The Sprint

On reconnecting, rediscovering, and finally making the thing I kept meaning to make

I’m writing this from Malaysia.

My kids (young adults now) are here building their own projects at something called the Network School, an experimental startup society where people come to “lock in” and actually make the things they’ve been meaning to make. I figured: why not join them? Reconnect and be present. And while I was at it, finally build mine. I mean, I feel like I still have a good sprint left in me.

That’s the simple version. Here’s the fuller one.

For thirty years, my superpower was being the bridge, the connector in knowledge management, in social strategy, in my communities and in every organization I worked with. I was the person who understood both sides: what humans need to connect, learn, and share, and what technology needs to make that actually happen. I lived in the gap between them and helped people cross it.

Then the gap became something else.

I’ve been watching someone I love face the cognitive challenges of aging. I recognized things in myself; fog, fatigue, a quiet drift from the person I knew I was, that I later understood had names. Real, researched, addressable names. The people you love most are sometimes the hardest to reach. And I found myself asking the question I’d been circling my whole career, now from the inside: what does it actually take to stay well across a lifetime?

Midlife is also when distances grow; kids leave, parents age, friends scatter across time zones. Having been the caretaker and the anchor, we now feel adrift, alone. How do we “swoop” (be there to support each other) especially when you’re doing it across distances; from the people you love, from your community, from yourself?

The science and the technology exist. What’s been missing is something that makes it usable, personal, and human.

I’m building that now. Something I genuinely wish had existed years ago.

More very soon. And because I am still a geek girl, that’s including the research that changed everything I thought I knew about how the brain ages, and what we can actually do about it.

~ Heidi

If you are curious about the Network School, message me. Happy to share more.