Words That Follow Me

Yeshe Rabbit asked on Facebook:

My dad Dick Matthews has a felt scroll that always hung in his closet that says, "The glory of God is man fully alive." My mom Linda Matthews has a plaque on her dresser that says, "Duty makes us do things well, but love makes us do them better." Personally, I have two blocks of wood that have mottoes painted on them, "Kindness matters" and "Be extraordinary." These little phrases we choose to have in our spaces are interesting to me. What mottoes do you maybe have hung up somewhere for observation in your own daily life? What are the words that follow you around from room to room?

On Facebook I answered:

Since YesheRabbit asked, I have too many to list here, but maybe my favorite is: 

Once you start to speak, people will yell at you. They will interrupt you, put you down and suggest it's personal. And the world won't end. And the speaking will get easier and easier. And you will find you have fallen in love with your own vision, which you may never have realized you had. And you will lose some friends and lovers, and realize you don't miss them and new ones will find you and cherish you. And you will still flirt and paint your nails, dress up and party, because, as I think Emma Goldman said, "If I can't dance, I don't want to be part of your revolution." And at last you'll know with surpassing certainty that only one thing is more frightening than speaknig your truth, and that is not speaking. -- Audre Lorde 

But this isn't Facebook, and I can ramble on as I please without length limitation so here are at least the ones that live in my work office with me (which includes the above).

"I always try to come from a place of love.  But sometimes you just gotta break it down for a motherfucker." -- RuPaul.

"Incremental Goodness: what small step can we take today to make things better?" A.C. (an awesome woman I work with).

"Content Strategy: a shared set of goals, guiding principles, and success metrics that guide the creation, delivery, and governance of content across an organization."  I don't have it attributed on my whiteboard, but I believe it's Christina Wotke.  You can replace "content" with anything else and it still holds true.

"Breathe. (pri 1) [gratitude, compassion]."  That's a reminder to myself when things are getting stressful...
"Drink water too."  What can I say, sometimes when things get crazy I forget some of the basics...

"Real, radical change happens when someone in a position of authority turns to a blowhard and says, 'You are wrong. Stop talking.'"  Bee Lavender.  I have a whole post linking to the article this is from.  It is Required Reading.

"Stop not being awesome."  From the Discardia blog.

"ISO: 21st Century -- Information wants out of three ring binders.  ^And microfilm!"  I can't remember where I got the first part, the second part was something I added.  Though, given the rapid shifting still in digital content formats, they may become unreadable faster than microfilm, and I acknowledge it was sort of tongue in cheek as my inner archivist whimpers sadly off in a corner.

"No one can go back and make a brand new start but anyone can start now and make a brand new end."  Can't remember where I saw this one or who it came from.

"Assume the best!"  One of our directors used to say this, things are better when the group culture assumes that everyone is trying their best to do the right thing.

"Ownership is not making the decisions.  Ownership is being responsible for the results."  I think this is another Christina Wotke thing.

"You don't have to attend every fight you're invited to."  Dorothy Parker.

"Before a revolution, a revolutionist leads a daring and romantic life.  After a successful revolution, she must erect a distribution system for olives." -- Sparrow.  Sort of the same idea of  'before enlightenment: chop wood, carry water - after enlightenment: chop wood, carry water' but I think this captures the anticipation of big achievement, and the sense of pragmatic, practical efforts, *work!* that must still take place afterwards better.

Aaand, now that I mention it, 'Before/after enlightenment: chop wood, carry water' is also represented.

Lots more words in here.  "Keep calm, carry on." (I put googly eyes in the crown, because reasons).

"Every day is a good day in library automation." -- Richard Jost

"Do not get distracted by teh dum.  FOCUS."  Work politics gave rise to this one. I was having a very bad day and there was so much to do.  Doing the things that need to get done gets everyone further than getting caught up in the drama and politics...

All sorts of meme stuff that is amusing ("When life give me lemons, I squeeze them over life's eyes" & "What which does not kill us will regret not finishing the job," etc.).

I also have our company mission and values which are too long for me to go into here, but it's important for those things to be visible to my teams and to me as those are our organization's guiding principles & they're good solid ones.

So many words.  I think the last one that I'm going to type out (because I am a word collector and this is getting long!) is something I got from a friend about assessing what work to take on, because I think these things are important to consider.  All four of these will ideally be complementary.  :

• How do I like to work (within an organization, and does this project/job/etc meet these qualifications)?
• What is success (for the project, for the client, for the organization, for the team, for me)?
• What do we get out of it?
• What do I get out of it?