Happy Birthday, America

Sitting here on a Saturday - July 4th, to be exact - reflecting on my life, on this year, on freedom, and what that really means.

Today I battled what felt like anything but freedom: a deep sadness and exhaustion that kept me in bed for most of the day. Thank goodness my daughter was at a party with her friends, and my son is not here anymore. I was able to be exactly how I needed to be, which is rare.

Miles is in college now, loving life and navigating all the things that come with the first summer after freshman year in Fayetteville.

Wow.

The memories of that place are vivid and clear - more so now that he is there, back home, walking the sidewalks and streets of that magical little place in the Ozarks.

Life has been a roller coaster that has yet to slow down since I moved to this city from there, Christmas Day of 2013, to be exact. Marin was three and Miles was five, and our family was on the edge of a new beginning.

Lots of them, actually. And, some very painful endings, too.

For the last several years, I’ve been heads down, grinding and working, while somehow also keeping my head in the clouds - designing, building, and imagining.

Building Faana has been the hardest and most exhilarating experience of my life.

Working on this product means I’m having conversations about humans, robots, and agents in the same meetings - and how this impacts the way we work, who and how we hire, and how we integrate new solutions into a workforce that is exhausted and sick of change. The compression and stress sitting inside organizational systems is heavy, and very noisy, for most teams right now. 

Faana aims to bring more signal, and help customers reduce the noise and the distraction tax of disengagement and pockets of distress in the organization - things that hold the company back from doing the good work of serving the customer well. 

Navigating the torrential headwinds in the market when you work with the labor and leadership system, it’s the reason days like today are a feature of my life right now - and I need to remember to be grateful for them. The highs and the lows of building anything worth it. It's a feature of the process.

Some days are for being exhausted, perhaps slowing down long enough to realize the grief I carry for the kids who are no longer little and in need of their Mother the same way, alongside the happiness and pride I feel for the mature young people they are becoming. This being human is a guesthouse all right.

The opportunity to build a life I chose, work on a company I chose, and to express my passion creatively through entrepreneurship - well, this is truly the American Dream.

Happy birthday, America.