Welcome to Work Bravely
Re-entering the internet as a working professional.
Me & Writing on the Internet: A Brief History
The second I sat down to write this inaugural post of the Work Bravely newsletter, I realized I hadn’t fully thought about what to say. This newsletter isn’t a personal one, so it doesn’t feel like it warrants an intimate introduction. However, this also isn’t my first foray into writing on the Internet. And that part feels a bit relevant.
Most recently, I ran this blog, where I wrote a sum total of 3 personal essays. It was a short-lived endeavor, but I choose to keep the posts up. For me, they are beautiful remnants of a distant, mercurial version of myself whom you’ll find no traces of here. You’ll also find no sprawling or expressive posts like that here. It turns out that was all just a little too personal for me.
Before that, I had a Tumblr blog. A popular one too. From 2009-2013, I posted daily poems and depressive ramblings that, in hindsight, were far too personal for the Internet but that thousands of girls read regularly. While that blog has been (thankfully) wiped from traceable existence, there was something so special about those days. The experience of writing that blog was transformative, albeit reckless.
For my whole life, I have harbored a certain self-consciousness about writing and the presumption that people care what you think. It has gotten quieter as I have gotten older, but even now, it is snarling at me. Growing up a little precocious has left me with a fear of seeming self-important when for most of my life I’ve felt quite the opposite. When I started posting on Tumblr as an adolescent, I had no illusions that anyone else would read along. And when they did, I was surprised by how much it meant to them.
I, like so many kids of my generation, found my first true run-in with “community” on the internet, a place where people finally seemed to understand me (oh, the pain of youth). Every day, people I didn’t know would witness my tumultuous, public coming of age, and I would witness theirs. Sometimes we corresponded, sometimes we just followed along. But every so often, something would happen that I found magical and life-sustaining.
A girl I’d never met would post about her life, her body, her mother, or her loneliness, and I, as if sandbags were being lifted off my heart, would exhale and think to myself “Yes. Exactly.”
That deeply resonant feeling is both the danger and the beauty of the Internet. It’s also what always brings me back.
Me & Writing in This Corner of the Internet: A Preview
Now that the passage of time (+ my patient psychiatrist) has cured me of my affliction for gratuitous emotional disclosure, I want to take another pass at this writing thing as a version of myself I feel so comfortable being — a professional! Specifically, a professional who spends her life thinking about organizations, leaders, and teams.
I’ll admit that I’m not entirely sure about what this newsletter will and won’t be. The things I work on and think about change quickly because the world is changing so quickly. And since I don’t know what things you want to think about, I figure we’ll work it out together.
However, so you can have a sense of what to expect from me each week, here’s what you’re signing up to hear about (i.e. a list of things — in no particular order — that monopolize my thoughts):
Leadership and management
My staunch belief that emotional regulation is the rarest and most valuable professional skill in the modern workplace
General musings on organizations and teams
The future of work and AI-enabled work in particular (note: this is bound to be a big one because it’s the current subject of my ever-squiggly career path)
Squiggly career paths
Debate (the activity) and debate (the thing we should all get better at) because I know a thing or two about it
Reactions to the content I love and learn from
The tech industry
If any of that interests you, stick around! While I would deeply love for something I write to make you say “Yes. Exactly,” my hope is that in carving out this corner of the internet for us I can also write things that will make you say “Wow, I couldn’t disagree more,” or “I’ll have to think about that more.”
Whatever you find yourself saying, I hope you’ll let me know.
Thanks for reading,
Kristen Lowe