Busy as a…
Busy beeing at work. 2026-05-21 An executive director once told me employees don’t have to be happy at work. I didn’t believe him, until I did. I had believed that a happy employee meant an engaged employee. Everyone wants engaged employees. They bring it: the A game,…
Happy workiversary to me
Celebrate the good times and the less good times. It’s been one whole year since that nervous moment of the registry folks telling me that Unspun Communications, at least in name, was mine. Owning my own business used to be a utterance—a hex of sorts—but a happy place…
What runneth over?
I came across a post that laid out a simple reality about internal and external realities that affect how we relate to each other. It is an excerpt that has floated around, potentially attributed to the Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh, though I suspect it is now…
Who’s your who?
I love a good concert. Crowds of people moved by music, swaying/singing/dancing/fist pumping/woohooing. Collective movements, including concerts, can power me up, even when I’m feeling as limp as a smartphone battery in the grips of a Canadian winter. As good as a…
Taking action against violence
16 Days of Activism against Gender-based Violence My phone popped like fireworks that night. Earlier in the day, I had posted the first of 16 daily messages about how to end gender-based violence. Each post was meant to be a thing those of us among the “regular…
The right to define yourself
A simple grammar primer: Unless we always call ourselves by our names, we use pronouns as a subsititute. When someone is speaking about me (me is a pronoun), they (pronoun) can say “she” (pronoun). Pronouns replace names. It’s as simple as that. Pronouns are…
See what I’m saying?
October has nearly unfurled into November, bringing a close to another year’s commemoration of Women’s History Month, and I’m only now writing about it. For one, I can still think about women’s voices next month and the month after that. I won’t let a 31-day-long…
The romance of writing
Straight to the point: hire writers. writing. We all do it. It’s part of most of our jobs in some way or other, and for many of us, it’s tedious. A distraction from the real work. A boggle of grammatical traps. And then there are those of us pulled in by the allure…
Call it courage
Years ago, when I first started in professional communications, I got to do a bit of behind-the-scenes work investigating public opinion about mental health. In those days, people murmured about mental health if they talked about it at all. And in the workplace?…
Day for Truth and Reconciliation: a call to action
scrolled through LinkedIn this morning and noticed a trend. Indigenous organizations I follow reminded us that today is both Orange Shirt Day and National Day for Truth and Reconciliation. Other organizations, often quick to get on board with acknowledging days, are…