While creating the When-it Studio, I’ve been referring to 2025 as the year “When-it Comes to Life.” But, what’s coming to life is not the studio. “it” is something else…
So this is an apt first “When-it” moment to explore. Let’s start with the colloquial phrase “When-it Comes to Life”…
When-it Comes to Life, Version 1
For anyone who’s created anything (a painting, a meal, a poem), you know that moment “when it comes to life.” Not the final creation, but the “it.” Composing a scene settles into forms of dimension and color; you can’t look away. Garlic, butter, and herbs mingle from room to room. A rhyme jumps ship to swim in pure wisdom.
Here at the studio, the “it” of “When-it” signifies the work you need and love now, in all its evolving forms, faith tests, forces, free falls, free play, and freedom.
When-it Comes to Life, Version 2
For anyone who who’s talked quickly (excitedly!) with a kindred friend, you’ve probably gabbed your way straight into the dawn of a solvent insight that could well begin, “When it comes to life,…[insert the wisdom born of lived experience].”
No matter which of you said it, you both understand. Believe every word. And will move forward with this gem of resolve now.
In this way, I like to think that inside each When-it moment is a little manifesto on how to be true to yourself. Ourselves.
And so this “When-it Comes to Life” moment is also a little manifesto on the power of exploring our workstyles together so we can get to and affirm our “it” – more of the work we need and love now.
And I realize it’s an unprecedented now – nationally, geopolitically, rhetorically. Systems are being snapped apart. Diplomacy is under duress. Specificity, like authenticity, seems broadly undervalued yet all the more integral to how we will practice our creativity and community (the studio’s twin-flame values).
The work we need and love now will sometimes be personal. Sometimes collective. Always vivid.
Your Calling, Your Knowledge
This “When-it comes to life” moment and manifesto, and the whole creation of the studio itself, is rooted in a message I received from the Justice tarot card – a message for myself and the collective:
You are called to do justice to the signature workstyle that is yours – and yours only.
My sketch of Justice, the When-it Studio’s guiding card.
This is not about doing justice to a particular talent, strength, or skill. Have you ever heard someone say, “So-and-so is wasting their gifts” or “letting their natural abilities slip away”…?
What have I squandered, we intrinsically think, my youth, some phase of my career, a part of my mind?
And we’re caught in the trap of centering achievements, outcomes, products – all concepts used by a white-supremecist patriarchal society to control what or who we will work for. The Justice tarot card intervenes on our behalf.
This Justice, according to Christopher Marmolejo, “maintains that there is knowledge that emerges outside the categories of domination” (Red Tarot, page 57).
While creating the When-it Studio, I found my “it,” my work I need and love now: to slowly (even softly) understand “workstyle” as a concept outside of its (our) domination, so more of us can do justice to our own workstyle and its knowledge.
To do justice to your own workstyle and its knowledge is to honor:
- The way you enjoy your talents (over and above their reception),
- The way you claim your strengths (over and above any muscle, merit, or might), and
- The way you accept your skills (over and above their diligent – sometimes draining / sometimes dreamy – application day in and day out).
You acquire sacred, sovereign knowledge by doing justice to your workstyle outside of capitalism’s programming, conformity’s awards, colonialism’s roles, western culture’s workday, etc.
Moreover, this knowledge is an intrepid tool for personal and collective liberation from those spaces, institutions, and organizations that will gladly restrict, refine, or revoke your signature workstyle to serve status-quo order, strict hierarchy, and banal productivity.
Storytelling and Revolution
I hope that storytelling across our When-it moments will help us capture, exchange, and celebrate the knowledge our workstyles will continue to divulge, even and especially when difficult.
Workstyle storytelling will touch nerves, isolate regrets, and prompt uncomfortable questions (not unlike our potential knee-jerk reaction to the above saying about wasting talent – ouch and…no more.) Our past (and present) not-it moments will come into full relief.
Something else Marmolejo says about Tarot’s Justice belongs right here: “The gift of our faults, our transgressions, when held in clear perspective, keeps us from becoming the only moral one. The one who must always know better is often bound by shame” (Red Tarot, page 59).
Together, especially in storytelling, our workstyle
journeyrevolution centers the sacred, sovereign knowledge acquired and accruing. Not “knowing better” once and for all.
And so, workstyle storytelling will also touch abundance, isolate veracity, and prompt radical questions about all the work that will have been needed and loved across our lives – and the ethical imperative of our contact with that sacred, sovereign knowledge. Our when-it moments will map out a new way forward.
My collage of what it feels like to be at the start of this workstyle journey revolution. The turn inward, the brightness (it’s okay to be here) insulating all movement through this When-it moment and manifesto.
In the quest to do justice to our workstyle, and to integrate the knowledge it offers, I’m keeping Marmolejo’s reading of Justice close:
“Justice asks if we are willing to lose face in order to gain heart. To begin judging or valuing life as Justice does is to become sensitized, to notice the feather’s psychic subtleties”
CHRISTOPHER MARMOLEJO, RED TAROT, PAGE 59
Go for the Unexpected!
Doing justice to your workstyle may find you similarly losing something (like face) to gain something (like heart). Only you can name those losses and gains across your When-it moments…
For me, I want to lose the ideas about work/working that have held back my creativities, and my communities. Tender exclusions, feelings of inadequacy, and economic heartaches have trailed those ideas about work/working, especially under persistent Old-Guard gatekeeping that chooses to risk irrelevancy when declining to democratize and advocate where it counts.
For me, this “When-it Comes to Life” moment remains a place from which to make critical decisions. I ask myself: What are you not going back to? What are you workstyling your way into?
I hope you’ll write your own “When-it Comes to Life” moment. That you’ll summon the creative revelations that emerge while bringing something to life today, this week. That you’ll discern an unexpected “it” – the work you need and love now – whispered into a notebook or shouted from a mountaintop! Comment with it below, or email me!
And when you get to your “it,” say it twice (at least)! Once to identify it. Check. Then, to hold space for it…
I’m here for this too: to slowly (even softly) understand “workstyle” as a concept outside of its (our) domination, so more of us can do justice to our own workstyle and its knowledge.
Now What?
In the coming days / weeks, I’ll share a few more posts around this month’s “When-it Comes to Life” moment, then move forward…
Each month will usher in a brand new When-it moment, announced first in our newsletter! Why not sign up?! And each moment will bring another version, reflection, dimension, or clarification of “it“!
NOTE: The “it” in this post is very big picture. Very this is what we’re called to do at the studio. Very me introducing and welcoming you to the studio!
YES! WELCOME, WELCOME, WELCOME AND THANK YOU FOR BEING HERE!
Wherever we go next, I’m excited to keep up with how “it” shapeshifts into evolving forms, faith tests, forces, free falls, free play, and freedom. For me. And for you. Through our own signature workstyle, we can keep up with our very own it.