When the Earth Moves Under Your Feet

Your sky does not have to tumble down.

Wine Night With My Mom

Note: Saturdays are “personal writing” days for Jim and Toni. We’re always thinking about systems in some way, but while the weekdays may be more operational, Saturdays on Humane Work (here) will be more introspective. Think of this like the weekend magazine shows on television before they were afraid.

Current State is Not the Ideal State

Everywhere there is danger Absolutely for real
Subliminal feelings Too strong to conceal…

Modusinstitute.com is down right now (hopefully it’ll be up when you read this). But Cloudflare, an organization of repeatedly questionable quality, has once again made thousands of web sites go dark. My primary business address has been unfindable for about 18 hours now.

Me? I'm writing this from my temporary studio, using a makeshift set of desks made of card tables in my mother's spare room in Omaha. Three months ago, this wasn't the plan. Three months ago, we were supposed to be in London by now, celebrating our successful relocation to a place with trains. Instead, I'm surrounded by suitcases and question marks.

The house we were so sure would sell in days? Still sitting empty in a housing market that “decided” to take a nap right when we needed it most. The London flat we'd imagined? Still imaginary. The financial cushion we'd counted on? Evaporating while we watch the global economy be systematically dismantled by “pro-business” interests. Uncertainty lowers confidence which lowers economic activity which, oddly, is bad for business and I have businesses.

When multiple things break at once, you get a stress avalanche. It's not just one thing going wrong. It's when the housing market, your business prospects, and the world's general sense of stability all “decide” to have a collective nervous breakdown at the same time.

The Sound of Dominoes Falling

This ain’t no party.
This ain’t no disco.

This is no tree in the forest, with no one around to hear. Stress avalanches start with this sickening moment when you realize the ground isn't as solid as you thought. Seattle's housing market, which had been devouring properties like a hungry teenager, suddenly got picky. Mortgage rates climbed toward 7%, and buyers started acting like they were shopping for plutonium instead of houses.

Meanwhile, the bigger world decided to serve up its own special cocktail of chaos. Economic forecasts that looked optimistic six months ago now read like horror stories. The manufactured uncertainty has gotten so thick you can cut it with a knife, and when fear becomes the most traded commodity on the planet, it doesn't stay contained to Wall Street…it seeps into everything. Instability undermines stability.

For my consulting work, this translated into the kind of business slowdown that makes you question everything. Clients who were ready to move forward suddenly developed decision paralysis. Projects that seemed certain became maybes, and maybes became not-right-nows.

Building Lighthouses in the Storm

Like a dog without a bone.
An actor out on Loan…

When you can't see the horizon anymore, you adjust your focus. Your long term thinking becomes short term. (Exactly what chaos peddlers want). So we quickly adjust to focus on what's right in front of us. What can help right now. You assess, you pivot, and you rapidly create a new routine.

The first thing I did was dump everything swirling around in my head onto visual boards, post-its, videos, Miros, kanbans. Building the lighthouse required finding the right location, the right materials, and the fastest path to construction in the rain with gale force winds. I needed to turn abstract anxiety into concrete sticky notes (actions and needs) I could actually do something about.

When in stress, we either find the path to progress or the path to increasing stress. The only way out, they say, it though. And through is not easy. Building the lighthouse sounds heroic, but when you are cold, wet, and your hands are bleeding you’d gladly trade heroism for coffee shop in Soho.

See The Future One Step At a Time

So if you’ve come in off the street
And you’re beginning to feel the beat…

Personal Kanban and my Obeya stopped have, for years now, been my avenue of sanity preservation. Breaking down the nebulous future into immediately actionable tasks that could lead to London. My original assumptions (even the very reasonable ones) did not survive contact with this dystopian reality.

The house sale became a series of specific tasks instead of a looming catastrophe. The London move transformed from a broken dream into a set of contingency plans. If not now, then… make the then. The business challenges shifted from existential threats into opportunities to reach people I'd never thought to contact before.

Every one of these was unexpected work. Every one of these was nearly a completely new business plan. Every one of this is heroic and resented. We need to own that. No Pollyanna “everything is fine.” Right now I am in an economic meltdown entirely designed and executed by human beings who seek to profit from the chaos. I preferred the previously imperfect stability.

So we balance those very real emotions with the near-magical act of making potential visible and building our realities despite the roadblocks of others. When everything feels overwhelming (it is overwhelming), creating a clear picture of what actually needs to happen today to build a better tomorrow creates these little islands of stability in the middle of all the chaos. It's the difference between drowning in uncertainty and having something solid to stand on.

The picture of the goal

The Counterintuitive Move

If again the seas are silent if any are still alive
It'll be those who gave their island to survive….

When we are overloaded, we tend to shut down. Focus on immediate needs at best. And wait.

You can’t wait though. And that’s the main message here. When something is in your way, even something of global and perplexing proportions, you need to find the immediate actions to stabilize you and then move around the blockage. Your pivot sometimes needs to be extreme. Your actions, counterintuitive.

And they are unknowns, and they are options, and they feel really damn arbitrary at times.

And you can do this. You can.

Here, I started reaching out to potential collaborators around the world. Even here in Omaha, I set up classes and speaking gigs. We built a new studio out of card tables and reimagined how Modus could respond to the upheaval. The Humane Work newsletter is part of that. Toni and I realized that right now, with dehumanizing politics and the rise of AI, we needed to go back to who we were, who all of us are.

People. Brutally freaking honest. Vulnerable. Fuck you if you can’t take the truth, people.

Hi.

And I’m married. And it’s not been easy. But we all go through things together (collaboration, yes). So, I started helping my wife launch her own Substack newsletter, drawing on her years as a speech pathologist. Sometimes when your own systems are failing, the best move is to help someone else build their stability. To help your whole unit be stable.

The Meaning of Our Soundtracks

I am a terrible musician. But I love making music. I love listening to it. I love the language of it.

The first thing I did when it was clear that the house was going to sit, was create a makeshift music studio in the space I was in. I got some okay headphones and made a few terrible songs.

Each section here has started with an intentional and unattributed quote. If you knew them, fine, If you didn’t they were part of the flow. Go find them. They are an audible workflow. Pretentious, maybe. But look, you need…yeah, you personally…to find the things in art and life that give you shortcuts for meaning and direction.

These aren't random selections from my record collection, (I miss my record collection, but Qobuz has kept me sane) these songs are guides of navigating chaos. Each one is a different stage of what happens when multiple systems fail simultaneously.

Devo's Race of Doom is that fundamental breaking down of society. Talking Heads’ Life During Wartime strips away any illusion that we can ignore our way through systemic collapse. The Doors’ Riders on the Storm is rife with pre-goth existential displacement (sorry, we didn’t invent it) without anchor or direction. But then Madness shifts our energy, because that’s what Madness does best. We can’t ignore that we need other people to dance. One Step Beyond is undeniable positive energy and becomes the moment you decide to engage chaos rather than wait it out. And Gabriel's Here Comes the Flood implores us to see that our survival requires abandoning your island of safety to navigate the rising waters.

The View from Ground Level

I won't pretend this is easy. The stress is real and relentless. Financial pressure mixed with personal displacement mixed with watching the world fracture in real time means some mornings I wake up confused about where I am and how I got here. (queue obvious talking heads lyric).

Years ago, as an AIDS activist I was in a situation where people were obviously dying and people were obviously not caring, but … people obviously were starting to care. We had to dig our way through that by getting people to care. We did this relentlessly and together. And we can dig out way through this as well.

Stress avalanches aren't single catastrophic events. The AIDS pandemic wasn’t just a disease. This current crisis isn’t just irresponsible government. They're ongoing conditions that I think are going to become more common for the next several decades. It’s simply too easy to break things at scale now. (Yay!)

So, we all require a completely different approach to resilience and solving problems. Just like avalanche professionals develop awareness, safe habits, and rescue skills for mountain conditions, we need resilient systems for sustained uncertainty.

The Practical Medicine

If you're dealing with your own version of everything falling apart simultaneously, here's what's actually helped me:

• Get it out of your head. Visualize your end goal (your true north) and work towards it. Variation means some days will go forward, some will go back. The goal is transforming overwhelming fear into manageable tasks with a direction. Don’t over define (victory is a continent, not a street address). Anxiety is abstract; tasks are concrete, take comfort in doing.

• Control what you can. When external systems fail, double down on the routines and practices still within your influence. Daily workflows, exercise, staying connected to people who matter, and every day expand that influence. These become your foundation.

• Multiply your options. Instead of waiting for one specific outcome, actively create multiple pathways forward. This is psychologically essential for maintaining any sense of agency.

• Connect with others. Stress avalanches are easier to navigate with company. Family, colleagues, online communities, Isolation amplifies every pressure and makes small problems feel insurmountable and it is the major tool of those who would want to control you. Isolationism is always a detriment.

• Accept Own the unknown. This one isn’t easy for anyone. No plan survives contact with reality. Your plans will always change. So own it. Own the unknown. Our job is to build our capacity for seeing change and elegantly responding to it.

The Sound of Breakfast Being Made

As I finish typing this, I can hear my mother moving around the kitchen, preparing breakfast. I can hear my wife making lemon cake. There's something both humbling and oddly comforting about this unexpected family space during a time when everything else feels unstable.

We don't know when our house will sell. We don't know exactly when we'll make it to London. We don't know how long the economic weirdness will persist. But we know we have systems in place for handling whatever comes next, relationships that sustain us, and work that continues creating value even from a third bedroom in Nebraska.

Don’t let those who don’t get out too much make you do the same. Find the human touch. Find the options.

Go faster, young master
You're breathing disaster
'Cause these human hands need a human touch
'Cause my demons don't get out that much