Even though work isn’t as crazy now as it was a couple weeks ago, life feels kind of crazy this day or two. (But the taxes are finally submitted!!)

And at work, there are a few challenges looming — not with personalities or anything like that. Just with the aspects of non-profit work that are sometimes really, truly, legitimately difficult. “It’s hard because it’s hard,” my boss and I sometimes say to each other on days like these.

So, in lieu of a longer or more thoughtful post, here’s a favorite TED talk about hard conversations, and the closets we all find ourselves living in when we’re too scared to have them.

There is no harder, there is just hard. We need to stop ranking our hard against everyone else’s hard to make us feel better or worse about our closets and just commiserate on the fact that we all have hard. At some point in our lives, we all live in closets and they may feel safe, or at least safer than what lies on the other side of that door. But I’m here to tell you, no matter what your walls are made of, a closet is no place for a person to live.

Be authentic, be direct, be unapologetic. Thank you, Ash Beckham.

I hope to be back more fully tomorrow night.

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Image credit: http://boringpittsburgh.com/wtf/mister-rogers-middle-finger-flipping-the-bird/