How the F!$@ do we embrace discovery in uncertain times?
Good lawd, where do we go from here? This has been on my mind for roughly… 10 years, but really more since a second Trump presidency became real. As I’m sure many of you have experienced recently, my mind has been swirling with questions like:
How do we leave what’s not working behind?
How do we embrace what’s happening now?
Is it possible to find stable ground in an unstable environment?
This is some of what I’ve been wrestling with again/recently—with clients AND personally.
That said, I do not have any definitive answers. Things have become more murky, more volatile, more… horrifying? than anyone expected. Except, LOL, I feel like I saw the worst coming. What I didn’t anticipate was how few felt the same way. What frustrates me most is that so many Americans chose an administration so destabilizing for ourselves and for so many others. Like it or not, as the USA goes, so goes most of the world, let alone our little business microcosms and personal realities.
One thing is certain. Uncertainty is here, and it ain’t goin’ away. It’s anxiety-inducing. It makes me want to hide in my closet. Presence fills conversations and yet also feels so far away… keeping a hold of the quotidian-ness of life feels like something I’m grasping for—for myself, my business, my clients and their businesses, all of you. Everyone. FUCK. Like… literally, not figuratively, WHAT THE FUCK is going to happen next? It’s a lot to hold, on top of business as usual, digital communications, and everything else. In the creative biz world, the security of sound strategy to make solid decisions seems… elusive. To say the least.
AND YET: I am a firm believer in strategy. Like I wrote last year, your strategy has to be adaptive. We have to be nimble. Smart. Focused. Ready to pivot when we see the signs. We have to embrace a discovery mindset… cautious, for sure, but curious! WHAT DO WE DO NOW needs to be our motto, keeping us open, engaged, not fearful or closed-off.
This is Weird Specialty’s first newsletter of 2025, so I’m going to recap and refresh—recalibrate—you, as you head into the new year. Eyes wide open, scanning the environment, integrating what you hear and see so that you can stay the course, wherever it might lead us.
“...but I vote for more than myself. And that's just not how people operate. And that's where, when I really think about what is the American iconic ideology, it's individualism at any cost.
And that's what we like very few people actually are willing to do the right thing for more than themselves in this country and that's where I feel like I feel so I've traveled all over the world I saw while I was getting my degree how American I was through the lens of you know so many different international cultures like I am very much from here but I don't identify with like the core tenets of how that, like individualism can be a way to set yourself free.”
“The U.S. Suffers from an Extreme Level of Individualism”
Angelica Mendez
As I articulated via a recent IG video – we need to step up and be the stable safe havens for our communities, our businesses and our households. We have to galvanize around our values and prove it is possible to stay the course in terms of holistically sustainable business practices. We are the standard bearers, our work as as creatives comes with responsibility and it is imperative that we hold steady in unstable times.
#getwithit
gJ
