The Alchemy of Now

Pressure. Compost. Transmutation. Alchemy.

Rinse and repeat.

It's been years since I was a business owner. The perpetual tension of experimentation. The anxiety and the exhilaration. The beauty and the devastation. A life of paradoxes that, hopefully, lands you in the heart of what you envisioned when you decided to toss yourself off the cliff just to see where you land.

I exited my full time business owner days in 2017. I loved the work, it was simple and lovely, but sadly redundant. Boredom is my kryptonite. I loved working with my clients, 95% of them. Many of my clients resurfaced every few months with a new storytelling challenge to solve, a new comms challenge to get my panties twisted. A handful of my clients became a family of sorts and we worked on long-term retainers for years.

I slowly wound the business down and transitioned into privacy and cryptocurrency work through my local hacker space. An experiment that turned into accidental jobs doing the work technologists struggle with the most-- I handled the humans-- community and comms. I've spent a lifetime of documenting human interactions, so I just know how to navigate the nuances of humanity. Which is wildly ironic as an introvert.

I knew I had some gaps in my personal skillsets and needed to finish my undergraduate degree, a giant unfinished task hanging over my mid 40s. So I returned to school to study classical tantra Yoga and contemplative religions simply amplified and polished that understanding of humanity (yes, a Bachelors in Yoga in possible). I worked remotely in web3 while studying emergent systems, somatic therapy, advanced yoga, Sanskrit, mythic religions, biomimicry, ecopsychology and more. I learned from peers and elders-- wisdom keepers-- who passed the knowledge to me.

During my last semester, I landed in the heart of the Ethereum infrastructure-- the belly of the beast. Director of Community at Consensys. I still don't know exactly how or why. The people who know me best were like, "wtf"? All I could say was, "I'm curious". I've never worked in a corporation before (or had a real salary) and since I just got a degree in yoga at age 47, why not give this thing a whirl next and see where we land.

I was deeply curious about how so many people working in corporate settings were showing up in droves at yoga studios, wellness retreats and other mindfulness spaces-- seeking some sort of peace to calm their perpetually triggered nervous systems. I had no frame of reference because I had no first hand experience. I also naively thought I could be the shining beacon of conscious leadership, if it was needed.

I was so fucking wrong it's almost hilarious. With ALL of my training, I rolled into one of the wildest corporate settings imaginable. Filled with the tropes that keep Netflix and HBO in business as millions seek a therapeutic balm from the big screen version of their daily normal. And within 9 months, I'd completely broken my nervous system (and my spine) because I didn't know how to protect myself. Me. 1000 hours of rigorous academic yogic studies. Toast.

If I couldn't survive it, how could others? How could people with no training or education in self-care or nervous system regulation navigate a pressure cooker like this? Spoiler alert— they can't. These systems aren't meant to be survivable. They are meant for mutual extraction and then you move on. Or you get churned out.

I work with activists as often as possible, privacy workshops, mentorship or just coffee and advice. I repeat this often, and I deeply mean it, in order to create systems change, some must push from WITHIN the system while others push from outside. And I just happened to be wired to seek the pushing from within. The process is strategic, calculated, terrifying and fascinating.

After that adventure, I spun through a startup who had a sizable Series A and beautiful tech. Unfortunately, once again, I was facing the opposite of conscious leadership. I bounced through the chaos trying to find my footing but never did. And watched as beautiful tech and the humans that build it struggled under the weight of the machine's lack of humanity and leadership.

My mission was clear, create safe spaces for Ethereum developers to build the tech our society needs right now to counterbalance surveillance capitalism and centralized banking systems. I work in these toxic systems on a daily basis because I want to protect my niece’s generation from the manic destruction that broligarchs are forcing upon us all through weaponized algorithms and black box AIs.

Community and narrative work like this is necessary, challenging, misunderstood and deeply human. It requires servant leaders to fully deploy conscious leadership to create spaces capable for brilliant synergies to occur.

Building community for technologists to thrive and empowering founders to lead with compassion is the whole game. And do you know what that work requires?

Alchemy.

Those of use who view the world through the lens of systems, who have done the hard work of learning how to transmute energy, how to lead people not through force or fear but empathy and kindness, are now rising up to lead.

We are the alchemists, spinning the lead from yesterday into the gold of tomorrow.

We embrace our lineage and share our earned wisdom. We understand our flaws and we celebrate them. We are (or are learning to be) unapologetically vulnerable. We have lived it. Deeply. Our wisdom is not gleaned from books or ghosts in the machine, without context or experience.

Our wisdom is EMBODIED. We earned that shit. We proudly bear the scars that prove it. No technological advancements or artificial wizardry will replace the value we bring to any situation.

Which leads me to the logical conclusion that for this next chapter, after 10 months of composting the beautiful chaos of the past 10 years, it is now time to fully step into my wisdom sharing phase. At scale. Through the studio I spun up in January because I just needed to build something. Anything.

And that anything-- hoo boy, it is beautiful. I've "accidentally" created a vehicle that will allow me to bring all of my professional and life experiences to the wild work of creating systems change at scale through emergent tech, co-collaborations and leadership.

I don't regret my time in corporate crypto, even though it almost broke me. I obtained the most relevant masters degree to my yoga studies imaginable. I do deeply regret the trauma my colleagues had to endure on the daily because of our bosses. I know now that your co-workers are not supposed to be your family, but I deeply cared for most of the humans I worked with on the daily basis. They are brilliant technologists and artists dedicated to seeing our tech reach mass adoption. They simply had to play the same games I did to survive a system never meant for us to do so. I am grateful many of them are still part of my daily life.

I now have the chance to continue my mission through my own business. Which is exactly what I am doing. I am putting the final touches on DesertRat Productions and we help conscious organizations design strategic partnerships and develop the communications infrastructure that makes them sustainable.

For now, I'm experimenting in the following areas:

• Strategic Architecture & Communications Studio
• The Human Layer (our R&D Lab and proof of concept)
• Signals & Seeds (essays education & leadership)

As with any business at its early stages, these are all experiments. Once I play with a concept for a few weeks or months, I take it on a few test runs. If it works well and lights me up, I connect it with clients needing support or a production needing to be birthed. If it doesn't, I dust it off a bit, put it on the shelf and revisit it later. Or use the ashes as fertile compost for the next experiment.

Welcome to Signals & Seeds. Please subscribe and enjoy this experimentation in real time.

Pressure. Compost. Transmutation. Alchemy.

Rinse and repeat.

Our Founding Members tier is designed for those who wish to dive deeper into any of the concepts and experiments I write about-- privacy, Ethereum, community building, conscious leadership, strategic communications-- anything written here is fair game. Founding members enter a 1-1 client relationship where we meet quarterly for a 90 minute strategy session and members join a private group for ongoing communal support as we co-create tomorrow.

Ready to build beyond extraction?

If this analysis resonates, you're likely ready for deeper engagement with post-extractive alternatives. Here's how to connect:

🌱 Explore more signal — visit The Human Layer Knowledge Garden for our complete archive of podcasts, frameworks, case studies, and regenerative media experiments

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Building tomorrow's infrastructure with today's wisdom.

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