Describe yourself in three words.

Thinking about feelings.

Tell us about yourself.

I am a science-fiction writer, teacher and digital organizer. I got really burned out on organizing in 2019. Trying to understand why (and what to do to address it) got me thinking about burnout, resilience, and the future of feelings.

So much of Working 2050 (podcast available at Spotify, Apple, and Google) has been about learning to deal with feelings: my own, other people’s, the ones that come out of nowhere and the ones that accumulate. As I learned more about changes in the world of neuroscience and took my own healing seriously, it became clear that feelings, or how we feel about what we do all day, are part of some of the biggest shifts that will happen, that need to happen, in the next 30 years. When I was burnt out, I was really bad at dealing with my feelings but I think the organizers who are in touch with their feelings are some of the greatest agents for change and connection.

So, I wanted to see what happened when I asked people about their feelings about their work.

Tell us about the work you brought into your Fellowship. What problem(s) were you trying to solve and how?

As I began to become aware of my own burnout, I noticed organizers all around me burning out, too. I have been using futurism as a way to heal from my burnout and I wanted to bring that same energy to other burnt out organizers. There are too few of us to let each other stay burned out! That’s how Working 2050 came to be born, from me dreaming about my own future and the future of my own work.

Working 2050 is a speculative oral history about workers of the future.

We talk to organizers + about what they do all day and how they feel about it. Then we write science fiction about what the future might look like in 2050 based on what they say.

Our goal is to build hopeful futures and our own resilience in the day to day through these stories.

What happened? What did you learn? What changed most between June 2020 and now?

I came into this fellowship with five interviews of varying quality, 10 pieces of fiction that had no relationship to each other, and a bunch of roadblocks I had built up over six months without really looking at the “why” of what I was doing.

I knew that I wanted this to be an iterative container that other people could also use to build and explore the world of work in the future, but I spent a lot of time before the fellowship waiting to decide things. I waited to ask for help, to ask for feedback, to invite people to be part of the process, and to create a fully formed pilot episode, even a rough one. What I realized through the fellowship, especially through the feedback I got from collaborators, is that by avoiding and doubting what I was making, (parasympathetic nervous system problems!), I was losing opportunities to collaborate and grow with other people, and to challenge the dominant narratives in my brain + work.

So now, with an audio producer, a season of six episodes that launched in January, and a plan towards making this project more financially sustainable, with ways for organizers/artists/writers to work on this project beyond these six episodes, I feel like the container that I was hoping Working 2050 could form is starting to have a stronger shape.

What tools from CSS did you use during the fellowship? Which were most effective?

Cornerstones is a key strategic tool in Story-based Strategy.

I kept finding myself stuck on questions were related to cornerstones, but then being really reluctant to go back and actually look at my cornerstones. Questions like: what is the point of this project? Why am I writing fiction anyway? How am I going to get people who are already burnt out excited about anything? These questions felt like they were big and overwhelming, but really they were about thinking through cornerstones. It took me getting feedback from the other fellows to really start engaging with who I was producing this for and with, and that lead me to turn the interviews I had into episode scripts with a specific audience in mind.

Cornerstones and knowing my audience it also helped me notice where I was getting stuck in the process. Usually when I was avoiding something in the work, it was because I was having some imposter syndrome, anxiety, or general apprehension about making a story that would actually connect with the people I most wanted to reach. Cornerstones also help me identify when something was really off in the writing I’d already done when I thought about it from the perspective of my audience.

What are you most proud of from this time?

“I feel like using CSS tools as not just tools to go to in the story of Working 2050, but also to examine my own story of work in this process has helped a lot. ”

— H Kapp-Klote

I spent forever avoiding finding an audio producer, not because I didn’t know what to look for, but actually because I was insecure about asking someone to work on the show. I had a lot of fake reasons why this was actually OK, including: my own interest in getting better at audio production, the lack of fundraising I had done, and uncertainty about what to look for when working with someone. Ultimately that was all an excuse to avoid putting myself out there and asking someone for help and to engage with this vision. I finally got it together after a really good conversation with Rachel Plattus in the third-to-last fellow call, and reached out to my friend Katie In who is really excellent at sound design. Katie shared my values, interest and definitions of what work actually is. Kate also had social justice knowledge and was someone who I had previously interviewed for an earlier iteration of the show. Working with her on this project has been one of the most fulfilling parts of the show already.

What were you most surprised by?

I noticed ways that fear shapes my own understanding of process, collaboration, purpose, and what it means to do “work” — not just in the writing, but in the way I approach this project as a full person. One piece of the fellowship that helped me a great deal was the modeling: the modeling the other participants and Lawrence did around giving feedback, admitting to mistakes, being real about what wasn’t working in their own projects and how they felt about it, and just being a full person on the calls, especially in the middle of so much crisis.

What questions are you still wondering about?

I feel tense about how this project will move after this first six episodes are done! I am a little worried that I will psych myself out about fundraising and setting a launch timeline. That said, I feel like using CSS tools as not just tools to go to in the story of Working 2050, but also to examine my own story of work in this process has helped a lot.

Work Worlds: Imagining our way out of burnout with H Kapp-Klote