08/13/2024
General back-to-school 2024 life update ..... Awesome week exploring epicurean entrepreneurialism inside The Wisdom Workshop ... perhaps the most fun I've ever had working hard in my life.
Have an amazing in-person group gathering Tuesday nights at a super-secret location in Fort Collins to kick off a seven-week meditation on PRESENCE. Two nearly-full groups kicking off via Zoom on Wednesday, August 14th.
This time around, which will be the 21st (🤯) live experiment in midlife education, we're integrating the transformative wisdom of poetry with wonderful people in the UK, Australia, India, and Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, and Colorado ... all excited to write and explore living the good life. So exciting.
And our team is growing, exploring how a university of the future might run like a lean start-up, like this presence is a kind of portal and a magnet for people who want to live more deliberately, step away from their phones, and prioritize time for human connection, deep reading, and introspective reflection. Create more space for real human connection, for the great conversations, humor and emergent insights that make a small group experience feel so awesome.
I feel like this is the work I was here to do -- to bring people together in the spirit of joy. Through music, education, writing, and the arts... It's like Epicurus all over again, building a garden and a library of courses we need now, giving ourselves room to reimagine "higher education." It's all about the people. The quality of presence. The gift of perspective. The purpose and play inside of projects-of-worth.
I keep coming back to presence, though -- in my pages today, remembering that a person is not rich from what they have, they are rich in what they enjoy.
And with friends, and music, and the excellent conversation of a life in transition, I'm feeling very rich indeed.
A big hearty thank you to everyone who has ever smiled at me while I've been doing my thing. I appreciate it.
And a last call if now is the time you're ready to do something different and step into a new way of being. send me a message or an email and I'll share the next steps.
Still loving teaching at CSU, in the Dept. of English for the 15th year!?!?!! teaching junior level writing and sometimes writing in digital environments.
Life with Erica and Amara is amazing. Amara is almost two and a half... and she's a natural source of love and awe. Learning so much, growing so much, and so glad.
And I really like this experimental essay I just published on the substack and an on the youtube.
cheers and love wonder-full people,
with a big thanks to Drew Stegmaierfor the manager-time, inspiration, and operational intelligence this week. Here's to the emerging wise university.
https://open.substack.com/pub/seanwaters/p/if-kindness-were-intelligence?r=112lg&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
