When I launched Multisolving Institute I always made a point to tell funders that we were deliberately choosing timelines for our goals that would require less than a constant full on sprint to accomplish.
I anticipated our team (all teams) would be increasingly impacted by climate destabilization and we (everyone) would need to build in more slack to be able to cope.
That idea didn't land well. (Understatement alert!) This is an example of a place (there are many others) where I feel constantly trapped between saying what I'm really thinking and planning and saying what feels fundable.
Funders seem (mostly, there are always exceptions & these folks are dear to me & in service of an emerging better world) to want to fund "winners," invincible heroes ushering in a shiny new world in an exhausting but somehow upbeat rush.
Anyway today I'm the only one on our a team having a "normal" day. My colleagues, spread across the southeastern US are dealing with power outages, internet outages, debris, a chemical fire, flooding impacting them, loved ones, and their communities.
Kids home from school. Relatives staying over. Worry for the future. Loss.
We climate workers are people too. Soft and vulnerable as anyone else. Hearts breaking. Filled with worry. Or putting down our laptops to deliver supplies or shelter others.
It so clear now: our interventions need to be climate proofed if we are to be useful. Our work needs to be designed for the very destabilization it is trying to prevent the worsening off. And taking care of the world has to mean taking care of each other too.
I can tell you that trying to do so, to figure out what "climate proofed climate work" is makes you look odd. Downright weird. And it seems to makes the fundraising part exponentially harder.
When you stop doing that which everyone (mostly) is doing but which you think can't continue under the coming destabilization you step out of a lot of opportunities
When you instead put your energy into infrastructure you think could be sustained through destabilization - newsletters, pdfs that could be used even w/o power very simple tools, an actual three dimensional artifact, a book of al things - some opportunities close down.
When you design tools that you think have the best chance of helping people who are more in more in crisis, in confusion, who you can't fly to or who don't have much money or time, or who have to start and stop their work, your tools look less shiny and more simple.
When you admit to yourself that there is not enough time to offer detail level analysis to everywhere that needs it your analysis seems, not surprisingly, less detailed. It's not because you can't do detail, not because you can't handle complicated...
...it's because you have mentally stepped into an emergency mode (even though you look calm) where certain things become clearer and one is that whatever you do has to be useful under conditions you can not yet imagine.
I'm not sure I really how to end this thread (rant?) except to say that if you have had some of these intuitions yourself I think the world and the future need you to trust yourself right now.
And maybe we weirdos (or early adopters of a kind of realism) can help each other feel less alone. So I'll end by sharing this piece by Amy Westervelt which did that for me and and maybe will for you too. https://drilled.ghost.io/on-climate-week-and-toxic-positivity/