What are you going to be working on?

I used to see them everywhere—sliding along the brick walls of the duplex where I launched a community farm, nestled in sidewalk cracks, hiding in damp corners of the yard after a rain. Tiny, glistening travelers tracing silver spirals in silence.

I’d crouch down close, eye to shell. Watching. Breathing in the wet concrete, the leaves, the scent of mud so rich it almost had a pulse.

Sometimes, my eldest, Marc, would whisper to them. Sometimes he’d name them. Always, enchanted. Then life sped up.

Somewhere between deadlines and detours, the snails faded from view just long enough to study the rhythm of corporate duties.

But when Marc was 8, he found one near a river in Utah. “Mom,” he said, cradling it like a jewel, “is this... alive?”

And just like that, the world slowed down again.

Now, days with my boys sometimes begin with fingers in the compost, flipping leaves, checking on our soft-shelled companions.
They know the rhythm of rain on the roof, the squelch of wet soil, the quiet magic of something small doing something vital.

In the last 7 months, I’ve been moving at an entirely different pace— laying the operational foundation for Helical Healing Habitat. It’s been the most intense, purpose-driven stretch of my life.

Where I've also stopped wasting time.

No more performing for people whose values are too rigid to hold the complexity of people like me. No more carrying the weight of others’ cynicism. I've separated from the chorus of doubt that expects people like me to fail—and when we don’t, calls us exceptional instead of inevitable.

Because we are building something inevitable. Each tick on our to-do list is proof: do-gooders aren’t extinct. They’re organizing.
They’re designing, composting, convening. And they’re actively calling in the kind of creativity that pours out of me daily.

My cup is being refilled—by purpose, by partnership, by a future my children can root in.

Now, I’m attempting something radical: to balance recovery with rest. To savor this summer barefoot with my boys. We’ll camp in the backyard. Chase fireflies. Listen to the low songs of toads at night.

And yes, we’ll look for snails—because they’re still here, if you know where to look.

Here in the Texas Hill Country, the land is soaked with memory. This month, it’s held more than it should have to. Flash floods swept through homes and histories. Too many lives lost. Others changed forever. And still, the land listens—swollen, grieving, patient.

Tomorrow, before we dive head-first into the next funding round, Brian and I will drive further south— to lend a hand, to bear quiet witness. To help turn what’s broken into something fertile.

Because that’s what we do.

Because healing, too, is infrastructure.

Because ancestral wisdom—when given the tools—can meet modern emergencies.

So, now be honest:

What are you going to be working on?