SDAWP SI 2025

*This is an in-progress draft :)  In Conversation with a Mental State Interviewer: Welcome back, we are glad you’re here! We have a great guest with us today. We are excited to get into conversation with Doubt! Doubt is the author of a new book, In Solidarity: How Doubt Leads You to Confidence . She demystifies misconceptions around her role and clarifies her purpose as a partner to help people reach toward their higher selves. Doubt, thanks for being here with us today.  Doubt: Thank you so much for having me!  Interviewer: So, let’s just jump right in. Doubt, can you tell us about yourself and your role as a partner with folx?  Doubt: Yeah, thank you so much for asking! I think I would categorize myself formally as a consultant, but I like to consider myself a thought partner. I think it’s a little bit more informal, but I do think it captures the dialogic approach I take when working with someone. I usually show up when folx have new opportunities, are making big...

 The thing about excursions is that they’re not as glamorous as what’s advertised.  They herd you like cattle to a bus or a van and give very little information about how long it will take to get to the destination.   While on a cruise with my wife and some friends, I was unprepared to spend almost 45 minutes on a bus, a single adventurer among partnered up strangers, driving up the coast of Grand Cayman in the Caribbean.   The thing about plans is that sometimes they change.  I was solo because my friend who was signed up to come with me on this excursion had to change her plan at the last minute because her wife was scared and crying about their stupid sunken ship snorkeling trip and she had to go with her to be supportive.  Once we arrived to the Dolphin Discovery Center, I was able to move quickly, my singleness paying off.  I was the first to cue up on the dock. The thing about life vests is they’re torture devices universally referred to as safet...

  Love Songs Excerpt

Modern-day fables based on real life and fallible memory I have two moments that keep me grounded. They’re times I recall being intensely present and trying to really see another human, who might be otherwise easy to look past. I play the moments in my head when I'm spinning, so I can try to return to earth. I hate that memory is flawed, because it saddens me to think that what feels like such deeply personal and authentic experiences have been re-written to erase what was actually there in the moment. The very authenticity and grounding that I get from reflecting on these moments might be a result of my brain’s inventions, and not the true facts of each situation.  What a disappointment. But, they’re still serving their purpose, and I can hold them in that way in my head. They’re likely flawed, and I don’t need to cling to them as the truth-the-whole-truth-and-nothing-but-the-truth-so-help-me-god. That disappointment and gentle holding of these stories can also be a part of t...

☆ Last year, I did not know what I was doing with my life. I was between jobs, working odds and ends. At the time, my brother in law was managing a small construction project for a residential kitchen. He offered to train me. Me, with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Literature and a work history toting the likes of Starbucks, tutoring, and Trader Joe's.... But I was desperate for work. So I agreed.  What began was six months of 10 hour days and silent, hands on, physically exhausting work. It was just the two of us, 6am to 6pm, tearing up floors, hammering down walls, rewiring the electrical system, sanding doorframes, tiling the backsplash -- anything you can think of for a complete kitchen remodel. At the time, I saw myself as a septum-pierced girly-girl, not as someone capable or strong. Even though I got some weird looks from the couple of other guys that would visit the site to do plumbing or a junkyard run, when it came to the work itself -- to the tearing and sawing and wiring ...

**This piece is being published as a work in progress :) Transcript: In Conversation with a State of Mind--Doubt Interviewer: Welcome back, we are glad you’re here! We have a great guest with us today. We are excited to get into conversation with Doubt! Doubt is the author of a new book, In Solidarity: How Doubt Leads You to Confidence . She demystifies misconceptions around her role and clarifies her purpose as a partner to help people reach toward their higher selves. Doubt, thanks for being here with us today.  Doubt: Thank you so much for having me!  Interviewer: So, let’s just jump right in. Doubt, can you tell us about yourself and your role as a partner with folx?  Doubt: Yeah, thank you so much for asking! I think I would categorize myself formally as a consultant, but I like to consider myself a thought partner. I think it’s a little bit more informal, but I do think it captures the dialogic approach I take when working with someone. I usually show up when folx ...

 On The Edge of Falling Into....

  Last Year’s Club Last August I joined a new club. It was challenging, but as accompanies challenge, incredibly rewarding. We had inside jokes, secret signals, songs we’d sing to each other, nicknames, and identities. There was the resident “gato” whose job it was to catch and release any unwanted bugs. There was the loud member, waking us up when things got boring. The dancer, the organizer, and the one who walked in late every day with a sneaky smile that said “I know, right, a pleasure to see me?”  It was such a close-knit club that at times it felt like a cult, or a family. Sadly, the community I was part of day in and day out has since disbanded, and it is permanent. There will be no more meetings. We will never celebrate together again, never be caught by surprise by earthquakes or fart noises. We won’t have each other to lean on or bicker with. There won’t even really be a way for us members to contact each other, we just sort of said “bye”. We knew it would end, but i...

 

“How lucky I am to have something that makes saying goodbye so hard.” Of course it had to be a Disney quote, but it’s just so true and it gets me through. I read a quote from a poem that said, “If love alone could have saved you you never would have died,” and instead of crying I actually chuckled, thinking in true mentor text copy change style, “yeah if belly rubs alone could have saved you you never would have died.” I am extra teary thinking about you lately, it could be your two year anniversary is coming, or it could just be grief. Grief is like an eight ball that contains all the emotions felt as a result of a loss, and you just never know which one you’re going to get when you shake that ball. Some days I smile at your memories, others I cry, some days I am numb, others I am sad. I miss you sleeping curled up by my feet, I miss your sleepy body coming into the bathroom shaking to wake up, I miss you liking my ankle as I brush my teeth in the morning as your way of saying, “Hi, I...

Vehicle Registration Stickers   In California, the color of vehicle registration stickers rotates every five years between red, yellow, blue, orange, and green, and is a symbol of quiet compliance or defiance. I assume for most people, renewing their car registration yearly is just another bill, but for me, it has always been more loaded than that. In 1901, the first states began to require any vehicle to register with the government. By 1915, the DMV was created to manage all 191,000 registrations in California alone. In the early days of registration, states would issue a brand new license plate each year, with the year permanently listed on the metal rectangle. Today, the marker of current registration is a brand new, shiny, colored sticker with the next year’s number listed. If you don’t have it, you are in violation of California Vehicle Code section 4000(a)(1), which states that in order to drive a vehicle in California, the registration must be current and paid for. Violatio...