This is exciting! Am I crazy or are we opening back up? Slowly I see the masks coming off. I missed your mouths so much. And we are starting to gather again. I can hardly wait to dance. Remember dancing?

As part of this return to operation, work is picking up too. I’m seeing a swell in incoming gigs, inquiries, and projects. So now is a perfect time take a quiet moment to sit and resolve my/our intentions for the new work we are about to embark upon.

Before the pandemic, pretty much everybody thought the world was going to hell in a handbasket, and many of us for different reasons and in different ways. All at once we found ourselves racing toward ecological, economic, political, and spiritual collapse.

A synopsis of the status quo

It’s no wonder our reigning technocrats are building spaceships. It’s no wonder the ultra-rich are setting up camp in abandoned missile silos, forming private militia, and digging moats around their hideouts in New Zealand and Alaska.

But are we really done for?

Or are we feeling the whiplash of a massive cultural inflection point as sovereignty infects the populace at much-slower-than-light-but-nearly-5G speed?

Last March I saw the skies clear and heard the birds sing as never before. That was two weeks after the Great Pause. What might happen, how might we heal, if we were to slow down to a sustainable pace for good?

After over a year of lockdown (was that even a word before 2020!?) we’ve each and all had an excruciating but bountiful opportunity to reflect and redirect: to isolate our needs from our wants, to find compassion for ourselves, our neighbors, and all beings (except mosquitos), to shift into a mindset of abundance and ease.

And yet I notice subliminal rage returning to the dance of traffic. Stories of random acts of intolerant, John-Wickesque violence crop up uninvited in furtive social media propaganda notifications. New old forests continue to burn spontaneously, while novel variants of that pesky virus emerge to plague and haunt us.

In these odd times, as at any time, we must ask, what is worth working on? What would I love to work on? What will the world pay me to work on? Where do these sets intersect?

What is worth doing?

I’ll share my shortlist here of projects I would love to work on that the world needs and that folks would pay for. I’d love to know what is on yours, and especially where our lists intersect. If anything sparks you, tweet to me or email me.

Old Rubber Hubbard Parks

We recycle thousand-year plastics like those used in sneakers to create amazing, bouncy community playgrounds for kids who no longer go to school because Khan Academy and family pods. I’m interested in any facet of the plastic recycling game. Sooner or later this will become imperative.

Full Smile Studios

Converting pandemic-bankrupted storefronts and centrally located commercial real estate into intimate play spaces where healers of all disciplines teach their techniques to cohorts of students of holistic well-being. We could call them Full Smile Studios. The growing mental health crisis cannot be quelled by treating our symptomatically sick and malformed minds. Our minds begin as a bodily defense, processing our sensory experience and attempting to predict conditions in order to maintain homeostasis.

Moasis

A fleet of mobile oases for the growing hordes of delivery drivers and mobile workers, filled with supplies and offering services drivers need most, sponsored as a benefit by the companies who hire them, stocked by the drivers themselves, and always popping up where the surges in deliveries occur. Codename: Moasis

Youlogy

An AI-driven end-of-life storytelling platform that takes in your life’s data (photos and videos, communications, writings, biometrics, locations, Quantified Self) and puts out a gorgeous, poignant, personal tribute to you for all to share.

Kindest Regardenings

We can reclaim dilapidated buildings or forgotten urban space as vertical farms, hanging gardens, wildlife preserves, botanical parks, etc.

The list goes on and on…

I’m off to get crackin’. Chime in :)