Often, I find myself gravitating toward a song or style of music as the backdrop for a season of my work. I will put that song on as I think through big ideas, or when I need to power through a particularly complex facilitation or piece of content that needs to be created. I find that this consistency of background allows me to go back to a particular place in my head and get inspired anew or retrace my steps through a line of thinking.

This summer, the song has been “Take Your Guess” by Tom Rosenthal:

I didn’t walk how you said I should walk
I walk how I do walk, and that’s fine
It didn’t go how you said it would go
It went how it did go, and that’s fine

I look out the window somedays
I see a million ways and that’s fine
I didn’t dance how I wanted to dance
I did a bit of prance, and that’s fine

Take your guess, spurious at best, can’t you see its all just chaos

I breathe in and then I breathe out
I’ve got a trillion doubts and that’s fine
I took a road that wasn’t a road
But it was something I chose, and that’s fine

It didn’t go how you said it would go
It went how it did go, and that’s fine
Take your guess, spurious at best
Can’t you see its all just chaos

While clearly this is not an entirely uplifting sentiment, I draw inspiration from it in that my (and our) choices are “just fine” and it is the making of those choices that holds power. It is my hope that we dance how we want to dance and that we embrace the “trillion doubts” that we have and move forward into “the chaos” anyway. I also hope we choose roads that no one else has chosen, some that others don’t even see as roads to travel. In the end, no one will be able to “guess” the amazing things we will do together for Kids and Teachers this year, and any attempt they make at it will be “spurious at best.”

With all of that said, I wonder what the background music has been for you of late, or what you have drawn inspiration from in the past. Is there a piece of media or idea that you keep on coming back to that continues to impact your thinking?

I’ll see many of you soon, and we will continue this walk together.