Today’s Morning Buzz is brought to you by Dr. Sarah Story, Executive Director of the Jefferson County, Colo. Public Health Department. Find Sarah on LinkedIn, Medium, or Instagram.
What I’m reading: I’m about 10 years too late, but I’m reading A Little Life and jeez Louise is it hard to get through. Not really before-bed reading material. It’s great (I think?), but I’m forcing myself to finish.
What I’m watching: Do we need to set up an ELGL White Lotus Season 3 group text for Sunday nights? Because after Episode 5, I need some camaraderie. I can’t say anything else for fear of spoiling but… that monologue… by that actor… in that bar. Let’s discuss in the DMs.
What I’m listening to: The hidden tiny snippet of new Frank Ocean music in UFC fighter (and rumored Frank Ocean love interest) Peyton Talbott’s YouTube video.
I had to give a speech a couple of weeks ago. This wasn’t any speech. This was the opening salvo to our annual All Staff Retreat which, if you’ve been keeping an eye on *gestures around to the whole world*, felt heavy-laden with meaning. What are you supposed to say to ~150 hard-working public servants in public health at a time when the legitimacy of what we do is questioned and the funding landscape is, to put it mildly, uncertain? Do you stick with a trite “keep your chin up, bruh!” or attempt a rousing version of pre-cancellation Mel Gibson in “Braveheart”? Normally, words are my thing. Sometimes, it’s all I have. But the writer’s block was real and it was paralyzing. I’d spent the last six weeks before the retreat just trying to navigate what was fact and what was rumor, all while attempting to keep spirits high and eyes focused on the work we are here to do. I had squashed down any heightened emotions in my own body in order to exude calm composure, and now that I had to dig into those same emotions to inspire my team, I felt like I had nothing left. It was as if I had lost all sense of direction but, at the same time, felt overwhelmed by having too much I wanted to say. Every Mel Robbins-inspired soundbite made the first draft. I was just throwing out a flood of motivational quotes hoping something would stick. Nothing did. I was producing as if I was an AI robot designed solely to create Instagrammable quote graphics attributed to celebrities who DEFINITELY DID NOT SAY THEM.
On the eve of the retreat, I met with my Executive Coach (who, let’s be real, is basically my work therapist). While relaying the silliness of my obsession with the Pantone Color of the Year and how I have demanded that our annual retreat themes every year revolve around it, she stopped me and asked a straightforward question.
“Why does it mean so much to you?”
I was stumped. I waffled. She dug in her heels. I ended up rambling about nonsense until I finally admitted:
“It just brings me joy.”
That’s it. It’s simple and makes me happy. I have an app on my phone that counts down the days until the announcement of the new color. I read blogs leading up to the big day where designers give predictions. I’d bet on it at a Vegas Sportsbook if there were such a niche market for this type of thing. My own predictions were monumentally wrong, so at least I didn’t lose my life savings.
In the course of one conversation, my entire speech was scrapped. I started over at 5:30 p.m. the night before I had to stand up in front of everyone and make a positive impression. The idea of simple joy, the concept of color and art, and creativity became my inspo. I thought, what if I took it back to basics? What if I just focused on the very first spark of life we had for this work?
Over 100 years ago, one of the forefathers of public health described it as “a science and an art.” Art was my first love. I’ve never been able to be a visual artist. My sister got all those talents – they were used up in our gene pool with nothing left over for the rest of us. But I love art with a fervor I don’t feel for many other things. So to hear that our entire field was built on the paradox of being both/and got me all sorts of giddy. While the narrative of the culture right now demonizes the science, we can fight back with the creativity, passion, and feeling of art. I’m not saying we have to paint a giant mural of vaccines on the side of the HHS building. I’m advocating for leaning into the heart, persuasion, and emotional drivers of art to make social change and defend our right to exist.
I’m also advocating for returning to the love we had at first. Much like my Mocha Mousse, in all of us is some tiny ember of excitement that we have covered up with the fire extinguisher of adulthood. Instead of standing on our soapboxes, we need to get back to the very essence of our first smile, our first kiss, our first heartbreak. We need to feel the entire beautiful spectrum of human emotions and own them, write about them, paint them, and pour them into our daily lives. When we fail to acknowledge our humanity, to embrace all the complications of being alive, in this field, at this time… well, we lose.
Art isn’t random. It’s purposeful. As I said in my speech when I pulled up a Michelangelo and a Rothko, even the most abstract art inlays intention in every brushstroke. Both realist and abstract artists have the same goal: to inspire awe and make the viewer feel some type of way. And hopefully, no matter who our teammates voted for or what their opinions are on policy options, we’re in it for the same endgame. To be a public health artist is to endow every email, every bullet point, every Canva slide with meaning. We have to fight to stay relevant by fighting to stay lucid.
It feels almost too saccharine to tell an entire department to “choose joy.” But that’s what I did. If that’s all they remember of my rambling, I’ll have done my job. Choosing joy in this weird season isn’t the avoidance of pain. It’s the rebellion to do what so many other artists have done before us – to channel their feelings into their work and look upon that work with the joy of having created something.
In two days (or a day ago, depending on when you read this) I turn 44 years old. Nearly four decades ago, I had my first love and my first heartbreak all in the same kindergarten school year. His name was Chris VanCamp. I loved him because he was cute and funny and liked the same TV shows as I did. It was the first time I felt an overwhelming sense of jealousy, too, over the fact that when the class lined up alphabetically he stood next to Corinne Vallerin. Corinne was everything I wasn’t – a petite, cute little girl who wore dresses so frilly it was as if every day was her quinceañera. I, on the other hand, was the tallest kid in the class. I wore overalls and had a dangly Punky Brewster earring and a Joan Jett mullet. If I look back to that first love, I’m not much different at 44 than I was at 5. I am drawn to the funny, charismatic people who get in trouble for talking too much. And I’m also prone to insecurity and comparisons that steal my joy. We don’t really change as much as we think we do.
I fell in love with public health against all of my intentions. I said I wasn’t interested, that I was in school to study economics. But then, love hit me. I fell for the field’s devotion to equity and the complexities of the intersection of policy and biology. My studies lit me up, made me angry, and sometimes bored me. It was mundane and it was thrilling. It was always changing and it was rooted in permanent values. It wasn’t my first love, but it was my forever love. It was the difference between my kindergarten boyfriend and my modern-day husband. Anyone in a long-term relationship as an adult knows this feeling – on the hard days, or the hard presidencies, sometimes we have to dig a little deeper to remember how to fall in love again. We have to choose to recall the reasons we swooned in the first place and hold fast to those memories.
Much like in my All Staff speech, I’ve exceeded the word count. Maybe this is my rebellious artist spirit resisting convention. Or maybe I make a better writer than an editor. Regardless, I hope that somewhere in your heart is a spark of first love that leads to joy. And I pray that in your everyday meetings, spreadsheets, press releases, and funding formulas joy leads to creativity, and creativity to breakthrough. Feel your feelings, choose joy anyway, and continue to make the canvases of your workplace a masterpiece, even while it’s still a work in progress.