Lessons Learned #4 — On Obstacles
It’s been about eight months since we moved from the writing into the illustrating phase of our first book.
What that means in it’s been about eight months of myself, Lillian¹ and Monica² in a WhatsApp group together, navigating cultural differences and working together relentlessly, back and forth, getting as many details of the visual storytelling true to life.
Between the three of us, we span three continents — with Lillian based in Kenya, Monica in Puerto Rico and myself in Australia.
And between the three of us, we’ve experienced enough obstacles to last a lifetime — and I’m not talking about internal or socio-economic challenges, though there’s been plenty of those as well.
I’m talking specifically about large scale environmental and political obstacles.
In the last eight months, I’m talking specifically about:
- Widespread drought across Africa — causing food shortages and price increases on what was available in Kenya
- Political upheaval in Puerto Rico — with hundreds of thousands of people taking to the streets, bringing San Juan to a halt for weeks
- Earthquakes in Puerto Rico — which caused huge amounts of physical and emotional damage and left thousands without a place to call home
- Australia’s Black Summer of bushfires — which burned over 2,500 acres of land, thousands of homes and killed over a billion animals
And now, together we’re facing a global virus pandemic.
Oh, and there’s also a plague of locusts descending upon the Middle East and Eastern Africa, decimating crops and threatening food supplies again.
It’s been one thing trying to grapple with empathy and burnout for myself and my colleagues through all of this. It’s been another trying to push on and create something together.
At first it felt unfair, and like the world was trying to throw everything against us so that our first book would never see the light of day.
But now, it’s making me work even hard to make sure it does.
Because the kind of business we’re creating — one that’s based on sustainability, collaboration, sharing wealth, creating understanding and sharing empathy — that’s the one our world desperately needs.
For me, there is no greater wake up call that “business as usual” can no longer co-exist in a world with finite resources and fragile ecosystems.
That corporate structures which create unequal distributions of profit, that destroy natural resources with little remorse or consequence, and that treat people indifferently have no place in a world on the brink of self-destruction.
In the face of all of this heartbreak and loss over the past eight months, it’s been all too easy to feel powerless and full of despair.
But the act of building something different — building something that genuinely seeks to recreate structures so that they’re fair and driven by impact over profit — has been a tangible way to say, I’m doing something.
And so we push on, bearing the weight of these life-altering obstacles as we go, taking strength from each other and from the hope that comes with working towards change.
We can’t wait to cross that first finish line (of a first book release) sometime this year, and take the next step in showing the world what this new kind of business looks like.
Lessons Learned is a regular series about the many things I’m learning as I build Small Fires. Part reflection, part working in the open, these learnings are here to share what I’m discovering and also give an insight into the operations and thinking behind the organisation.
Notes
1. Lillian is the amazing storyteller and dedicated change-maker of our first book.
2. Monica is the ridiculously talented illustrator who’s working with us to bring this story to life.
