We started Xerophile because we love telling stories and everything that goes along with it — the opportunity to meet new people, to explore, craft narratives and bear witness to the fullness of human experience.

But one of the biggest and most unexpected joys of our work has been helping our clients solve their problems and reach their goals, whether that’s raising funds, inspiring action or connecting with new customers.

Nature and visual art are among what Keltner calls the ‘eight wonders of life’ that induce awe. But also high on that list are stories of everyday courage, strength and kindness, stories of what he calls ‘moral beauty.’ More often than not, Keltner says, it’s the people around us that inspire awe (which is not to say they don’t also drive us crazy). Awe, I realize, is the perfect way to describe what I feel as I watch Bawi’s story unfold.

If I were to boldly imagine a future for Xerophile and for the film industry, it would be one that makes space for the talents and voices of those who have been traditionally sidelined because we’re all enriched when our workplaces and communities are more inclusive.

It’s tempting to do the quick thing and set goals according to what we can measure — number of followers, views, shares, and/or immediate purchases. But what if we privilege short-term wins over our long-term goals? What if the ultimate goal is to build a lasting campaign, thriving community, or iconic brand? What if the real work is about touching hearts, shifting perspectives, and communicating values? Or, in other words, the work of storytelling.

I’m reminded of a trope that’s often repeated in writing workshops: kill your darlings. It’s a reminder to not hold any scene or sentence as precious, to be willing to revise or cut your favorite parts in service of the larger story. This week, we killed some darlings.

Crafting a documentary is in some ways the art of collage. Of taking bits and pieces from the world around you and assembling them in an attempt to create narrative. And in this attempt, make meaning out of the everyday.

On days like these, decisions aren’t made so much as possibilities explored. I like to think of this as invisible work. It’s how we get to the heart of a project and find the ideas lurking just out of plain sight, how we fill our brains with nuggets that come together in unexpected ways on walks or when folding laundry.

Humans are wired to tell stories, to make meaning out of the disparate experiences in our lives. In many ways, organizations are no different. As teams look back on a year of twists and turns (Delta variant! Remote work!), they’ll likely find a narrative theme they hadn’t noticed before. Maybe it’s resilience. Perhaps collaboration. Whatever it is, it’s the act of looking back that reveals these patterns in our story.

We began shooting Art Is Our Response in the summer of 2020. By then, we’d been at home for months, passing shuttered theaters and galleries, missing the nourishment of the arts. It was a moment of tremendous collective grief, and I craved a sense of community rooted in physical space. I was hungry for reasons and ways to hope.

Stories, as we’ve come to learn, have the power to not only transport but also persuade. They can sweep us away to another time and place and help us see life from a different perspective.

I appreciate the quiet lessons that that shy little girl taught me — that it can be scary to share our stories and speak our truths, that letting ourselves be seen is one of the bravest things we can do.

“The present was an egg laid by the past that had the future inside its shell.”

One of the bright lights in this strange, difficult time has been the opportunity to witness a kind of joyful work.

To have spent an entire year doing what I’ve l always wanted doesn’t feel like fireworks going off or the pinnacle of a hero(ine)’s journey. It feels like relief. After years of resistance, I was finally following poet Mary Oliver’s advice to “let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.”

“Perfectionism is a mean, frozen form of idealism, while messes are the artist’s true friend,” says writer Anne Lamott.

When I think about life before and after the pandemic, I imagine an offshoot breaking away from its leafy stem, a timeline splitting into two. I think about one of our last indoor shoots, a day just like any other before the lockdown.

I once visited a tiny town on the tip of Alaska called Utqiagvik. The town is so far north that from November through January the sun doesn’t rise at all, a phenomenon known as a polar night.

I asked a resident I met, a woman originally from Brazil, what it felt like to spend months in total darkness. For her, she told me, the hardest part wasn’t the darkness — which was hard but something she got used to — but what came after: that gray, in-between time when the days weren’t completely dark but also weren’t light enough to be carved discretely into day and night.

I think of what she told me as I navigate where we are now, a decidedly in-between place.

In Lynda Barry’s delightful book Making Comics, she shares an exercise she leads her students through at the start of each class: draw a portrait of yourself in 2 minutes flat. You can draw yourself dancing, snoring, turning into a butternut squash, whatever. It doesn’t matter. Don’t plan, don’t censor. Just draw.