Dreams I’ll Send You | Essay 11
A micro essay practice
On my birthday this past February, I decided to start a new creative practice of publishing a micro essay once a day for the entire month. I published ten essays in eleven days, and then stepped away. As I told a friend, “the practice hit the shoals at essay number 10.”
But maybe that isn’t a generous assessment in these kinds of days, in this time, in the midst of (sweeping gesture) all of this. These kinds of days are ones that feel dark and anxious, when the world feels like it’s closing in around us. Claustrophobia and ennui, rinse and repeat. And then there is the everyday, the mundane tasks that have to be done, tasks that can be grounding, but can grind you down and pull you away from joy and imagination. I suppose I hadn’t thought through what writing a new piece every day with the parameter of political hope and short prose would be like while running a social enterprise, doing the work, seeking support, caring for loved ones, and connecting with my people over the questions of how we build our paths toward a shared future that right now feels harder to see, when our work is not only to see but to make visible.
Sensemaking is an art. It is a commitment. But it can melt your mind and squeeze your heart and burn you out if you’re not careful. I remind myself: Sometimes it’s all right to step away, to let the chaos unfold while you simply observe and build up your reserves while others carry the water. At least, this is what friends tell me, and I say it back, that we are in this together and we are in it for the long haul. And there is strength in that.
As I write this, I am in Bogotá at the invitation of a colleague who is re-imagining the future of higher education in Colombia and the global south. It’s May 1, three months to the day that I started this practice, and international labor day in most of the world. There are protests today all across the globe. Here, thousands of members of Colombia’s indigenous communities gathered to demand rights and reforms in Plaza Bolivar. I don’t quite know the political context of these particular protests — and protest, marching, or assembly aren’t usually the tools I choose to exercise my own advocacy or future building. But protests for justice are fuel, to me, and to the world, to show that people are not sleeping, that they are dissenting, they are demanding, and they are seeing a different way of being.
And so bearing witness to the protests here today fueled me to pick up this practice again, until I need or want to put it down. Or until I feel it’s done. It’s a reminder to me that the work is done in a myriad of ways and forms. (Choose yours.)
