awesome Time Devotion program), which helps me:

🩷 Revisit and refine my Initiated Collective Purpose (ICP) statements (which I still sometimes refer to as my MTIPs or MTPs interchangeably; the big world changing-healing intentions) and my Big Hairy Goals (BHGs, AKA High Hard Goals)

🩷 Anchor those into my body at a Heart and Sacral level

🩷 Attune my goals and day-to-day to the seasonal cycles and my personal daily rhythms.

It’s a constant practice of unlearning and replacing, but I love this structure compared to a more rigid, industrialized Quarter/Month structure because it invites me to get out of my head and connect to my body, nature, community, and the cosmos.

The second thing is ’s #My3Words challenge that he’s been doing since 2006 — in which we pick three words to be guiding points for our creative, professional, and community goals and work in the new year.

Chris is really good at archiving each of his 3-word sets, going back to 2006. I’m not nearly the archivist he is in that way, but my 2024 words are still fresh:

Cooperate: Championing distributed work, fostering strategic partnerships, and centering Queer, BIPOC, and Female voices through community-building, cooperative models, and intentional collaboration.

Cazimi: A nod to Astrology, Cazimi moments happen when a planet is directly conjunct with the Sun. Cazimi events carry symbolism of renewal and purification. As one of my 3 Words for 2024, Cazimi reflected my commitment to helping people and communities reinvent themselves, supporting joyful reinvention and bold reimagining of the future of work.

The Doctor: We’re big fans of Doctor Who and The Doctor’s whole kinetic and mercurial self. This was a reminder to balance structured goals with surrender and curiosity, saying YES to the present moment to unlock more Flow, creativity, and unexpected opportunities.

I like my word choices to be novel enough to keep me interested enough to use them as anchor points throughout the year. They’re personal to me, and I honestly don’t spend a lot of time sharing them with others (other than here as part of the ritual). So it’s OK if they feel a little esoteric to the outside observer.

These are mine for 2025 (for the Winter Solstice-to-Winter Solstice period) that I’m pretty chuffed about:

Gallup

Not referring to the polling company of the same name, but to Simon Gallup, The Cure’s bassist. Robert Smith & Co put out their first new album (Songs Of A Lost World) in 16 years on Nov 1 (2024), and it’s spectacular.

Robert’s writing, composition, and vulnerability are of course the heart of all of The Cure’s work (including SOALW), but I’m obsessed with Simon’s bass tone throughout the album (and equally obsessing about it across their other work, as I’ve been “Curevember-ing” and “Curecember-ing” their catalog since the SOALW teasers started dropping in October).

Simon has such a distinct signature tone and style that he’s spent decades crafting, experimenting, and iterating. I picked his namesake as a personal lodestar to do the same in 2025.

To be hyper-focused on putting the work in on my professional and creative BHGs for 2025 that are resonant in my heart.

To slay fear and keep self-doubt and self-sabotage outside the castle walls. To not spin out to a shiny new thing the moment something gets challenging or I get bored (a thing I’m constantly working on).

I’m still a devout Generalist, but honing my own signature vibe means digging into being more “inch wide / mile deep” in my projects and development in 2025.

Aperture

This one is both personal and transpersonal. “Become a practicing photographer” is one of my Big Hairy Goals I’m getting serious about in 2025, so this is a literal nod to that practice.

But on a personal level, it’s also a commitment to open/seek new perspectives (music, podcasts, newsletters, conversations, etc). I love connecting dots between non-obvious things in my writing, so opening the aperture to other experiences only helps me do that better.

It’s an intention to let more light in and be more visible, even though that scares the shit out of me a lot of the time. That includes doing some important growth work of seeking out community with Ixchel, more often, here in San Cristobal.

On a collective level, it’s a grounded reminder that I’m here to help others. To be a bridge and a connector. To help dismantle extractive work systems that aren’t serving the abundance and fulfillment of enough people or communities. Helping people and teams get more clarity in their work, projects, and organizations. Helping them turn chaos into calm through bespoke project, remote workforce, and change management solutions.

Mycelial

I wanted a nature-connected word among my three, and I had a few on a shortlist — Donkey, Starling, and Murmuration among them — before anchoring on this one. I chose it mostly its transpersonal vibe and themes, but it has personal resonance, obvi.

Mycelium is the information and healing superhighway of any healthy forest ecosystem — a vast, nurturing network of connection, communication, healing, nutrient/resource delivery, and regeneration with the collective.

On a personal level, it’s a word to remind me to always be deepening my somatic awareness, to lean into my Astrological and Human Design strengths, and to cultivate a greater connection to nature and its cycles. It’s about the personal growth work noted above, of connecting with community here in Chiapas.

In my audacious content goals for 2025, I want there to be a more natural merging of things I love in my personal life, of our life in LATAM, and any professional tips or strategic advice I’m offering. I’m 1000% about lifting the veil between those two worlds vs the compartmentalizing we see too often on “business” platforms like LinkedIn. I think we need more of the former and much less of the latter if we’re really going to thrive in our immediate and global communities.

Professionally, mycelium reminds me to do the work of being a connector and a bridge to serve others — particularly underserved communities and people reinventing themselves — with love and healing.

It’ll show up as helping people, teams, or organizations develop their resilience systems to navigate times of change or chaos with more Grace. It’s also about erasing borders and being a force for reimagining work as more co-operative and mutually supportive structures.

There you be! I’ll plan to integrate these into my Seasonal (quarterly), Lunar (monthly), and weekly/daily planning, and to revisit/review at the equinoxes and solstices to check in and how each is vibing and resonating.

But this is a good launch point to start. Here’s to a vibrant 2025 for each of us!

I’m in the midst of helping launch no less than 10 different single-day tech and AI upskilling events for a client in the first half of 2025. It’s proving to be equal parts exciting and 3D Chess in these early goings. Developing the playbook and web/design/marketing “kits” to produce these at scale — while allowing each to have their own unique signature and vibe.

Maybe it’s an end-of-year thing, but I’ve been reflecting a little deeper on what we project managers need to grow and make the AWESOME badges we wear sparkle brighter in 2025.

Because we’re just more than “managers” — right? We’re organizers, yes, but also facilitators, teachers, culture-makers, counselors, and cheerleaders.

We’re operations wizards, L&D leaders, change managers, and product leads. We’re tightrope walkers balancing technology and humanity to help our teams thrive. We’re inventive, versatile, magnetic, and unflappable.

Is the role of a PM changing? Probably, especially if we remote/hybrid/async devotees get our way and see ***more*** (and more varied) hybrid workforces in 2025.

But I don’t know if the role itself is changing as much as the crayons in the box we now have available to do what we do. If we were playing with the 24 or 48-pack before, now we have the 96-crayon or 152-crayon mega box available to us now.

I don’t know if I’m in the camp of “AI is coming to take my job” as much as I’m intrigued about how intentional focus on specific AI tools and enhancements will help me, my clients, and my colleagues level up. We each have our unique path, focus, and specific levers we’re looking to flip, to help us be better collaborators and herders of cats.

Hard Skills I’m Betting On

AI Fluency and Digital Tools

An obvious one for any PM since we all touch technology to some degree, but I’m focusing on going deeper.

That means leveling up with the platforms I’m already using—HubSpot, Asana, ClickUp, LMS/LXP systems, event management systems, and async communication tools—getting better at getting them talking to each other and learning/leveraging their latest AI-enhanced features.

But I’m also chuffed about learning/using AI-enhanced tools smartly to become an architect (or at least a conductor) of knowledge graphs, dynamic workflows, and decision-making assistants.

Data Literacy

Interpreting, analyzing, and telling compelling stories with data is always a vital skill—especially in this era of so much data and information noise.

BUT—confession—diving into spreadsheets and data sets doesn’t generally light me up. I usually prefer collaborating with people who find joy in playing with data and uncovering insights.

Resistance to getting cozy with data is something I’m learning to reframe as an act of surrender. because 1) being data-literate is non-negotiable if I want to do what I do even better, and 2) there are so many gifted people out there whose superpower is transforming rows and columns into dashboards and useful data visualization art.

For me, this is an opportunity to embrace a Conductor role—collaborating with people who love making art out of data while sharpening my own skills and curiosity as a growth mindset. That means getting more out of tools I already use, like HubSpot, and staying curious about adding new ones to my kit in 2025 (see: knowledge graph platforms like Obsidian or Neo4j).

Soft Skills I’m Doubling Down On

New Collaborative Leadership Models

This is a place where I’m doubling my energy in 2025. I’m super curious and inspired by emergent strategy (h/t Adrienne Maree Brown) and looking to natural systems and biomimicry for better cooperative org and work models.

I’m predicting and rooting for new workforce collectives and cooperatives to emerge in 2025, now that Pluto (transformation and upheaval) is in full forward motion in Aquarius (social structures and systems) for the next two decades.

Structures that prioritize trust, adaptability, shared ownership, decentralization, letting the younger generations take the wheel more, and dismantling the current structures controlled by a few billionaires.

For me, one way that might show up as learning to blend human-centered approaches with really promising AI tools that can help with sentiment analysis, team engagement, and micro-coaching to create deeper, more meaningful connections within teams.

But I’m also here for the Revolution.

Change Management

This is as much a hard skill as it is a mindset, and it’s got a big spot on my 2025 vision board. As the one who often makes the trains run at work and at home, I’ve learned to love helping folks embrace chaos and change.

I have “become a badass change manager” on my Big Hairy Goals list — to do more of the work of helping more teams navigate uncertainty and liminal spaces with confidence, clarity, empathy, and more Flow and cooperation.

Honorable Mentions: EQ, communication excellence, and adaptability

Looking forward to exploring deeper into how we can turn project management and change management into art forms in 2025— into spaces and places where people are supported more fully, where there’s equity and abundance, for more, and where the work has meaning and Flow.

What about you? What skills are you centering in the new year? Hit me with a comment below or a reply to this. I’d love to hear what’s on your radar.

I'm a rabid chaser of Flow (mostly of the creative/artistic or nature-immersing varieties. I'm not a big wall rock climber or big wave surfer 😅).

And I’m a NERD for devoting time to regular learning and immersing into all things Flow — the neuroscience of it, and learning about peoples’ Flow habits and practices.

And, I’m deeply curious about our relationships with Place. I think that comes from not always feeling emotionally safe growing up, and I now I overcompensate by looking for belonging and this Place-relationship-stories curiosity.

Flow is a big, broad topic, but I wanted to dive into a short discussion about the kindred relationship between Place/Setting and Flow—because—I’ve learned that ‘setting’ is more than you think when it comes to optimal Flow conditions.

What is Flow?

This is a basic you might already know (or have Googled), but Steven Kotler and the Flow Research Collective (building on the work of Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, who first coined Flow and Flow States as terms) define Flow as:

“[Flow is]…a highly focused and immersive mental state in which an individual's skill level matches the challenge of the task, resulting in reduced self-awareness, altered time perception, and heightened positive emotions.” 

My partner, , often refers to to Flow as our Birthright, our natural default state. I love that as an even deeper, embodied definition that’s less “productivity” and “output” focused (as tends to be the case with a lot of folks who write about Flow).

Many of us have forgotten or disassociated with that at a base level. At a body level. Or we fall in and out of remembering that natural state.

Many factors impact our ability to get into Flow regularly. There are the Flow Activators themselves (an estimated 13 individual activators and 9 additional Group Flow activators, mas o menos). But there are also ingredients like Passion, Purpose, Motivation, and the activities we choose to focuus on in the mix.

Our environment — our Setting — is one of those vital ingredients that impacts our dance with Flow.

Setting is Our Physical Spaces

Our physical spaces where we do our deepest, most immersive creative, and impactful work are wildly important. It's vital for us to design and find spaces with fewer distractions, that reduce cognitive load during the day

That isn—the sacred spaces of solitude or group collaboration we create in our homes or offices to hold space for Deep Work.

I’m a 100% remote-working freelancer and team leader. So I have a couple of these spaces in our home in Chiapas, Mexico. One is my dedicated office space. My desk is a blend of “having all the things on it that fuel my work and bring me joy” and “only the essential things” that keep me focused.

The other is my favorite sit spot, tucked behind our kitchen. It faces a big picture window looking out on an empty lot behind our house, which the community uses for growing food. It’s here that I sometimes do work-related, laptop-bound Flow work, but also use it as a place for just ideating or fun, non-work flowy things like coloring.

Your physical space could be this, but also could be jamming in a co-working space or a cafe you love, maybe with headphones on to block out noise. We each have the Flow habits and practices that work for us individually.

Working beyond the physical “room,” I've come to learn/love that the "setting" that supports us in chasing Flow is more than just physical spaces like these.

Setting is Somatic

Beyond the physical room, our bodies are also the “setting” in which we work. A pretty important one. A healthy, embodied relationship with our human meat sack and our nervous system is vital to our connection to Flow.

So that’s how well we're caring for ourselves with good food, hydration, and sleep habits. But it's also how well we're supporting our nervous systems, emotional health, and body trust.

While most Flow proponents or experts will tell you the Flow Cycle starts with leaning into the struggle phase that precedes Flow, Ixchel will tell you that it needs to start with Rest.

Without Rest, our nervous systems can be put on edge, which creates distrust within our bodies. Which can prevent us from accessing Flow, because our bodies don’t trust us to go there

(Ixchel expounds upon this and many more Flowy things in an awesome, recent interview on Megan Leatherman’s ‘A Wild Thing’ podcast. You should check it out.)

I continue to practice on creating from a place of excited but emotionally neutral, which gives me both the Dopamine and the focus and centeredness that I need for Flow. With Ixchel’s help I have a daily/weekly body check routine going that helps a lot with keeping focus on things that matter and working from Purpose.

Setting is Motivation and Semantics

Intrinsic motivation is a key ingredient for Flow. Meaning, the things we’re choosing to focus and work on are the things we feel the internal pull to do — for the joy and curiosity of it — as opposed to doing them only for external reasons like money.

So, for me, that set point is another technicolor coat that “setting” wears. Find the things that fuel your Purpose and drive your contributions to the collective (however you define that — your family, your place of work, your immediate community, or something more global).

Related, our words and intent are kindred partners with our Motivation. It's "Right Speech" in the Buddhist tradition. How we speak to ourselves. How we describe our work and Purpose. How we collaborate with others. Doing that from a place of intrinsic motivation is the bedrock for consistent Flow.

I deal with negative self-talk all the time. You might as well. I’m a people-loving-socially-awkward-introvert, so—for me it’s a want to serve and be seen walking in step with a fear to actually be seen. Even though I know I’d have fun getting up on video regularly, or launching a new podcast — so far my my creative work has only manifesting as written pieces like this, where I don’t have to show my face.

It’s the container where I can find both safety and Flow right now. I’m working on it, as we all should, because the world needs us and the unique things we bring to the party.

All that to say that where we focus our attention, manifests, and if we focus on fear and negative self talk, that can affect our motivation, which can limit our Flow.

Setting is Our Relationship With Time

Time is Place, and vice versa. It’s not a physical ‘setting’ like your favorite chair or cafe, but but our relationship with Time is a necessary container and condition for Flow.

The most mainstream manifestation of this is in the form of things like time blocking, which you’re probably familiar with, or even practice.

And I do that. I time block like crazy in my Google Calendar, sometimes excessively. Blocks for client work, for creative work, for business development, for personal/family/Hedonic time. I’m learning to leave liminal spaces between those colorful time blocks on my calendar to allow for things to be fluid.

But this is an invitation to go even deeper, as Ixchel and other decolonial leaders might teach us. It’s an invitation to really get to know our specific, personal rhythms that might not jive naturally with the normative M-F/9-5.

So that’s diving feet first into (re)aligning our good, vital work with our natural body rhythms — and the larger seasonal, natural, and cosmic rhythms. Another h/t to Ixchel who is a brilliant mentor and coach on this topic. They have a bevy of resources at decolonizingtime.com and through their Dragon Letters newsletter. You should check those out.

Start with noticing and witnessing when your peak energy times are in a given day. Focus on nutrition, hydration, rest and recovery, and good sleep — and how those impact your daily energy and focus. You are your most important laboratory!

Expand that awareness into getting to know your surroundings, nature (or what passes for nature where you live), and your relationship with the seasonal cycles (Ixchel’s Time Devotion Renewal Kit is a great resource for this).

I’m an event planner and a project manager. I LOVE structure and a good Asana plan. And, we all operate in the same capitalist structures. Goal setting. Quarterly and Weekly milestones. Today’s throughput.

And I operate in that system, but I’ve also learned to imagine and plan and track goals to a more seasonal, lunar, non-Gregorian “schedule.” It’s massively helpful in keeping me grounded in a greater Purpose of service, which helps drive motivation, which begets more focus and Flow.

The physical spaces we create for doing our work definitely impact our ability to dive deep and lose ourselves in deep thought or creative Flow. But I’ve found these other ‘setting’ ingredients to also be super important.

It’s finding/designing physical spaces that bring us joy and support our focus.

It’s our relationship with our bodies and finding set points of emotional and psychological safety on the regular.

It’s how deeply rooted we are in our unique Purpose and gifts to motivate us down whatever individual and collective path we’re on.

It’s the language and words we use — with ourselves and with others —that affect our motivation.

And it’s our relationship with Time — the work we do to (re)discover our own unique rhythms, amplify those with a deeper connection to the natural and cosmic rhythms, and use those things to drive more focused, more meaningful work, more consistently.

It’s a fun cocktail to play with!

What about you? What manifestations of ‘Place’ are most important to your own focus, Flow, and creative work? Drop a comment below or hit reply to send me a note.

If you’re looking for help rejiggering your purpose, focus, and Flow, definitely hit up Ixchel at decolonizingtime.com. If you’re looking for project, operations, or remote workforce advice or help, I’m your guy! Send me a note or book a time at bearfuht.com for us to chat!

(At the time of writing this) I’ve had The Cure’s new album (Songs Of A Lost World, their first in 16 years) on repeat since it came out on Nov 1. It’s fantastic if you haven’t checked it out yet.

Robert (Smith) has about three albums’ worth of music in the can. SOALW was originally slated to have around 13 tracks, but he’s said in recent interviews that he edited it down to the eight tracks he thought would create the best, most intentional listening experience.

Rabbit hole-ing into “Curevember” (which is quickly going to become “Curecember”; IYKYK 😂) has me slightly obsessed with the Art of Sequencing these days.

About the art of choice in an album's tracks that makes it really good (or a tight sequence of episodes in a TV series; I'm assuming for good content / writing in both cases).

It’s a central skill for musicians, producers, marketers, and content creators alike, but it’s also incredibly applicable to project managers and teams.

What Sequencing “Is”

In music, Sequencing refers to arranging sections of music (notes, chords, etc.) or the order of tracks on an album or EP. It’s subjective to the artist’s vision but critical to the listener experience.

For me, more music on a Cure album is always welcome. But the intention Robert brought to editing SOALW into eight tracks created an equally brilliant experience (of course I don’t have a 13-track SOALW as a comparison point).

The same concept applies to content or marketing strategies — the sequence of an email campaign or content series is key to aligning with your audience’s journey.

( explored this brilliantly in a recent edition of his weekly newsletter. Think episodic content. You should sign up for it here.)

Sequencing in Project Management

It might seem obvious, but good project management and execution are all about intentional sequencing and Flow.

It’s more than just checking boxes (although that does give me wonderful dopamine hits). It’s about creating a narrative that guides your team from conception to the final deliverable.

Just like a well-sequenced album or an 8-10 episode season on your favorite streamer (Familia de Medianoche or the latest season of The Diplomat, anyone?), a well-structured project builds momentum and gives each milestone a purpose. It keeps everyone aligned, engaged, and drawing from a collective well of purpose and joy.

TRY THIS: Use a “peaks and valleys” approach when planning phases. Balance high-focus periods (like pre-launch or event deadlines) with reflective stages (like reviews or adjustments). Sequencing this way ensures your team’s rhythm supports productivity without burnout.

In the event business I’m in, that might be the month or the two weeks leading up to an event’s website or marketing launch, or it might be a pricing deadline — or an imminent, planned announcement about a significant program or speaker announcement that we think will drive a bump in ticket sales.

We should also be building in natural pauses into our projec plans, for reflection, to keep projects fresh.

This ensures your team has a rhythm that supports the vision and Good Work, without burnout.

TRY THIS: Try holding a periodic team reflection session (which can be done in-person or async) to assess what’s working, what’s not, and what the team needs to move forward with confidence.

Something as simple as a “What should we start/stop/continue?” exercise can provide the insight and clarity needed to adjust sequencing in real time and keep the momentum going.

Sequencing in Async Work Structures

For those of you working in async structures (high fives to you!), sequencing often means getting really good at simplifying and prioritizing — and helping your colleagues do the same.

A “less is more” approach allows teams to focus on tasks and milestones that truly matter, preventing burnout and creating clarity around the project’s core goals.

TRY THIS: A simple framework like "Must-Should-Could" (or Red-Yellow-Green…or Yahsss!-Meh-Nah’ - whatever you want to use as labels) when sequencing tasks.

When building out a fresh project plan, focus first on what absolutely must get done to move the project forward. That’s your milestones or your big quarterly or monthly goals.

Then layer in supporting work. In an async environment, this helps with natural prioritization and reduces decision fatigue for everyone involved.

It’s the classic big rock/small rock challenge: put the big rocks (major goals) in the jar first, then the small rocks (supporting work), and finally the gravel (daily tasks) around those.

Async collaboration benefits from thoughtful sequencing of team tasks. Assign work to leverage individual strengths, which reduces cognitive load and ensures focus. Personally, I love using a Gantt chart in tools like Asana or ClickUp to visualize sequencing and project flow.

Whether in music, marketing, content creation, or managing projects and async teams, the Art of Sequencing is about creating a container for Flow. It connects each step meaningfully to the next, aligning tasks and affirming team talents and work styles.

Just like a well-sequenced album (seriously, check out Songs Of A Lost World 😉) guides listeners on an intentional journey, thoughtful sequencing in projects and async work empowers teams to stay connected to the Big Hairy Goal and accomplish more with clarity and intention.

Founders and org/team leaders - looking for help with your upcoming projects or with remote/async strategy? Let's chat! I've been crafting/leading both for many moons. Drop a comment below, visit bearfuht.com or email me at jaimeywb@gmail.com.

Let's talk about Time for a moment, our relationship with Time (which includes the "management" of Time that is so pervasive in the collective Western consciousness) — and how as leaders and innovators we can each become better dance partners with Time.

As project owners, leaders, and managers, we know that time is a lifeblood of getting from Point A to whatever the end goal is (the ultimate goal/outcome or the end of a sprint or phase, for the Agile devotees out there).

The overall goal, broken into phases/milestones, broken into manageable, distributed weekly and daily tasks (that's a simplification, but you get the idea).

And we bind our projects, our teams, and ourselves to Gregorian calendars...because Capitalism and commerce. Business hours and business days. Output and throughput.

We all (or most of us) play the Gregorian game...But what if we didn't? Or at least not completely?

We all participate in it. As an event organizer, I certainly do. The event is scheduled to happen on [INSERT DATE HERE], and we work within those culturally normative structures in the planning, marketing and communications, relationship management, and execution of the event.

I participate in those capitalist, cultural norms because that's the game.

But I'm also a rabid advocate for distributed, async work — for myself, my clients, and my colleagues, which allows for NOT being so tethered to a Mon-Fri 9-5 schedule.

(Async work structures IMO are also one form of important decolonizing work that a lot of us need to be doing right now.)

I've been repairing my relationship with Time for some time — making my goal planning and my async work much more non-Gregorian — thanks to my fantastically wise partner and mentor, .

They have a bevy of courses and mentorship options to help us repair our relationship with Time. Their new Time Devotion offering is fantastic medicine, as is their core Befriending Time program, (alongside many more wonderful longer-term options you can check out at decolonizingtime.com).

How it works for me

I've learned to start with a foundation of aligning my personal and professional goal planning and actions to the seasonal cycles and to lunar cycles (because New Moons are fertile ground for initiating things and Full Moons for bringing them to fruition).

Attuning to those personal cycles means knowing when I'm more fresh and open for Flow, and when I know my energy has waned in the day.

(This also rejects the post-Capitalist idea that you can actually be "on" for 8-10 solid hours each day and produce good work. I can "work" for an 8-hour day but I'm realistically creatively useful and focused for maybe half that time).

Upon that, I layer in the client work that needs to happen during a normal business week, month, or quarter.

BUT - the kicker - I personally prioritize client work and support async team schedules that give us each the flexibility to do task work on a schedule more attuned to my/our personal energy ebbs and flows) — and still deliver the thing on [INSERT DATE HERE].

When I'm practicing this consistently, starting with a baseline attuned to cycles vs. calendars is life-changing. I'm in Flow more. I prioritize creativity and fulfillment more. It expands my awareness of how my colleagues and team each operate best — which makes me a better leader and the "we" better at delivering the thing with excellence.

Non-Gregorian for the Normative

This is me speaking from the POV of a freelance team leader who works in a distributed team that produces events.

I get it if you're saying "but Jaimey, I work for this or that company. They're not as flexible." That's probably true if you're in an uber-Corp.

But, I'd argue back atcha that this idea of getting a little non-Gregorian actually can work for teams and leaders in more structured and corporate settings — if you allow for it.

I'd wager that there's a lot of you out whose body and spirit are at odds with the culture's overemphasis and fixation on time as output, productivity, and commodity.

You're not alone, and it's not your fault.

You might still need to be bound to quarterly metrics and weekly sprint deliverables. You might not have the flexibility of aligning your projects and goals to seasonal and lunar cycles like I've learned to do as a baseline OS.

But try starting with embracing async schedules. Set the parameters of "these things need to be done by this date" and give your team the freedom to work schedules that are more aligned to when each is most in Flow and productive.

Your team's throughput can actually improve massively as we loosen our attachments to holding and managing time as rigidly as we do — vs. learning to Befriend Time, as Ixchel teaches us.

And, if you want some help with that, get in touch with Ixchel here on LinkedIn at decolonizingtime.com and timedevotion.com.

❤️

As a creative and a Saturn-loving project manager (Saturn in Taurus in my 7th House of collaborations), I often find myself caught in the tension between taking time for contemplation and the “doing” of the thing in my creative, project, or leadership work (I’m a long-time perpetual, recovering ‘doer’).

I love sitting with an idea, letting it germinate and develop. LOVE. IT. And, I’m too often super self-judgy when I feel like I'm taking too much time to think instead of jumping into action.

It can be really anxiety-producing.

I saw a post on LinkedIn recently (Gah! I didn’t save it, sorry!) asking a similar "how much time do you spend thinking about the thing vs. doing the thing, creatively?"

A lot of the comments I read in that post (as well as in my own when I pondered the question out loud with peers) were pretty strongly in the “almost all of the time I’m deep thinking and contemplating — and actually just a little time doing the writing/creating/executing” camp.

I’m the same way but, damn — again — super self-judgy. (Like, literally, if I’m spending 30 minutes thinking about the thing my brain jumps into “WHY THE FECK ARE YOU DOING SOMETHING?!?”) It’s a constant path of self-repair and self-love that I’m working on.

Deep Time, Deep Thought, and Contemplation are Sacred

It's too easy to get caught up in the idea that we must continuously churn out work. It’s our systems and culture that lionize output and exponential growth. It’s the thing that gives me emotional hives with every Hustle Bro post I see in my social feeds — and why I’m so intent on helping deconstruct those systems for something…better.

This is a thing you’ve probably read/seen many times before, but it’s worth putting in front of you again, in case it’s the message you need in this moment.

It’s massively important to take the time we need to contemplate and let ideas develop as they will. This “wild idling time" (h/t Lianne Raymond) allows us to make connections, recognize patterns, and tap into our subconscious. It’s essential to Flow. By embracing contemplation, we hold space for fertile, fecund innovation and problem-solving.

When is it Contemplation and When Is It Resistance?

So it’s OK to take the time we need to work through an idea. To let things percolate. To do pattern recognition and let our subconscious find wild new threads to pull on. Check.

It’s also important to notice when we’re genuinely contemplating-creating — and when we’re not “doing the thing” we’re called to do, out of resistance. Usually out of fear.

I have to check myself all the time because I’m often simultaneously rabid about wanting to create and be seen (and recognized) — and socially awkward enough to be petrified by the idea of actually following through.

It usually shows up as busy work I make for myself and — POOF — the day is gone. I make a string of excuses that run out the clock and tell myself I can try again tomorrow. In my case, that’s equal parts self-love and bullshit excuse.

When we find ourselves stuck, it's crucial to ask whether we're intentionally letting an idea develop or if we’re simply in resistance. Resistance can be an ally if we let it. We can learn to spot it, do the practice of greeting it, dance with it, and move past that struggle — where we can find sweet, sweet Flow on the other side.

Creating Space for Contemplation in Async, Remote Work Structures

Putting my especially sparkly and passionate Flexible Work Advocate hat on for a moment, this tension between contemplation/action/resistance gambit can be even more anxiety-producing and empowering in async settings. Empowering when we intentionally bake contemplation into our async schedules. Anxious because async can = unstructured and we might often sacrifice deep thought for the grind.

These are things I do (ahem, always practicing/learning to do) to self-repair, allow for contemplation as a sacred part of every day, and dance with resistance — as a human and a fully remote professional:

First, double down on acknowledging that reflection and contemplation are necessary — as important as the actual thing we’re putting into the world in this moment. Sit with that in your body as many times as you need, to affirm that.

❤️ 🧡 💛 💚 💙 🩵 💜 🩷 🤎 🖤

Schedule non-negotiable deep "thinking time" into your calendar every day

Do this at times when your body’s energy are most attuned to that kind of work, supported by your chronotype.

I typically get up a ~6am with the dogs and have a morning ritual that includes meditation. My meditations can be noisy (no judgement) I’ve found that to be a wonderful time for idling. It’s also a great time to connect with the body and reflect back to myself that idling is a mandatory part of creating.

Super important.

If you force “Deep Thinking” into your calendar at 10am every day and you find you’re actually not as regulated at that time, that you’re forcing the activity, you’ll probably find yourself frustrated more often than not.

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Take regular breaks and take advantage of activities that promote mind-wandering.

I know that my focus is less on point around midday for creative work, but that’s a fertile time for me to sit in silence again. Evening routines like washing dishes have also been really great for letting the mind do some free pattern recognition and dot-connecting.

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Attention Founders, Bosses, and Executives

You need to hold space for your employees to do this reflection and whole-body contemplation (or if just doing that in your brain is your jam, also awesome) — as core cultural value. Working with and leading remote teams the past 10+ years, "find your ideal Flow and work to that" is at the top of my list of things I can do to support my colleagues and clients.

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Find Your Community

Find your community that can support and affirm that you’re on the right track about guarding time for deep thought and ruminating. I felt buoyed just by the quick check-in with folks on social media. Accountability partners that you trust, as well, if you need them — to help you recognize if you’re resisting out of fear vs. process.

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It's a lesson we can continually learn and practice – to give ourselves permission to let ideas percolate without judgment, while also knowing when it's time to take action. By recognizing the value of both and creating conditions that support them, we can cultivate a more creative and fulfilling remote work experience.

Thoughts? How you do you approach contemplation in your creative process?

I’m going to suggest a wild time (management) idea — for anyone, but especially for all of my remote / async peers out there.

Try ditching your alarm.

What I mean by that is, if you normally set an alarm to wake you up in the morning, try not setting it for a day or a week.

Instead, focus on getting in right relationship with your sleep cycles and circadian rhythms, and letting your body naturally attune to the solar rise/set patterns where you are.

We made this shift years ago in our house, thanks to . Personally speaking, I was pretty Gregorian-alarm-on-the-smartphone dependent (and, confession, I still rely on the iPhone alarm when I’m working an event).

It definitely took a transition period of being OK if my waking time varied while I worked on my sleep hygiene and letting the sun’s natural cycles wake me vs. a device.

But my body attuned to it pretty quickly. Now I will never go back to using an alarm again. I feel better being in step with Earth’s rhythms.

A couple of caveats:

Your biology and where you are in the world are specific to you (more difficult to do this in the dead of Winter in Northern Minnesota or the heart of Manhattan, I’d imagine), so this method may or may not work for you.

We’ve lived in LATAM for 7+ years (in Southern Mexico right now and Nicaragua before that). It’s more consistently an even 12 hour day/night split, mas o menos, with that amount and the sunrise/sunset time shifting, depending on time of year.

We have 3 dogs that need to get up and out the door for morning business by around 6:30am, regardless. So I have that as a forcing thing anyway. But I know from experience my body just naturally wakes around sunrise, sometimes before the pups start stirring!

I might not use this method when I travel to do conference work or other business trips because I generally need to be up at a different/earlier time, people are depending on me to show up at a certain time, etc. Depends on setting and where I am in the world.

But, if you want to give this a try, do these things:

• Equinoxes are a great time to test this out (more equal day/night splits in many parts of the world), but you can really start wherever you want in the calendar.

• Start by committing to your sleep hygiene. It includes things you've probably heard like having a consistent bedtime, shutting off screens an hour or two before bed, not eating heavy meals too close to bed time, and practicing meditation or breathwork before bed. (I've put a couple of resource links in the comments below.)

• Start by testing this out for 2 or 3 days, in a week where you have less first-thing pressures to be up at a specific time.

• Make an agreement with yourself that it’s OK if you’re a little late to rise those first couple of days.

• When you do wake up, get up right away. That might be a little before or a little after first light or sunrise. But it’s an important signal to your body’s rhythms.

• If you can, get outside and take in some natural sunlight first thing. Helps with the body the attuning process.

• Bonus: Try adding a grounding mat to the top of your bed, above the sheet. We have one and it's done wonders to help us get more grounded sleep. (I'll drop a link in the comments for that one too.)

For me, making this shift has led to a much more natural and ease-full entry into the day, and has set me up to be much more focused, productive, and sustained through the day.

Our ancestors thrived for a millennia letting their bodies be attuned to natural cycles and patterns. We’ve just forgotten how to do that.

Let me know what you think in the comments below. Do you have an alarm device co-dependency or did you already ditch the alarm clock? Curious to see who tries this out and what results you see!