a good week

Despite the sadness of having to let Masdot go, all in all this was a good, good week. It started off with a productive meeting at our studio, with guests from Yogya and Jakarta, followed by a planning meeting. Just putting down in writing what we planned to do this week helped us better understand our own workloads, and that of our workmates.

By Wednesday we were on a roll...each working hard on finishing their own assignments, which for me included creating a proposal for a series of activities to build innovative women leaders to lead creative change in their communities. An exciting challenge that I'm happy to say is going to be supported! It felt really good to get positive feedback from my peers, "beautiful!" said one, and "inspiring!" said another. Exciting, cool, and great...were some of the other comments I got. The power of positive reinforcement through words...it lifts you up!

And so, we are going to get to do something we have been wanting to do for at least two years now. To write our own manual on leadership, to share our own experiences and tools and creativity...to be copied, used, consumed, adapted, built upon by whoever picks it up and reads it. Thanks, Julie and Nat...and Dani and Ijul too, for believing in me to put my thoughts and ideas onto paper. Just thinking about this work makes me tingle and smile! Always a good sign!

I also managed to spend some quality time at home, and today was especially nice because Ibu was also taking it slow. Here she is with Pica and Pixie, enjoying our newly grassed garden...after years of having patches of dead dirt, it is now grassed again. My anniversary gift to Ibu and Bapak...and I know he is definitely spending time sitting in the garden and enjoying how green it is again.


Tomorrow our team goes on to Solo for the first in six training workshops to build creative community initiators! All in all there will be 50 participants, in two parallel classes. May we burst with creativity! ... and then some. :)