I’ve been away from my home in Provincetown, MA for several weeks, having traveled to Washington, DC and Scranton, Pennsylvania to see friends and family. DC also featured some in-person work meetings, which are a thing again!
Now that I’m back in Provincetown, I’m realizing the life and career lessons that living here provides me.
I moved to Provincetown full-time in August 2019, and in the past few years I’ve learned that we have a slow Spring. This is unlike my experience living in DC for 22 years, where Spring seemed to last a couple of weeks–one day it’s chilly and 52 and the next the heat and thick humidity have settled in.
But not in Provincetown. The crocuses, daffodils, tulips, lilacs, wisteria, and irises all have their own space and time to bloom, with little overlap among them. Nothing is rushed about it, and nature seems intent on getting us to focus on and appreciate one type of flower at a time.
My first full Spring here was 2020, and learning to be patient with Spring was a good lesson–especially since that year we were dealing with All The Things. Admittedly the snow we had in the middle of May in 2020 was one lesson too many, but whoever said the weather is ours to control.
High above the flowers is another lesson, which has been pretty profound for me (at least this week!).
Double-crested cormorants are large, dark sea-diving birds, and they return to Provincetown in mid-April. For the next few weeks, I will watch as members of the cormorant flock that settles here for the summer make hundreds of trips per day between the marshes out closer to the ocean and the breakwater in the harbor. They nest along the breakwater, and each year use last year’s marsh grass–now dead and somewhat woody–to rebuild their nests.
Their flight path between the marshes and the breakwater is literally over our house, and I see them through my office window this time of year, flying back and forth all day. Each bird carries only one piece of grass in its beak per trip (now and then there’s an overachiever with two pieces, but they are rare).
I don’t know much about cormorants or any birds–I was an English major in college and worked in policy and politics most of my adult life–so when I first noticed this practice a few years ago, it mostly struck me as dumb and inefficient. Why haven’t they figured out a better way to do this, year after year? They hunt and eat fish that are bigger than a single straw (or two) of marsh grass, so it’s not because their mouths or beaks are too small.
But the other day I started to think that maybe there is a real reason why they do what they do–I am a firm believer in science and evolution, after all. I’m just not knowledgeable enough to know everything that explains cormorant behavior.
That thought led me to start thinking about intentionality, and how being focused and patient is often needed for us to achieve our goals in a realistic, rewarding, and sustainable way. Maybe cormorants know that lesson better than I do.
I’ve made a lot of professional and personal changes in the last few years, stepping back from full-time leadership roles in policy/political organizations and stepping into a role as a consultant and coach to nonprofit organizations and their leaders. I’ve also carved out a significant amount of time for creating and growing a fine art photography practice.
As a Leo with perfectionist tendencies, I sometimes think I’m not making enough progress on any of these endeavors as I would like–or should be. Because of these tendencies, I have “Bird by Bird” written on a Post-It note, which I stuck on the window that my desk faces. That note is there to remind me of the great book of the same name by Anne Lamott. It’s a phrase her dad said to her brother years ago, when her brother was struggling to get started on a huge school project having to do with birds.
And this Spring I’m realizing that the cormorants are here to teach me the same lessons that that book once did:
Getting started is progress itself.
Incremental progress is progress.
You can’t do it all at once.
In other words, the cormorant nest gets built one piece of straw at a time. The big school project gets done one bird at a time. Every photo I take is a new, unique thing I have created that becomes part of a larger body of work. Each coaching conversation is an opportunity for me to help someone grow and to be taught by them in the process. One step leads to many more single steps, and so much more beyond that. But that single step matters, a lot.
As I chastise myself for what I perceive to be lack of progress, I think of all the times I sincerely counseled my clients to work bird-by-bird, and cheered them on for doing so. And I do that because I know it’s often the best–and sometimes only–way forward.
It’s easier to think this about others than myself, but maybe the cormorants will help me reframe things for me. For the next few weeks, it’s an easy lesson to take in because I can literally see it outside my window. My goal is to translate this observation–this natural wisdom–into a mental habit for the months and years to come.
This was an inspiring post. My only suggestion would be to use a darker color for your text. These old eyes have difficulty reading the current one.