A weregopher burrowed into my chest cavity. Here's how that made me a better project manager.
A LinkedIn post
Hey, LinkedIn fam! 👋
I don’t usually do personal updates on here. But I’m trying to be more #vulnerable #honest #integrity #ai #keepinitreal in my new chapter, so I thought I’d share. 💁♀️
A year ago, a weregopher 😱 dug into my chest cavity and stayed there. NGL, I thought my life was over!
How could I live a normal, productive life with a little gopher man knocking around inside my ribs, peeking his head out of my sternum 🩻 as he sees fit? How could I continue to meet deadlines, anticipate stakeholder concerns, and deliver value to my org as the paper-towel-roll-sized man turned into a rabid gopher every full moon?
➡️ Over the next year, I embarked on a journey I never would have thought possible.
In those first few months, things as simple as getting dressed were unbelievably difficult. To make myself presentable on calls, I had to find button-up shirts with enough space between the buttons for the weregopher’s head to nudge through. And I could only wear dark colors to avoid showing the seepage around my 🕳️ chest-hole.
My weregopher’s moon days were especially challenging. Weregophers actually go gopher-mode during the entire period from waxing gibbous to full moon. When GP (Gopher Pal) would transform in that silver light from innocuous tiny man to snarling gopher, I was terrified! I was sure I would never again be taken seriously in my domain, even with my strong track record of identifying key risks and mitigating them to ensure alignment with business goals.
Then there was eating—let me tell you, figuring out how to keep a burrowed weregopher alive and healthy took A LOT of trial and error! 😂 As far as I can tell, my situation is #unique, and there are no forums or support groups for this. (psst… his favorite foods ended up being yogurt pouches, skirt steak, and spoonfuls of pomegranate seeds!)
BUT, there were immediate benefits, too. When in his tiny man form, the weregopher could reach out of my chest cavity to do computer tasks. His lithe little hands 🧚 were naturals at typing and clicking. This freed up my hands during meetings to make maximum impact with my nonverbal communication skills. As our mental connection strengthened, he could make changes to my slide decks on the fly or answer emails during my Mentorship Hour.
Other times, his presence injected some much-needed #humor into my team’s day to day. Ever wonder what a full-moon-mode weregopher types like? Cat lovers, imagine a cat walking across your keyboard, but times 1,000! 😆 On full-moon days, coworkers lovingly refer to my unintelligible Slack novellas as “ChatGPT—Chat where Gopher Pal was Typing” 😂 💕
Beyond the immediate value-adds, over the next several months, I was astonished with just how much my new resident took my #projectmanagement skills to a new level. My weregopher led to:
Performance improvements: After much teambuilding and emotional intelligence work together, the weregopher boosted my performance, guiding my hands Ratatouille-style as I tackled spikes, solutioned iteratively, and executed toward KPIs better than I ever had before.
Scrappiness: I ATTACK problems more now. I am VICIOUS. You don’t want to stand between me/GP and our deadlines—especially before we’ve had our skirt steak! 😆🥩
Increased motivation to catapult my team’s velocity: I’m working for 2 now, or 3 if you count both his forms. It’s a healthy pressure that encourages me to 10x my team’s speed, consistency, and robustness of task completion.
Letting myself feel the seasons of my work: It’s not about work-life balance, it’s about understanding and embracing the rhythms of your deliverables in relation to The Creature’s lunar pull.
Becoming closer to my manager and team: I always used to feel bad when I’d need time off for period cramps, COVID, etc. But sharing my condition let me and my colleagues connect on a human-to-weregopher-host level I never anticipated. And come the full moon, they make sure to keep those Fig Newtons on lock in the break room!! 💪
Finally, HUGE swag innovations 🤠: My bodily housing of a combination small human man/large frothing gopher has led to my amazing company actually altering their swag t-shirts to accommodate my weregopher. Inclusion win! Here’s the design they let me suggest:
In the end, I’m glad the weregopher burrowed into me as I lay in my yurt at my company’s bimonthly offsite. It’s really an extension of that #hybrid life, forcing a kind of flexibility to my working style that has made me more agile, inventive, and aggressive. Thriving with a weregopher in my chest cavity has made me a better project manager, better teammate, better #thoughtleader, and a better employee all around.
Do you live alongside a moonbeast? Let’s chat! ⬇️ I’m always down for a coffee… if the moon’s right 🌙 😉