Introducing Wave Mode

Welcome to my new Substack! 👀

I recently had coffee with a college student a friend introduced me to. She is nearing graduation with a master’s in social entrepreneurship, and wanted to hear about my experiences in that space. I told her that throughout her career, she’ll likely have seasons when she tries to change systems from within, and seasons when she builds outside of them. Both will be hard, and both will be important.

Today, I’m launching my own newsletter, as a move into one of those outside-the-system times.

I discovered writing about ten years ago (at the age of 36… because you’re never too old to discover new passions!). That discovery led me to a decade of writing about things that mattered to me, mostly from within existing systems. Honestly, I think I needed that validation from the gatekeepers of words to feel like I was a “legit” writer.

It started when I cold-emailed my first guest blog post to Arianna Huffington, who amazingly replied – and gave me a byline on Huffington Post. From there I wrote a book: Blaze Your Own Trail. While I loved the process of writing it, I still sought the external validation of a publisher to tell me it was worth putting out into the world. I was lucky that I found a great one in Berrett-Koehler Publishers, and I even got the validation of winning a gold IPPY award for my book. Yay for succeeding within existing systems!

Shortly after that, I landed a byline in Forbes, in their new-in-2020 Diversity & Inclusion section (which had since been folded into the Leadership section after DEI became unfashionable in 2024). I wrote 113 articles for them over the past seven years, finding a way to fit my ideas into my “swim lane” of Equity & Belonging in the Workplace, with writing that cleanly fit their style guide. It was awesome to have a publish button on a widely distributed platform, and it helped me feel like a “real writer.”

Until now.

I have realized that I don’t need a stamp of approval, a well-known masthead or permission of any kind to be a writer. And I’ve also realized that there are a lot of things I want to write about (and have written about, without sharing yet) that don’t fit cleanly into what an editor might want from me.

So here we go… I’m launching my own publication on Substack!

It’s called Wave Mode, based on my rudimentary understanding of wave-particle duality in quantum physics. The concept is that a particle behaves like a particle when it’s being observed, and like a wave when it’s not.

I love the metaphor of behaving like a wave… flowing in the way that feels true to me, without acting differently based on the observation of others.

Yes, of course I’m writing this for people to read – but the writing itself will come from me, and won’t be constrained to any expectations of style, topic, subjectivity or tone.

I love writing about things that I’m learning (and learning through writing), so there will still be some smart, thoughtful essays. But also I have IDEAS! And RANTS! And poorly formatted, first-person streams of consciousness. I have a piece I never published on anxiety dreams, and one on trains. I have thoughts on our collective AI transition, musings on external consciousness, conspiracy theories about conspiracy theorists. And I have some favorite pieces that I’ve previously published on other platforms that I’ll likely move over here.

If any of this sounds interesting to you, I’d be honored to have you subscribe!

My season of being a gate-kept particle is coming to an end – get ready for Wave Mode!