We can only find satisfaction in a high-tech, hyper-connective present/future if we are careful to use these advancements to build upon—not separate ourselves from—a meaningful, collective intimacy. –Alex Steed

As Gen Y-ers/millennials—I’m grouping the two together since the lines aren’t clear and it still feels like such a new century!—we are a generation inclined to share. Thanks to social media, largely Facebook, we are a generation inclined to “like” things and “share” things. Which is to say, like all generations that have come before us, we like things and share things. Bear with me… What I’m saying is, we share information and ideas about work or art that interests us and sometimes work or art that we create as human beings have always done. Only the means of this sharing have changed, right? So why does it feel like everything has changed?

Sometimes when you feel like everything is changing around you, it’s because you’re 25 (or 27 in my case), and life opens up wider than you could have ever imagined in your 20s. Other times it’s because everything around you is indeed changing and you live in a remarkably interesting time in history. Due to an explosion of technologies and applications changing the methods and frequency by which we communicate and share (read John Freeman’s The Tyranny of Email), I’d say we live in a particularly interesting, deeply transformational time. Technological advances have radically changed the ways in which we engage with the world and with each other, the very way we live our lives.

The thing (and sometimes problem) is, while it’s easier than ever, sharing—communicating something of interest and value to another human being or group of people—no longer requires calling up our friends or colleagues on the phone. It no longer requires sending an email. We can simply post the item of interest on our Facebook page. We can send something out into the universe via Twitter. And in doing so, we can feel like we’ve shared. If we blog, we can stop ourselves at the moment we push new information out before ever entering a dialogue. We can hide out online, connected and not connected to others.

But sending (or re-sending) information out into your social network is and totally isn’t sharing. It’s a limited, passive form of sharing that, while certainly not being useless, often makes us feel more engaged and useful than we are. And when life is moving fast, when we feel bombarded with a ton of information coming at us from all directions, and when we don’t know what to make of all that information—whether we’re in our 20s, 40s or 60s—this kind of sharing is much easier and safer than all of the ways in which we could share more meaningfully.

What might other, more meaningful kinds of sharing look like? On one level, it may mean doing something with all of that good information we come across on a daily/near-daily basis and feel compelled to share with others. It may mean attempting to make sense of all of those ideas, reflecting on them in community with other live human beings (or even just one over coffee) or moving those ideas forward one way or another by offering our own unique insights in our work or art.

We need not always do something with the information we receive, but when we know we can offer something of use to the world as a result of all of that new information available to us, I do think we have a responsibility to go ahead and offer it.

On a deeper level, more meaningful sharing may mean having the courage to think about what our real work on the planet is and taking concrete steps to do that work. It’s not that there’s anything wrong with sending information out into the world with the click of a button. More information and increased access to the right kinds of information often makes us smarter, more productive, even wiser individuals. But like anything, this kind of sharing and feeling engaged can serve as an escape from our real work, whatever our real work may be. By real work, I mean the work we feel called to do in our bones. Work that genuinely excites us and work we feel the world needs now. I think this is what my friend Alex, who I’ve quoted above, means when he says “separate ourselves from a meaningful, collective intimacy.”

As you can probably tell, I am writing this as much for myself as anyone else. I am a lover of information, a Gen Y-er often inclined to share, a person who can waste time online if I’m not careful, and a human being who sometimes struggles with questions as to where to put my energy and where I think my real work is. As genuinely helpful as social media is, I’ve found it’s all too easy to get caught up with everything else out there than to do my real work here, away from a constant source of distraction and intellectual stimulation.

I’m writing this to say more than “get offline.” I’m writing this to remind you and I to stay human, connected, and awake in an increasingly digital world. I’m writing this to remind myself to dedicate time to writing every week. I’m writing this to tell you I think the world needs you—whomever you are, whatever age you are—to do your real work, whatever you think it is. I’m writing this to remind us to go be courageous and talk to each other about the things that really matter, in person.

With thanks to Nicholas Schroeder for inspiring this post.

Originally published at Boston.com on January 19, 2012

In my last blog, Forays into the Future of Work, I ask, “What skills and qualities will serve us in the future?” and offer the idea that the world needs connectors. It’s a simple enough idea to grasp, but it’s worth exploring because it can easily get lost in our day-to-day routines.

I say the world needs connectors because indeed systems and systems thinking are key to meaningful, lasting change. Whether we’re talking about what the future of work holds for us and our organizations, or the ever-so-tricky social and economic challenges so many of us are facing currently, becoming aware of the systems we find ourselves in is crucial. And if we’re going to adapt to a fast-changing world and build new kinds of companies designed to thrive in a new kind of sustainable economy, then systems thinking is a skill all of us need to wrap our heads around, embrace, and let change us.

We must bring systems thinking out of the university, tech world, and think tanks, and into our workplaces and communities.

Over on the NewProsperity blog in December, I had the privilege of posting a piece by fellow Bostonian Nathan Rothstein on what he hopes for the future of education. Nathan reflects on the importance of financial literacy, civics education, and service for recent grads. Too many young people come out of high school and college knowing next to nothing about finance or how elections work, he says, and too many could care less about politics. This at a time when the promises of an expensive college education no longer hold true, and when the world needs young people more than ever.

With so many of our major cultural institutions changing at what feels like the speed of light, Nathan thinks our educational institutions could change quicker. I couldn’t agree more, but of course change takes time. We have to talk about things first and gather collective support around new possibilities. We have to admit when things aren’t working and take some risks.

While many of my friends and colleagues are spending time in organizations/startups working toward creating new futures in education (The ArtScience Prize, BoxxoutEnterprises, University of Venus)—or challenging/re-imagining the entire concept of education (Kaos Pilots, Swaraj University), I find myself wondering about the future of work. My colleague Erica Dhawan and I are thinking a lot about the attitude and skills Gen Y-ers and millennials (especially young women) need to create meaningful, rewarding careers in a changing world of work and money, as people seek to live as much as in the real world as they do behind their computer screens, and as social responsibility becomes more of a given rather than a side consideration.

As part-time entrepreneurs and Gen Y-ers ourselves, with different backgrounds, Erica and I find ourselves hearing the same things. Young people seek careers that will give them a good income, personal fulfillment, plenty of learning opportunities, flexibility, and joy. Companies and organizations want new hires who will help them move forward, who can work within the current company culture, and by being active, engaged, socially-conscious citizens, also serve to meaningfully transform it. Companies want what they’ve always wanted: people who will help them remain relevant. It’s about keeping an eye on all the ways the world is changing and in the meantime, offering products and services of real value to people.

So how do we stay relevant? We might arrive at the answer faster by first considering the question, what skills and qualities will serve us in the future? Whether we’re young people in the business of crafting our careers or companies in the business of bringing on new creative talent, those skills and qualities are the same. The world needs connectors. By this I mean systems thinkers, synthesizers of ideas, translators of ideas, free agents comfortable working across sectors and across different parts of the organization, and workers who are also willing to serve as fearless, thoughtful hosts of conversations that matter within our companies, communities, and organizations. It’s not enough anymore to be a hard worker who stays on task; the world needs smart workers who are paying attention to the world around them, letting it inform the way they work and lead.

In my next blog, I’ll go into more detail about what I mean by each of these roles and will invite your thoughts as well. What skills and qualities do you think the world needs now?

Long ago the word alone was treated as two words, all one. To be all one meant to be wholly one, to be in oneness, either essentially or temporarily. That is precisely the goal of solitude, to be all one.

-Clarissa Pinkola Estes

I took a break from writing in 2011. I did a fair amount of writing in 2010 and the early part of 2011, I liked how it felt, I got used to putting my words out there and having them be reasonably well-received, imperfect as they were. So after a handful of published pieces, some part of me figured I should probably stop while I was ahead, while everything felt golden and I felt a bit unstoppable. At the moment when I could have aimed for bigger things, I found I needed to go back to where my words didn’t matter so much—my own not-so-exciting, incoherent, unpublishable life—and do more work there.

Writing in public made me realize that I needed to go back to find out what I cared about. I thought I knew what I cared about, but it turns out life has a way of changing you, sometimes in rapid cycles. Dar Williams says it better in one of her most heart-breaking/healing songs: “Life gets into who you thought you’d be.” That’s the feeling. All I knew this past year was that I wanted to observe and participate in what was happening around me without needing to say something about it. A lot had happened and was happening still. For the first time in a long time I knew I was a part of it all whether or not I ever opened my mouth.

The tagline on one of my favorite writing websites, The Rumpus, is always changing. I find this comforting in a world where everything feels branded with a tagline meant to stick. I don’t need things to stick these days; I’m interested in noticing what is and letting whatever comes next come next. Right now the tagline at The Rumpus reads: “Part of working is not working.” I like this because part of being a good writer is knowing when to be quiet. Part of being a good writer is letting it be ok that you have nothing to say. Part of of being a good writer/conversationalist, is listening with your whole self, not crafting a response as you’re listening, just listening and letting that change you. And then if necessary, paying close attention to your own changing heart.

In my year of mostly-not-writing, I’ve been changed by my desire to support others’ writing rather forward my own, feeling what it feels like to do that. I’ve been changed by what feels like an almost daily bombardment of information coming at me from all directions (even though I usually go seek it out online). I’ve been changed by changing work relationships and friendships, and a couple of half-satisfying, plenty distracting love interests. I’ve been changed by new creative projects that seem to have come out of nowhere, demanding my time and attention whether I’ve liked it or not, which now I’m incredibly grateful for.

I’ve tried to notice all of these things rather than judge them. I’ve tried just to listen and be quiet. As a result, if you look in my drafts folder on my laptop, you’ll find a bunch of half-essays from this past year that read like they have resigned to being forever unfinished. Essays I flirted with and left behind because I was never wholly emotionally available to them anyway. There was something good there, sure, but I knew I couldn’t stay. I had other work to do.

And now this writing hibernation period is on its way out, too, just as unexpectedly as it came. I’m also kicking my own ass out of it because there’s only so long a writer can brew on something. I have things to say again.

I won’t be writing about things I thought I’d be writing about this time last year. But after taking time off, I know I’ll be writing from a more authentic place. Coming back to writing feels simultaneously fantastic and totally scary. I forgot how lonely this writing business is. How it’s not a business at all. How much it’s about having an honest conversation with ourselves about how we seek to live in the world. No matter how our writing serves, how many new conversations it helps to start or doesn’t. And how important it is to do just the same.

I’ve always loved poetry. In recent years, I’ve begun sharing my favorite poems and some of my own poems with my brother. Nick is a writer, although I’ve never known him to write poetry. A couple of years back he fell in love with Robert Creeley poems, which set us off on a deeper conversation about poetry. Since then we’ve batted around the idea of working toward a collection tentatively titled Brother Sister Poetry Compendium. In preparation for this project, whether or not it ever happens, I thought I should ask Nick some of my most pressing questions about poetry. I spoke with him by phone to conduct this interview, tacking it on to the end of a long, exhausting conversation, giving him no time to prepare.

LS: Why do so many poets talk about persimmons and milkweed in their poems?

Nicholas Schroeder: Probably just because they’re tried and true mysteries of the earth. Rare fruit is generally important because it’s sexual. If you say persimmon, it becomes a focal point of the poem. It always catches you off-guard because nobody can remember the last time they ate a persimmon. And milkweed is a convergence of two very evocative terms. Milk being the stuff of life and also of gastroenterological distress. Weed dating back to early America.

LS: That’s your answer for milkweed?

NS: Yes. [Laughs]

LS: What’s so interesting about pain?

NS: Well, because when people talk about pain, they’re not lying. Most everything else can be reconstituted as something you’re trying to sugarcoat essentially. If I’m interested in my own pain, then I’m truly getting at the stuff of life… pain. And B, if you can suffer with me, then we’ll love each other better.

LS: What is valuable about looking?

NS: What?!

LS: Looking. [Laughs]

NS: With the eye you thoroughly—one of the things I always knew when I was young was that when you look—the act of looking is such an action, such a decisive thing to do, to look at something. The body—the energy is coming from you… [Laughs] So if I were looking at a squirrel walking down his own path, I’m feeling, I’m looking at the squirrel! I hope he doesn’t see that I’m looking at him! I’m looking! I’m looking! When you look, what you’re actually doing is allowing the light into your retina, your lens, your eyes. And in your eyes, there’s your heart. When you’re looking at something, you’re opening yourself up to being a receiver of that which is occurring organically on the earth. Therefore, if you think of it this way, we have an incredible, incredible abundance of possible things to look at and receive as human beings. So when poetry evokes looking, I think that’s what poets mean. [Laughs]

LS: What are some of the similarities between poetry and architecture?

NS: Oh. Well, one thing I know is that in architecture you’re supposed to build—I think a lot of people get seduced into architecture because they want to put their own personal flourish on a building or a church or an awning or a storefront. Something distinctive that says “Yes!” [Laughs] And that’s silly. Everyone wants to use the word persimmon when nobody else expects it. But the thing that is most similar to poetry about architecture is that when you are moved to write a poem, you’re generally moved by a thought, the heart of the matter basically. The one thought that is the lynchpin of the poem. And what you need to do, just like in architecture, is write that thought first. I want to say I learned this from Nicholson Baker (the general sentiment, not the architecture bit). You don’t save the most important beam for the top of the building or the end of the building. You use it first and then you build around that and then you trust that every subsequent beam you put you up is just as important. You can’t even foresee their beauty.

LS: Do you think it’s possible to write a good poem when you’re in love?

NS: I’d like to think that it is, but it’s not.

LS: What would you name your first compendium of poems at age six and what would you name it now?

NS: At six, Orcs Meet Baseball. And now, it would probably be My Life Bathes in a Flowing Gargantuan of Light.