Jumping out of Bed

Weekly wisdom to level up your creative life in 3 minutes, for free.

A SHORT STORY

I met Lindy Elkins-Tanton during the height of COVID. She is the head of NASA's Psyche mission and the Arizona State University Interplanetary Initiative.

I’ve made a commitment whenever I encounter a great teacher in my life: I will always find a way to collaborate. So, when Lindy offered me the chance to audit her class with other NASA scientists, I didn’t hesitate—I said, Yes. Could we also collaborate on a large initiative called Open Citizen? You betcha.

I even found ways for Theater Mitu to collaborate with her and the Interplanetary Initiative on our production of Utopian Hotline.

I learned so many wonderful leadership lessons from Lindy, but one in particular has stayed with me ever since she shared it a year ago.

We were discussing her work on the Psyche mission, which had finally launched after a significant delay. Unfortunately, the delay extended the mission by seven years due to planetary movements.

After leading the project for six years, Lindy said to me, “I’m trying to figure out if I want to continue as the director of the mission anymore. I’m trying to figure out if I want to launch myself out of bed every morning and solve that problem.”

That phrase—"launch myself out of bed every morning"—stuck with me. It offered a wonderful lens through which to view one's work.

And here was someone, a leader in her field, refusing to settle for anything less than passion and purpose.

As a result, I’m constantly asking myself, “What will launch me out of bed in the morning? What problem do I want to solve?”

What makes you excited to get out of bed in the morning? How can you orient your day towards that feeling?

A CREATIVE TOOL

A PIECE OF ART

“soil” by Irene Mathieu

the way you say soil
sounds like soul, as in

after we walked through the woods
my feet were covered in soul

when it rains
the soul turns to mud

the soul is made of decomposed
plant and animal matter;

edaphology is the study of the soul’s
influence on living things

while pedology is the study of how
soul is formed, its particular granularity.

you are rooted in a certain red patch
of soul that bled you and your

hundred cousins to life, a slow
warm river you call home.

maybe there is soul under everything,
even when we strike rock first.

the way you say soil you make
a poem out of every speck of dirt.

Grateful,

Michael