The Importance of Showing Up, Even When You’re Not OK

Some mornings ya don’t wake up brave, some mornings you’re just exhausted.  Some mornings our hearts ache, our minds are scrambled from running all out, and our spirit is running on the battery we forgot to plug in last night.  And still, every morning when our eyeballs pop open, we rise thankful we got another day to make a difference.  Not because we’re unshakable, but because we have learned the importance of our quiet presence.  We must show up, be there for those who need us, even when it takes trembling courage because we know we are not OK ourselves.  That is the kind of courage that does not make speeches or pose for gold gilded pictures, it is the courage of those who know they are imperfect.  That is the kind of courage whose voice cracks, and steady intention can’t even find the words.  Those of us who can admit we are not OK, we sit down, take some deep breaths and let our presence speak the words we can’t quite get out – I am here.  I am doing the best I can with what, and who, I have.  And for today, that has to be enough and we have to be OK letting it be enough, because at least my eyeballs popped open.  

Lately we don’t get to show up on the hard days full of fire and fearlessness, ready to attack the day.  Lately we have to show up simply because our presence matters to those who rely on us, even at work.  We show up even when our strength and patience are running near empty.   That’s a quiet truth that most leaders learn the hard way, at least in my experience.  Disappearing, even for legitimate and valid reasons, can ripple through a team in ways we never intended.  For me that means making space for the team, even when I am angry and disappointed and my voice is cracking.  I still make the choice to support the folks in my care.  It lets them know that they are not alone, it lets them know we are here to support each other, even in the hardest of times.  I show up for them because I have a responsibility to do so, just like I showed up for my shipmates, no matter what.  Leadership is not a performance, it’s a presence.  Imperfect, human, sometimes raw and unfinished, but the constant is showing up.  It can be a gift, I know it is for me. 

It’s weird because those days I show up the most imperfect are the days that carry the most  hope.  Folks don’t want or need polished up quotes from whatever the latest leadership book they read, they need us real and they need our presence.  When we show up with tired eyes, an honest heart, even if angry and disappointed, it becomes permission.  Permission for them to stop pretending, permission to breathe, and most importantly, permission to bring their whole selves to the conversation instead of the curated version of themselves.  That is such a grounding force, authenticity is appreciated as it steadies the room without saying a word.  Just being there tells the team, we can keep going, even through the hardest things, especially the things outside of work they have no choice but to carry with them.  This act of care is a small but powerful signal that we understand them, that we believe in them, and that makes room for the possibility that tomorrow might be kinder to their soul.

Some days we simply have to admit the truth without letting it become our whole identity.  Not OK does not mean broken, it does not mean we are not capable, it means we are human in a moment in time where the world seems dead set on taking a bite out of us.   Funny thing, and it’s kind of like when a scientist watches an experiment and realizes the simple act of watching is changing the experiment, an unexpected variable.  When we stop trying to wrestle our feelings to the ground to get them to relax, they get a bit lighter, the whole thing changes when we let go a little.  We are allowed to be shaken by the goings on, I question those who aren’t, and regardless we can still be steady and a bit lighter about it.   Think about that wisdom that says home is still home, the porch light is on and we don’t have to prove to anyone we deserve rest, we just walk right in and plop down on the couch and Grandma brings ya a sweet tea and kisses your forehead, that right there is the good stuff.     

The simple truth is, none of us get through any season alone, even if we put up the façade that we are.  We are steadied by those we allow to show up for us, the ones that don’t need explanations or a bunch of words.  The ones who are simply present for us, maybe with a hand on our shoulder, or a longer than normal hug.  It might even be that random text from that person you needed to hear from, I got an email yesterday that filled my heart from a coworker, I damn near cried at the generosity of their soul.  These folks don’t try to fix us, don’t try to justify the world in any way, they simply make space that feels safe enough that we can breathe again.  That simple human kind of love reminds us that showing up isn’t something we owe the world, its something we learned from the people who never walked away from us, even on their hardest days.  That is who we need to emulate.

Some days the bravest thing we can do is let enough actually be enough.  This is a struggle I have, the intellectual part of me recognizes the need to let enough be enough but I have learned that my emotional part does not always give a damn about what the intellectual part is up to.  The dichotomy of that battle I find to be one of life’s less than humorous jokes.  Pretending when we don’t believe it is also one of life’s little jokes, one that can be cruel to our well being.  We must keep saying, this is what I got today, and that is enough, sometimes we have to add words, like God Dammit or for fucks sake.   That is our heart being humble and kind with ourselves.  Maybe when Tim McGraw sang the words don’t expect a free ride  from no one, don’t hold a grudge or a chip and here’s why.  Bitterness keeps ya from flying, always be humble and kind he was singing about that very thing.  We have to dig for our better selves, choosing gentleness when things are hard.  We have to work on not passing our hurt onto the next person in line.  And always be thankful you kept going without losing your humanity and inherent goodness – be humble and kind.

Showing up when you’re not OK is not weakness, its love with dirt on its hands.  It’s refusing to let the hard season turn you into a hard person.  I have said various versions of this over the years but folks don’t always remember what ya said.  But they do remember how they felt when you were there.  They will remember that you didn’t disappear, even if your eyes are tired, even when your day was shitty.  We have to make room and share space to help the room feel a little less lonely, for both of us.  The wild part is, it does not require grand gestures to make an impact.  More often than not, it is the smallest things that tell the loudest truths.  sharing a lifesaver, holding a door open when you don’t feel polite, letting someone in who stayed in the lane we both knew was closing a mile ago, or simply paying for coffee fort the person behind you in line at Starbucks, which happened to me today, I paid that forward and rode that wave of joy all day.  That joy was an unexpected gift from a stranger, and I am grateful for it.    

So maybe that’s the whole thing.  Learning to come home to ourselves the same way we went over to Grandma’s to feel safe and loved.  On nights where you’re running on fumes, let enough be enough.  Be deliberate about putting the bitterness and hurt down, because that shit is heavy and you deserve to breathe.  If all you did today was stay human and offer one small kindness, then believe me when I tell you, that counts and it matters.  That is courage.  That is hope.  That is perseverance. And most importantly, the porch light is on for you - always! 

How to measure signal to noise ratio (SNR)

The world feels loud these days, too damn loud for me!  It is the sorta loud where everything starts blending together.  The anger.  The misinformation.  The constant outrage cycles.  The hot takes.  The factions all yelling at this, that, and the other things, each dead certain they’re right.  After a sustained bombardment of noise, a sort of positive feedback loop kicks in.  For the non techies, that is like when you yell into a bad microphone and it just keeps winding itself up, shriller and the louder the shrill, the louder it makes itself.  The thing about the noise is that if you are exposed to it long enough you can start forgetting what the actual signal sounds like, you become acclimated to the noise.  When we hit that point, we can easily forget that truth has tone, dignity has tone, humanity has tone and right now those tones are being drowned out by all this damn noise.

Working in technology for my entire adult life, especially my experience with high power transmitters, situates me to understand and think about signal to noise ratios more than most folks.  Not in some abstract way, in a way that only 40 years of experience with signal to noise can give a person.  I see everyone contributing to the feedback loop, in ways we may not even recognize.  Some of it big, like what we share with others, how fast we react, whether we read past the headline, whether we treat people like avatars or people from the protection of distance and the buffer of our devices. 

Then there is the small consistent actions we take, noticing when a coworker is off and handing them a pack of lifesavers or texting that friend back right away vs leaving it unread, or even taking a breath before we ad one more opinion or hot take to the already burning pile.  Being a helper is signal amplification work, not noise amplification work.  The small stuff may seem small but it is what changes the room.  Choose to be steady when everything around you is trying wind you up.  I got this tattoo to be my constant reminder to pause,  think and check in with my values, which I hold in my heart, and then determine if I am feeding the signal or the noise. 

 
The more I think about this the more it actually feels like we are living in world with bad filters.  When stray harmonics are introduced into things they contribute to the feedback loop as noise and we install filters specifically to remove those frequencies, for example if you are old enough to remember the 60hz hum in your fancy wood sided Kenwood receiver when the caps started dying, you understand what I mean.  When filters go bad, or drift off frequency, the downstream signal chain gets fuzzy or distorted. 

The signal is still there but what comes out sounds like hot garbage.  In today’s world the filters are no longer mechanical and inert.  Todays filters are the algorithmic automatons running our feeds, they are far from inert and designed to keep us scrolling.    This is evident when half baked headlines of outrage of one sort or the other out runs the truth of things and it seems the collective we have the attention span of a Bolivian fruit fly, and the algorithms know it.   We can see how easily distortion becomes our reality, the algorithmic engagement engines work hard at that.

Some days it feels like we are compressing our humanity just to fit into the feed.  In audio, and video when you compress too aggressively it strips out the warmth, the nuance and all the things that makes audio feel alive and full and the things that make video so dynamic.  The compression on the old analog TV is a good example, that looked washed out and lifeless.  I feel like our habits now drive us to do that to each other.  We flatten folks to their worst moment, their loudest mistake and pretend that actually describes the original signal.  The world and those who live in it are not binary, we are magnificently complex and quirky individuals who all have something to add to the greater good, foibles, skeletons and all.  Humans are not MP3 files, we are not meant to be reduced until all the good frequencies get lost in the noise.

And then there is interference.  Every engineer has dealt with that as some point, some spurious source bleeding into the wires, some device screaming on the same frequency or that blasted 5^th harmonic or some trash noise signal bouncing around inside the chassis.  We got the same damn thing happening in almost every aspect of our lives.   Everyone broadcasting all the time, the damn ground is floating and the power supply hash is  wreaking havoc.  Half the time we are reacting to cross talk from folks we don’t know, will never meet in places we will not go, and this is on issues that both of us barely understand in the first place.  No wonder clarity feels so scarce.  We need a faraday cage to block out the interference.  

While this almost sounds like me waxing philosophical, I want to be clear, I am no Saint in this.  I am not walking the noble eight fold path with the discipline of a monk.  I’m stumbling along like a drunken sailor, who just won’t stop trying.  I very much contribute to the noise, I recognize this posting is part of that noise.  Sometimes I react to quickly, sometimes I let my frustration lead instead of my better self.  But the older I get, the more I realize my noise footprint matters, no more cranking it up to 11.  All of us contribute, we have obligation to each other to file the STA, that is Smitty speak getting permission to crank that transmitter down to low power.  Reducing the power does not mean shutting it down. Cranking it down is a choice, and intentional act to ensure our better selves lead, in all situations.  Asking ourselves is what Im about to feed into my transmitter adding signal clarity or am I injecting noise.  That little pause, that check in, that is signal work too.

Over my life I have noticed a constant, every helper I’ve ever known or seen is basically a walking signal amplifier.  It’s a special amplifier, it allows to spin off more positive and good into the universe than we do negative and bad.  They always seem to show up calm when things get chaotic.  They offer presence instead of gas for the fire.  They tune in the quiet stuff that everyone else misses.  They say the hard truth in a way that folks can actually hear it.  Helpers don’t crank up the volume or the power, they improve the fidelity.  They help everyone in the room hear the parts that matter. 

Look Y’all, at the end of the day measuring signal to noise is simple, we measure what comes through clean vs what just adds static. You look at what you’re putting out into the universe and you ask yourself, does this make the signal clearer or just louder.  If its noise, crank that shit down.  If its signal, power it up because truth, dignity and humanity still cut through when we the stop feeding the freaking feedback loop.  If ya wanna remember what the signal sounds like, find a helper or better yet, be one.

Then again, at the end of the day I am not trying to win the internet.  I am just trying to stay human in a world that has gotten really loud.  Measuring SNR is not a fancy thing, it’s a gut check, is  what I am spooling into the universe going to help someone hear the truth, or is it just more static?   So here is what I am choosing.  I am choosing the pause.  I am choosing the small acts of kindness.  I am choosing to be the kind of person who improves the fidelity in the room instead of creating a feedback loop that does nothing but screech at us.  I am going to keep checking that tattoo like its my own SNR meter, and keep trying to make the music cleaner instead of louder.  It’s a reminder, pause, check the meter, and don’t feed the noise.  Maybe, just maybe the most radical thing we can do is to be steady in the turbulence.  Send the strongest signal you can with the simple message, they are not alone and that you are here for them.