Working Beside the Flame - The Ember Walk 01 17

Описание: It’s early. Damp mist gathers near the ground and hugs at my ankles with each step. The air carries a faint grit from yesterday’s oils on the road. My breath lands steady, but it’s also shallow. I notice how I keep glancing to the side, as if expecting someone else to be walking with me. My body feels aware of proximity even when I’m alone. There’s no tension in that awareness. Just acknowledgment that I’m not the only one near the flame anymore.
You’re joining me on The Ember Walk, where curiosity meets motion. I’m David Dysart. Together we’ll take a few minutes to step through one idea that shapes the craft of enrollment.
Working beside the flame is different than feeding it alone. When it’s only you, the rhythm is simple. You make the call, you swing the hammer, you adjust your approach without asking permission. But the moment someone else steps toward the fire with their own intent, the craft changes. If you force it to stay true to your rhythm, you’ll burn both of you. If you back away to avoid friction, the flame drops below working heat.
True collaboration at the forge happens in the uncomfortable middle. Where you keep your stance without forcing theirs. Where you listen to their motion without abandoning your own. This isn’t about compromise. Compromise weakens metal. This is about balance through tension.
One of the hardest lessons I learned early in collaboration was that partnership begins the moment you resist fixing someone else’s swing. I used to jump in fast. A colleague would move slower or approach from a different direction and I’d assume they didn’t understand the stakes. More often than I want to admit, they weren’t wrong. They were just working with information I hadn’t bothered to hear.
Years back, during a high stakes yield push, a teammate suggested holding back an email we’d already queued because they felt the timing was too aggressive for the audience we were trying to reach. I almost dismissed her concern. I had built the flow. I thought I understood urgency better. For whatever reason, I stayed quiet long enough to ask why she felt that way. She didn’t talk about data. She talked about students’ emotional volatility that week. I hadn’t considered that because I was looking at the numbers, not the timing of their distractions. We adjusted the send date. I was wrong. They saw it before I did. Working beside the flame means being willing to acknowledge when you’re not the only one who understands heat.
Collaboration is not soft. It is disciplined presence with someone who cares enough to challenge you. It doesn’t reduce strength. It distributes it.
Today, notice where someone else is already working near the flame. Ask yourself if you’re protecting your rhythm or strengthening the forge. Choose one moment to listen before you correct. And one moment to hold your stance without surrendering intent. Let your spark speak, and let us know in the comments or DM me. How did that project turn out?
Let your pace settle into the awareness that others may walk beside you even when you can’t see them. Heat is shared more often than it’s declared.
And that’s The Ember Walk. The forge is yours now. Go make something worth the heat.