Breaking up: An Origin Story

I.

Last Monday I learned that we'd been awarded a five-year grant to provide afterschool for 150 students in Newark starting in the fall. It is far and away the most coveted award in the field. Multiple years, multiple millions. I was driving when the email came through so I pulled over at a gas station to read it again and again and again. We'd applied for the grant more than three months earlier, and frankly, I had zero expectation that we'd win in part because everyone told me that our chances or winning were slim to none. We were a new organization. We were in competition with more experienced organizations across the state of New Jersey. The application was arduous. We started the application process late and got it in two minutes before the deadline. For my own part, I'd long ago learned to manage my expectations. This way when good things came my way I was always be surprised. Here's the thing, though: even when those good things happened I remained suspicious. The bottom could still fall out, I'd tell myself. So while everyone else on the team who'd worked on this beast of a proposal was thrilled--congratulations poured in over email--the best I could muster was a "woah".

This last year was a series of firsts for me. I'd never been an Executive Director consequently I faced a number of questions that any new organizational leader faces. Could I raise money? Could I win grants? Could I build a board? Could I hire and a manage a team? Could I manage a budget? Could I navigate government bureaucracy? So far I think I've proven that I can do the job, some would even say with a fair degree of skill. In one year and with a lot of help, I've more tripled our budget. We've grown us from a staff one working out of a co-working space to a soon to be full-time staff of five and a part-time staff of nearly forty. We just signed the lease for a modest office space overlooking a beautiful park. This time last year we had no school partners. This fall we will be in six schools and serving well over 1,000 students. We're in the thick of New York City's new and ambitious Community Schools Initiative, and in the midst of planning and producing a fall fundraiser at 4 World Trade Center (https://www.crowdrise.com/AllStarClimb4Kids). And now we've been awarded the most competitive government grant in our field. I should've been thrilled. I should've felt awesome. Yet, I didn't. I felt suspicious. I found myself sitting in that gas station waiting for an email to come through saying it was all a mistake.

II.

As a kid I devoured comic books the way kids today devour video games. Comics--what would be called graphic novels in today's parlance--were my literature. I didn't read an actual novel cover to cover until I got to college and decided to become an English major but I read upwards of 20 comics each week, most twice and most in one sitting. Every Saturday after my soccer and later basketball games my dad took me to the Geppi's on Fenton Street in Silver Spring, MD. It was your stereotypical comic book store: musty, dimly lit, creepy manager behind the register who regarded any collector under the age of 30 an amateur unworthy of conversation. The intensity with which we regulars strummed the stacks in search of first editions, collector's items, missing links in whichever series we were attempting to amass the entirety of was the stuff of detective novels. My shopping pattern was rigid. I started with the new arrivals, picking up the latest issues of whichever series I'd been at the moment. Next, I drifted to the back issues in search of value comics. A decently priced mini-series in good-to-mint condition featuring multiple top-tier superheros was always my top choice. My goal as a collector was always to get entire sets because sets were more valuable on the market--not that was ever planning to sell. Next up was a special appearance issue in which one top-tier hero teamed up with or battled another top-tier hero. My last resort was a tie-in, meaning an issue in which an ongoing saga taking place in the greater (Marvel or DC)universe bled into a specific character's typically contained universe. Once I finished with my weekly buying spree the manager would slide my haul along with a stack of plastic sleeves to protect them into a thin brown bag like fresh baked cookies and off I'd go.

I had a rule against reading in the car. I required  snacks and drink in place and to be comfortably seated in my father's recliner before I opened the bag. Once everything was set, I'd disappear from the world for hours on end reading and imagining, completely and utterly immersed in the worlds my heroes inhabited. The storylines were so rich and real. They involved life and death matters. serious moral questions, social issues of the day. To me, albeit at 14, it wasn't escapism or fantasy. The characters were always mired in one life struggle after another. I sympathized with their plights as outsiders more than I fantasized about the powers they possessed.

But I digress ...

What I was always most interested in with just about every comic book hero that I followed was the origin story. Now, the origin story isn't just how they got their super powers. The origin story is how they came to understand both their power and its accompanying burdens. Typically, the origin story begins with a loss. Peter Parker's uncle was murdered. Bruce Wayne's parents were killed in a robbery. Kal-El's parents died on Krypton. The loss these characters suffer is so deep and profound that the wound can never be healed. The rupture, in other words, is permanent. But the hero turns that rupture, that painful loss, into his reason for being. He becomes a hero in order to prevent others from experiencing the anguish he has to live with. The closest he can ever come to healing his own wound is through helping others. Batman will always have his darkness. Superman will always be a remove from humanity. This is their plight. Their destiny is to deliver themselves to strangers and in so doing experience glimmers of the serenity that preceded the rupture. For them, the safety and protection they once felt is lost forever. The best they can do is provide it for others.

III.

We all have our origin stories. Stories of our awakening, our coming to a deeper, richer consciousness as beings separate and apart from those who protect us. I actually have a handful of them. They each represent a different phase of awakening. But one in particular stands out above the others as the defining story that has shaped how I react to good news. It occurred when I was nine. We'd just moved into a new home. My parents had separated briefly the previous year. They announced they were getting back together and that we were buying a new house in one swoop. I was doubly elated: my parents back together and a new house. We'd spent months looking at different homes. This one had it all as far as I was concerned, which meant a basketball court and a basement in which to race my cars, play ping pong, and entertain my friends.

I remember the day distinctly. Remember the way the summer sun hit my skin as I was walking down the stairs in search of my parents and sisters. Remember the sight of everyone sobbing in our basement. Remember hearing my parents say they were splitting up again, this time for good. Dad was moving out. The decision had already been made. He packed a bag and drove away. It was and continues to be the most painful day I can recall. I cried so much that I got a throbbing headache. And when I stopped crying I went on to spend the next 20 years trying to regain my dad and, by extension, my family, in one sense or another. As a boy I thought if I could just perform well enough on the field for him he'd come back. As a young man I sought success in my career in order to prove my worth. It was always for him. Always an effort to bring him back which was all the more difficult because he was always both present and not present. I could reach him by phone, spend time with him on weekends, stop by his office whenever I wanted, but from that day forward he was a mirage in the desert, a phantom, a ghost. As a boy I'd dream about his total abandonment. In college I'd dream about his death. I worried endlessly about him building a new family and leaving me behind. It was my greatest fear and it spread to all of my relationship--this fear of abandonment, this sense that everything was conditional, temporary. It didn't help that at 19 he moved to the other end of the country. At 28,  he got sick. Brain cancer. At 29 he was gone. I remember the morning distinctly. Uncle Jack called one morning and told me it was time to come home. I got up, got dressed, went to work and drove to DC that evening. I wrote a eulogy and helped with funeral plans. I don't recall crying or showing much emotion at all. Everyone was in awe of my composure. No one knew that I'd spent twenty years bracing myself for his departure. Sitting at the gas station nearly 11 years later it occurred to me that that origin story endured. I carry it like a shield.

IV.

My first year as an ED was a blessing. I got to grow something from nothing. I got to contribute to the growth of others. I got to combine all of my passions and use all of my skills and talents for a cause I care about. I got to be my own boss and experience that constant pressure and sense of urgency that either pushes one past doubt and disbelief or swallows one whole. Learning to be the boss has forced me to explore the stories I've told myself about who am I, what I'm capable of, how the world operates.

What became clear from all of the success I experienced and support I received was how wildly inaccurate my view of people and the world has been up to this point. At every turn people believed in me, encouraged me to stay the course. Looking back on a year that was easily the most challenging of my adult life, for me to continue harboring a lack faith belittles everyone and everything. Has going through life expecting the bottom to fall out whenever good things come my way served me? Certainly. It's made me circumspect and judicious. It helped me avoid the trap doors and pitfalls that cripple so many black men and their dreams. The distrust showed me how to not take anything for granted or leave anything to chance.

As a kid absorbing comic books by the bushel, I latched on to the loneliest, most tragic heroes and their origin stories. I identified with their awkwardness, their private suffering, and their commitment to a just world despite the evils that popped up in every issue. I hope to never lose my basic connection to the comic book universe. But every setback and disappointment needn't be proof of my ultimate doom, a symbol  of my grim fate, cause for dread.  I no longer need to view the world  as threatening and adversarial. I don't have to wake up every morning ready for the worst to happen.  I can embrace good news without fear that it will turn to defeat overnight.

I didn't break up with origin story at that gas station. I needed a solid week to work up the nerve. Once I did, though, I felt a sense of ease and confidence. Things are and will continue to  work out. After all, we did not win because of dumb luck or happenstance. Nor did we win solely because of my efforts. I had a team of dedicated people. They came in early and stayed late. They didn't leave or let me down. Neither did my father for that matter.

Life Without Leverage

The other day I showed up for an important meeting that I'd spent two weeks preparing for only to sit in the lobby for 45 minutes before being told that Celebrity X-- the person with whom I had a scheduled meeting--was unavailable. I'd been up all night finalizing a pitch deck for Celebrity X so I wasn't ready to walk out so quickly. But when I offered to come back, I was told that I could but that there was no guarantee that X would see me. Now, here's the thing. I wasn't alone. My CEO had flown in from Los Angeles in part to join the meeting. It was that important. X's endorsement and support could alter my organization's immediate future. I was disappointed, embarrassed and angry.

Yet my boss just shrugged and said to the gatekeeper, "Thank you." Then he turned and asked if we should go. I sighed and nodded. It was yet another setback in my year plus as an Executive Director. We were waiting for the elevator when I noticed that my CEO didn't seem bothered.

At the elevator I felt compelled to apologize. Granted, it was my meeting and my relationship. But it was still his time. "Why are you apologizing?" he said, stepping inside the opening door and pressing the "L" button in one motion. "We don't have the luxury of leverage," he chuckled.

In the past year I've come to accept three truths. The first is that there are a lot of charities with great missions chasing the same dollars. This puts us in what I would call a structurally disadvantaged position. The second is that aside from the tax deductions we provide, charities aren't viewed as value creators (this is slowly changing), yet most of us are entirely dependent for our day to day survival on public officials and private donor sector dollars. The third is that the average person thinks they know a lot more than they do about the nonprofit sector. You can read about poverty or education and even write about them for a living, but unless you work for a charity you really don't understand the scope of the challenges and how much worse things would be without a sector solely dedicated to keeping the floor from caving in. It's not a knock or a dig. We in the charitable industrial complex just know that the work we do in without recognition or reward benefits society as a whole. We know we're as indispensable as the police and private equity. We know that without people willing to help others for a living while being underpaid, civilization would look a lot more like fury road than downtown Brooklyn.

We also know that's not how the private and public sectors see things. No one will ever come out and say it, but as far as society is concerned, the nonprofit sector exists at the pleasure of the sectors that really make the world go round, the ones that create wealth and jobs. Charity is, well, a social good, yes, but it suffers from two distinct public relations challenges. The first is that it isn't vital to the economy, a view supported by the fact that it exists in its own special tax filing category and operates by a modified set of financial rules regarding how it draws, spends and accounts for its income. Charity in this sense is an add-on feature, the dessert we splurge on when times are good. As charities we're supposed to understand the rules of the game and be grateful for the support we get.

The second challenge is that a lot of Americans associate charity with penance. Our courts dole out community service as an alternative to incarceration. We assign wrongdoers volunteer hours at a homeless shelter with the vague hope that it'll be an edifying experience, and then we turnaround and expect people to willingly give up their time and money to those very same shelters? Isn't that odd? Yet, this is the predicament under which charities operate.

The hardest pill to swallow as the ED of an organization that serves urban black and brown communities is that our work and its value often go unnoticed. By definition, we operate on the social margins. We're surrounded by need, a mandate to fill it and a shortage of resources to get the job done. We make do with what we are given, which isn't much. We're expected to be grateful for every dime we raise, and we are. We strive after short-term government grants that come with exhaustive reporting mandates and threat of severe penalties and private gifts from the wealthy that come with so many strings that it's easy to lose sight of our mission. Parents regard my staff a glorified babysitters. Schools treat them like their less educated second cousins from the farm. Companies call us up for kids as an annual team-building experience: spend a few hours planting a garden with less fortunate kids and disappear for the next 364 days. My lot isn't a whole lot better. Sixty percent of the emails I send never get a response. My phone calls frequently go straight to voicemail and are rarely returned. The work alone is hard. The psychological abuse that charities endure--the constant reminder of your place on the pecking order--is brutal.

I won't put words in my CEO's mouth but I will say that his attitude was instructive. If I intend to last in this field then I'd better make peace with my place on the food chain. I didn't and would likely never have leverage. As an ED my job is to ask people for things, mostly money, for my kids, hope that they appreciate the value of what we do and don't take it personally when they don't, which is bound to be the majority of the time.

Luckily, the story didn't end there.

I happened to check my phone as we were headed to the train station. I had three new messages, all from X. "Where did you go?" "Are you still here?""Come back!" I texted him back and he insisted we come back up. Naturally we did. He met us in the waiting area and ushered us past the gatekeeper, who, in the moment, I came to realize had never even let him know we were waiting in the first place. He led us into a board room where his marketing team awaited.  X made introductions, expressed his avid support for our work and left us to work out the details for a partnership. Thirty minutes later we walked out of the board room with the broad strokes of a deal that could, in fact, alter the trajectory of my organization.

As we headed to the elevator for the second time in less than an hour, I couldn't stop talking about the twist of fate. My CEO had a more judicious perspective. The facts on the ground hadn't changed. We still didn't have leverage per se. What we had was access to leverage. In our line of work that's about as good as it gets.

The Enemies Within

Last week my dear and loyal friend Camille gave me two unexpected gifts. The first was an investment in this World Trade Center stair climb enterprise I’ve recently embarked upon. (Note: I really dislike the term “donation”.  It sets up an ill hierarchy between the donor and donee. It also sidesteps the larger societal issue of injustice and inequality that gives rise to such great need in the first place.) The second was a book entitled The War of Art by Stephen Pressfield, who is perhaps best known for authoring The Legend of Bagger  Vance, which I’ve still yet to see in part because in the trailers Will Smith’s character looked like another magical negro, and I don’t go for that.  In any event, I want to say I’d heard of The War of Art before and probably have since it came out in 2002 and back then—unemployed aspiring writer that I was—I spent several hours a day in the assorted Barnes and Noble book stores scattered across Manhattan. Chances are I dismissed the book 1) because it had the scent of self-help and I couldn’t admit that I needed help of any kind, 2) because I aspired to write SERIOUS LITERATURE and didn’t see the value in reading anything that didn’t fit that mold.  

My how times have changed ...

Rather than run out and buy the paperback version of The War of Art which is what I normally do when someone I trust makes a recommendation, I opened an Audible account and downloaded the audio book. This, too, would have never happened in my previous life since I also spent the my youth thinking audio books were low brow and that the only true way to declare one’s seriousness as a reader to the world was by turning (and marking) the pages of an actual book, preferably paperback since those were far more pliant and could usually fold into a back pocket. Now that I’m entrenched in suburban life and spend upwards of a 90 minutes behind a wheel each day I’ve had to rethink my hardline position on the audio book. Not every book needs to be read in order to be read. 

I started the book while mowing the lawn. I figured it would be a nice background companion. Then Chapter 2 hit me with a stiff jab to the chin. Titled “Resistance— Defining the Enemy,” Pressfield lists the various conditions—Resistance’s “Greatest Hits” he calls them—that summon the enemy within into our lives. As I listened, I mentally checked off the boxes. By the time he was finished it occurred to me that at that moment (which is also this moment) I was facing not one, not two, not even three, but four life conditions that typically give rise to resistance, at least as defined by Pressfield.

1.       The launching of any venture of enterprise for profit or otherwise

a.       I’d just launched the stair climb fundraiser with an ambitious goal

2.       Any diet or health regiment

a.       I was training for the climb myself.

3.       Any act of political, ethical or moral courage including the decision for the better to change some pattern of conduct or thought in ourselves

a.       My native predisposition is doubt and distrust. In some ways it’s made me who I am. I don’t like relying on others. I prefer get it done myself. But in order to be successful as an organizational leader I have to learn to empower and trust others. This, I have come to realize in the past year, isn’t easy for me.

4.       The undertaking of any enterprise or endeavor whose aim is to help others.

a.       It is called the “Climb 4 Kids”

Once I had them down on a napkin, the first thing I asked myself why I was such a masochist. Why on earth would I summon so much resistance into my life at once?  What was I trying to prove? But then I asked myself what my greatest fear was. I knew the answer before I finished the sentence. I’d had nightmares about it already. No one shows up, I’m completely embarrassed and we lose a lot of money. Those are my biggest fears, the sources of my anxiety and stress. I lay awake at night thinking the worst is going to happen. It’s how I manage my expectations, keep from being disappointed, maintain a sense of order and control. It’s also what’s limited my success up to this point. Managing my expectations  may have protected me from a cataclysmic psychic disaster, but it may have also prevented me from achieving the bigger dreams and goals that, in my heart, I long for.   

 I digested The War of Art in a single marathon listening session. My main takeaway: If there’s any good reason to take on a big task then it’s because it is terrifying and will invoke resistance and will demand that you dig within while reaching outward. A year ago I decided to put my writing career on pause and take on an Executive Director role for what was essentially a startup nonprofit. I’d never been an ED before. Heck, I’d purposefully avoided any job titles/responsibilities that  would interfere with my writing. I went after this job because I got tired of writing about other people who’d taken big risks and were making a difference. I wanted that for myself.  I wanted to feel overwhelmed, over my head, out of my element. I haven’t been disappointed.  But this fundraiser scares me in a way I haven’t experienced before.  The task ahead feels so big and unmanageable. I know it’s partly because I’ve never done it before and partly because I have to have faith in the process and people, some of whom I’ve yet to even meet.  My biggest challenge is going to be fully experiencing the process, meaning getting so caught up that I miss the wonderful signs of encouragement and inspiration in the midst of all of the doubt and uncertainty. Camille’s recommendation was one of those signs. If I’d ignored her and allowed myself to wallow in the doubt, I would’ve picked up The War of Art. I would’ve read chapter 2. Wouldn’t have acquired a language with which to label the enemies within.  Wouldn’t have been reminded that I chose this path because I want to discover who I am and what I am a capable of. Beyond that, it’s a chance to ask for and receive help, which is always hard for me.  My challenge for today and every day forward is to hold on to that goodness, that poise, to not flinch or lose faith, to duel with resistance, to stay the course.  

Back to Basics

Two weeks ago I found out that I was a finalist for an investigative reporting award. It came as a shock. I hadn't published anything in nearly seven months and for the first time in my adult life I'm not really working on any writing project of note, not with any real intention. I started a novel this year. Wrote about 12,000 words that I sorta liked then I lost my stride and didn't much bother trying to find it again.

It's odd, in a way. I worked my whole life to get to a place as a writer where I could publish and be recognized for my contributions and then I did that and I decided to stop writing. Believe me I wonder about it myself sometimes. But only briefly. Once a writer, always a writer. And I happen to be one who believes a little time off is good for the craft. I didn't always. It's been the gift of the last couple of years. Coming to grips with not being a preternatural talent and finding peace in a journey that's been totally worth it all the same. Doing so allowed me to stop doubting my voice, my mind, my perspective. Stop looking so hard for validation. I learned to expend that energy working on getting better. And I did. I got better bylines. I got better paydays. Something was missing, though. I wasn't satisfied in the way that I'd imagined I would be when I accomplished some of the goals I'd set for myself.

I decided that I wanted a different challenge. Wanted to see if I could take my life in a different direction and in so doing shake up my world view. Before it was too late. I saw the rut coming on. The kind of rut that lasts twenty, thirty years. A writer like any middle aged professional can sort of plateau. You find your level  (or sweet spot) and you sort of bobble there for the rest of your days.You become an excellent, respected craftsmen yet predictable all the same. Predictability is the death knell of the writer. After all, writing in its purest form is supposed to be an act of discovery yet what I encounter on the Opinion pages often reads like dogma. One becomes a professional commentator on X, a leading light in Y, a notable thinker on Z. One is called upon to share one's ideas on very specific or very broad topics. One is trusted to offer a responsible set of insights that an audience can thoughtfully consider and discuss for a few months before growing bored and moving on to the next trusted public intellectual's theory of everything. One begins to congeal in one's ideas. One becomes a spot up shooter, a designated hitter. Trusted to sink the open shot and sometimes even a contested one. Celebrated specialist. A pro's pro. Steady Eddy.

I wasn't ready to move in that direction just yet so I made a left turn from the right lane and now here I am back to the basics. Which is not to be confused with square one.

I would like this to be a space where I can figure out my next chapter as a writer. What exactly that means I don't know. But I think I want it to start as a release valve. Frankly I miss the act of putting words down on paper, watching paragraphs form, pages collect. As a beginning writer the most intoxicating part was watching one word produce another and another, knowing I was the one producing them and discovering that there were no rules. That was profound for me.  I never thought I'd find anything I loved as much as play basketball yet I found it with writing. In the early years I'd finish three, four journals a year. I produced thousands of words a day. I must've written a couple hundred poems over a two year period. Dozens of stories. Hundreds of sketches. It didn't matter that I was bad. The mere association with the writer's life was enough to sustain me. I'd found my calling and that was all I wanted out of life. The shift occurs the moment one decides to produce a commercial product. By which I mean something that they will share with others in hopes of an appraisal and, hopefully, approval. At that moment, the avocation becomes a vocation. Lines blur. The writing one does for one's self becomes less and less important. One finds one's self writing only that which is going to be read by others. Where once one wrote for one's self satisfaction exclusively, suddenly one writes only for others.

The irony of this being a blog that others may read is not lost on me. Yet there is an important distinction, I think. The production of these words was not at the request of an editor or in exchange for currency. It was not a reaction piece or a report on some piece of news. I am not trying to sell you anything or convince you of anything. Really, I just miss being in the gym.