There might only be two other times in my life when I felt this way. The day after my dad died unexpectedly, and the day I witnessed (along with my whole family) a fatal farm incident involving our family dog, Willie.

That’s what is so peculiar about post-traumatic stress, once you’ve experienced it you have a heightened awareness and enhanced recognition for it. In my particular case, the symptom isn’t sadness or worry - it’s purpose. It’s more anxious than it is fear. It sort of feels like a dream where you're running away but can’t run fast enough….or you’re trying to convey a really important message - like a life-threatening situation - but the words won’t form from your tongue. It’s steeped in frustration.

When I allow myself to get deep enough in that space, the word frustration festers. I get frustrated that other people don’t see the flaws in the system. I get frustrated that the task-heavy cadence overburdens our ability to see better ways. I get frustrated that people aren’t patient enough to HEAR and comprehend the words. So in my dream example - it’s less about my ABILITY to annunciate the words and more about their lack of interest and inability to hear them.

It’s not the encoding or the message - or the channel, but rather the decoding and the receiver.

I suppose it could come down to noise. If we substitute ‘busyness’ or over-burdened with tasks for noise, it would look something like this:

But I’m not entirely convinced the noise impacts the sender or the message as much as it impacts the receiver. Maybe that’s a place to unpack some of this frustration. Perhaps the sender, encoding, and message are adequate but somewhere on the decoding side, the noise effects the receiver’s ability. I don’t have an image that illustrates that…but it’s interesting to contemplate.

The communication model gets far more complex when we start adding feedback loops and introducing the quality of the messaging and the efficiency of the channel.

Another factor I haven’t seen introduced is bias. I believe that bias can be a version of noise that impairs our ability to receive certain messages. I know I have inherent biases that trigger visceral responses as soon as I hear them. Queue the eye-rolls and pull down the curtain. Who wants to hear that?

So back to how I feel today.

It’s my first day back to work after bearing witness to Hurricane Helene. What started out as a pretty simple weekend in the woods went south fast. The rain kept falling, and the creeks kept rising. Warnings gave way to evacuations and the winds came in. Trees fell, power went out, and we all became disconnected. Some could even say they were trapped.

I had the good fortune of being at our farm. I had all the tools and I felt obligated to help the community.

Out with the chainsaw I went. Cutting limbs, regaining access, and putting the network back together. 36 hours later, I stopped. I was out of gas - literally and figuratively. I couldn’t lift my arms above my head.

My exhaustion gave way to evaluation. Evaluation gave way to reflection. And now reflection is giving way to emotion. It’s not sadness, although my compassion for people during this trying time is front and center. I watched houses float down rivers. Cars, trailers, lawnmowers, grills - you name it and I saw it floating by. No, I wasn’t sad.

I was angry.

….and I still am.

I’m angry because I feel like I’m not being heard. It’s like running without friction or screaming without volume.

To me these system failures are evident. Our leadership is busy being preoccupied by things that USED to matter rather than focusing on what we can do right now that will start to influence the future.

For anyone with kids - I’m preaching to the choir.

For anyone with adult kids - I’m falling on deaf ears.

For anyone who might want kids - I’m spitting fire.

For the kids - We hear you and we’ve got you.

This is a system failure, not a symptom in need of treatment. There are no bandaids left in the box. This is an inflection point, for me. One that I will reflect on and be able to say with absolute certainty changed my path and set me on course correction.

I’m mad.

I’m mad at everyone who chooses to ignore the science and data.

I’m mad at everyone who is in a position of leadership that can’t hold an intelligent conversation about climate, environment, and social impact. I’m even more mad that these ‘leaders’ have access to resources and they’re burning them on ephemeral shit like management training and driving shareholder value.

I’m mad that the earth is on fire and everybody is too distracted to recognize it.

We have to put in the work. We have to make a common language. We have to give each other the grace to learn from one another and the space to do it at our own pace. We have to be humble and self-aware because the only real way out of this is the same way we got in, behavior. We have to be intentional, persistent, and patient.

    **…little decisions made consistently over time give us compounding ideas…**