Dancing with Yourself

I made myself really visible on calls like this. I was sending probably a memo a week easily talking about very personal things, way more personal than I normally would be. The titles would be fun, like three ways to mitigate being stir crazy. Just totally put myself out there. Anything from I put on my headphones and dance to Billy Idol. I'm dancing with myself all around my apartment when my husband isn’t here. I mean, I tried sourdough, that sourdough recipe, epic fail. And I talked about that. And then I would talk about serious things like walking over to the Martin Luther King Memorial and reading some of the inspirational quotes.

And why did you feel it was so critical to do that?

I think in one word it was empathy. I mean, no one was enjoying this and they needed a smile. They needed a little bit of humor. They needed to know they weren't alone. We did a ton of virtual meetings and I started learning that one of the problems of virtual meetings is you all sort of get on together. There's no fooling around, how was your weekend there? It's down to business. Everything is down to business. So one of the things I learned when we would have big meetings and we did a lot of meetings with field leadership. We'd have an ice breaker and the ice breaker sometimes would take 45 minutes. Like, tell me something that you are doing that is good about this pandemic and everyone would go around. And like one woman reached down and said, I'm raising chickens. And she had chicken in her arms. It was some of the craziest things and there are the eggs. And it just was fun. Seeing that, hearing that.