The work week is so scheduled — drop-offs, pick-ups,7 meetings a day – that on the weekends, it’s all about taking the time to loosen up, take it slow, and lose track of time. It means taking the time to make a pot of organic lavender earl grey, cook up some waffles with T, and actual read the paper. During the academic year, when every hour is accounted for, each email needs a response, it makes it even more critical to take time to unplug from Outlook and make time for myself and the family.

This was a tough week that required a lot of emotional connecting, empathy, perspective taking, and breathing. Where you spend most of your time, who you spend your time with, and what you spend time doing — these all weave into the daily fabric of a life. When people are struggling, when the mission goes awry, what is the most human way to respond? How do you align your moral and ethical beliefs with your work 100% of the time? Is it OK if it only aligns 80% of the time?

The saving grace of the week is an amazing class I’m auditing on Native North American Art. It’s a fantastic seminar with great reading assignments, fantastic guest speakers, and thought-provoking material. Most importantly, it’s a moment to heal and connect with and through indigenous art. It’s an anti-colonial space that reminds me of the other anti-colonial spaces that I sought out in graduate school. Demian Flores’s community art space in Oaxaca, La Curtiduria. The offices of Kaya Press and the people who publish cutting-edge literature from the Asian diaspora. Classes in American Studies and Ethnicity. The amazing female interlocutors I met at UCSD.

I’m longing for that type of unapologetic, brave, intersectional, soulful, healing, dynamic, un-self-conscious partnerships. Was inspired yesterday by the incredible work of Jami Powell, who I had the privilege of hearing in the seminar. Felt moved by the incredible work of Luciana McClure and Nasty Women Connecticut, who opened the show Complicit: Erasure of the Body last night to a huge attendance. Am inspired by these women and doing what I can within my own museum to breathe this kind of liberatory spirit into the work.