If you prefer NOT to listen in your inbox, we get that! Follow this episode on Spotify or Apple Podcasts.
I’m an objectively terrible dancer. But you know what I hate worse than dancing badly? Not dancing at all. That’s the worst—standing on the edge of the happy crowd and knowing, in my deepest soul, that I should be out there doing the human thing with other joyous movers.
In this week’s episode, Susan Hensley, author of Art for Your Sanity invites you out onto the dance floor at work—wait, where is that?—so our intergenerational roundtable can explore what seems like improbable wisdom for creativity at work.
These suggestions probably sound irresponsible. Some of our co-hosts thought so, too. So you’ll hear David, Josh, Betty, and me pushing back on Susan’s advice. After all, we’re squinting at the same news feeds as you are. We’re in the same sort of fraught workspaces you are. We’re hearing accusations of wokeness, feeling anxieties for immigrant coworkers, fearing the global trade war.
Your occupational overwhelm’s real. But we still think you should give this conversation a try for two reasons.
Susan’s offering more than feel-good advice: she’s giving professional reasons you should let art help you feel your feelings. Your emotions, after all, are your brain’s best guess as to what’s going on in your life. Sometimes those guesses are ambiguous or wrong! But your brain’s also got some intel that’s easy to overlook. Susan’s own story of career shock may help you make room for art at work—not because you’re an aesthetic genius but because your body’s emotional wisdom has professional implications.
Susan’s offering more than career advice: she’s at least pointing towards political reasons to try artistic expressions at work. If you’re wondering what to do in today’s political climate when your job keeps you so everlastingly busy, it’s a “small good thing” that this podcast offers a simple mode of political engagement: artistic expression, even in times of cultural uncertainty. Before you dismiss all this because you’re “just not that creative,” tune in to see how art can create resilience simply by making you laugh. Joy isn’t the only thing our society needs today. But it is one indispensable mode of political equilibrium.
So, that’s my plug for popping in your ear buds and giving this a listen. It’s a conversation that will help you take joy in simply being a human person again.
-craig
Welcome to all our new subscribers!
It’s been so encouraging to see an influx of Mode/Switchers! For you new followers, the Mode/Switch flits into your inbox each Tuesday morning, one week with a podcast and the next week with a newsletter. But either way, the Mode/Switch’s looking for shifts in thought and action that will make a difference for you in your working community.
Have a topic you’d like to see discussed either at the Mode/Switch roundtable or in the biweekly newsletter? Hit reply and put your issue or question to the Mode/Switchers!
And let me show some love to other people’s podcasts as well: listen here and here or here for a few conversations about my new book Digital Overwhelm.)
Share this post