“and what do you do?”

Ugh. I always liked my uncle Doug’s answer,

“Mostly I breathe.”

CC photo Fire breathing light monster by Kevin Dooley

I’m hoping some random participation in this You Show adventure will get me a bit further ahead on a website that reflects and shares my work…there’s some stories to tell for sure and it’s high time to dust off my web and media skills a bit.

Truth is I have never had a comfortable answer to that question. This despite many, long years as a “career development” practitioner. (I was a fully out-of-the-closet anti-planning career planner back in the day.)  A friend once said my work was “emergent”. That sounds hip, so sure.

My last job before my hybrid freelance/parenting phase began in 2007 was Manager of Web Strategy for UBC Career Services. From a resume:  “Led online course development, web projects, partnerships, staff training and development as well a strategic planning efforts to move Career Services  into a fully integrated online with face to face service model, serving UBC’s 40 000+ students.”

I owe it all to Mexico. So that’s a decade worth of stories and maybe a few artifacts on the web if I scrounge about.

There’s a sharp turn after that- down a road I’ve travelled all my life in my personal time. For the last 7 years I’ve worked on a number of community projects with a food systems/ garden/ neighbourhood theme.

 Food Sovereignty is the right of peoples to healthy and culturally appropriate food produced through ecologically sound and sustainable methods, and their right to define their own food and agriculture systems.

My newest contract gig is with Farm to School BC. I’ve been hired as a ‘Community Animator’ and I’ll be some kind of a catalyst for getting more local food into schools, hands-on learning and growing community connections. I’m also working on my annual organizational development gig with the Edible Garden Project, who are my inspiration for how you can grow community by growing and sharing food.

I’ve documented and shared lots of these projects online but when it comes to the unpaid overtime inherent in any emerging sector of work, it’s been the stuff outside, on the ground, that my Harry and late, great dog Dex could join in on that more often won my time. The web stuff is a bit untended (actually my gardens too, but that’s by way of design.)

It’s the right season to do a little gardening on the web.

CC photo Winter Rosehips by Dawn Perry

Growth begins in the dark, my growth anyway.

There’s an underground mycelial network that connects the visible sprouts of my career-a mish mash of guides, recurring themes and learning experiences…

listening, stories, loss, writing, bands, women, queer, radical feminist therapy,  anti-racism, garden, permaculture, intersecting oppressions, wilderness, guiding, immigration, exile, anti-psychiatry, anti-poverty, rest, advocacy, kids, families, plants,  attachment,  popular education, abundance, trauma, elders, making art, making music, making food, travelling, separation, healing, culture, growing, celebration, open web, hands-on learning, indigeneity and yes, community…

CC Photo Mycelium by Ryan Alexander

I’m not sure how these hidden influences, background stories and speculations will be reflected here beyond this  post.  But if I’m going to grow a garden on the web I want to tend, that’s the living soil.