Good news, bad news, who’s to say?

The sequel nobody asked for… including me

If you were here last summer, you know how it went. Twelve weeks of trampoline parks, conversations about death on a neighbor's porch, moving a bookcase that somehow turned into a two hour discussion about dreams. I walked away with my business, Team by Team, taking shape and a conviction that the next chapter needed to be built, not applied for.

Then a tiny bit of cancer was found in my boob (get those yearly mammos ladies, tiny is key!).

They cut it out. Got it all. But still, next week I start chemotherapy — I'll say the word once so we're all on the same page, because it means something wildly different depending on the situation and the person. Mine is preventative. The cancer is gone. This is just making sure it doesn't show up elsewhere. It's not the knock-you-flat, 1980s movie version. Plenty of people work straight through what I'm doing. But it's still "that word," and it still has side effects, and I still have feelings about it. I don’t like it but what choice do I have?

But first, let’s catch up since my last 3 month purpose driven summer.

A quick recap of the in-between

AI was never foreign to me — years in IT took care of that. What was foreign was doing something with it that was actually mine. Inside a federal career you learn to play it safe inside a system. You get good at it. And then you leave and realize you have no idea how to bet on yourself.

That's the real story of this past year. Public Value Lab came first — a two month program for ex-feds, by ex-feds, who want to launch something meaningful. That's where Team by Team stopped being a concept and started being a real thing. Then She Leads AI, which rewired everything. Suddenly I was surrounded by women who weren't waiting for permission, running workshops, learning out loud, figuring out how AI could actually serve people rather than just make things faster. Complete change of thinking. Complete change of people around me.

I also started substitute teaching, which was an absolute blast, turns out getting handed a room of tweens with zero notice and no lesson plan is excellent training for basically anything life throws at you afterward.

I went from playing it safe inside a system to betting on myself and finding my people. That's what this past year was.

Last summer I served, this summer I'm being served.

Last summer was a choice (well, sort of) — I chose to step out of the daily grind to focus on others and myself. This summer the pause chose me. But the invitation feels identical: don't let this moment pass you by, make it meaningful.

Receiving is actually going to be the hard part. People want to show up for me, and I'm going to have to let them without turning it into a project. Harder than it sounds if you know me at all.

But there's another way I'm being served that I didn't expect. This pause landed right in the middle of something I need time to build. I've been learning to vibe code — teaching myself to build a community web application that could really help neighborhoods. A whole year of AI education and workshops, and I finally have uninterrupted time to make it real. The universe has terrible timing and perfect timing simultaneously.

And I'll be honest about the other unknown sitting right next to the medical one: I have no idea how these three months end, job-wise, either. Team by Team is the dream. But October could just as easily land me back in a cubicle doing project management inside the very system I left, because at the end of the day, girl's gotta make money. Both things are true at the same time, and I've stopped pretending that's a contradiction.

So, what is this blog about?

Each week I'll name where the blessings showed up, and they will, even in weeks that feel depressing. I'll name what I learned. I'll plan one thing to look forward to the following week. And I'll look back at last summer's posts and find the echo, the thing that rhymes between who I was then and whatever this is turning me into now (I intend to be a badass).

Because I genuinely believe these two summers are telling the same story, just from opposite ends. Last summer I couldn't wait to start. This summer I can’t wait for it to end. That gap is probably exactly where the interesting stuff lives.

I'm not going to pretend I'm looking forward to any of this — that would be a significant understatement. What gets me isn't even the “therapy” itself. It's the not knowing. Everyone's experience is different, nobody can tell me what mine will be, and no amount of Googling closes that gap. Will it get harder every week or level out into something manageable? Still unwritten.

See you next week.