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<h2 style="white-space:pre-line">Creative Writing</h2>
This is where I share my creative writing, reflections, essays, and explorations that emerge from lived experience, curiosity, and the quiet spaces in between. Some pieces capture moments of transition, questions I’m working through, or observations about life, work, and the world. Others are experiments in thought, memory, or imagination.
Many of these writings are shared through my newsletter, where I can write more freely and dive into ideas without filters. Here, I also plan to expand and organize other pieces, so you can explore them at your own pace to linger, reflect, or simply witness.
This is not work created to perform or persuade. It is a record of attention, honesty, and thinking out loud. You are welcome to read, pause, and take what resonates with you.

Creative writing at home by female hands enjoying a calm, peaceful day off indoors. Woman making notes in a journal, expressing her feelings and thoughts while making a note of a personal experience

Recent blog posts

The articles you’ll find here are a collection of pieces I originally wrote in 2024 and first published on LinkedIn. I now write primarily on Substack and archive those pieces here as well. Together, they form a living record of thoughts, experiences, and transitions.

You can find me at: 
https://www.linkedin.com/in/dorotacastillo/
and 
https://substack.com/@dorotaww

Written so far

Orignal article was posted on <a data-mce-href="https://dorotaww.substack.com/p/the-bunny" href="https://dorotaww.substack.com/p/the-bunny">Substack </a>on 4/24/2026On the ones who find a way to sit with you stillMonday was a good day.I posted something on LinkedIn, my perception about what to do when everything is urgent. The post moved. Comments, conversations, momentum. The kind of day that reminds you why you’re doing this.Then the week did what weeks do.A colleague, also building something of her own, sat me down and pushed on my message. Not unkindly. She’s trying to help. But when someone asks you to dig deeper into what you’re selling, you find out quickly how much digging is left. Doubt crept in. Then resentment, which I’ve learned to take seriously, resentment usually means something real got touched. The flat days followed. Wednesday. Thursday. The kind of days where you don’t post, don’t reach out, don’t have the words.I am standing at a threshold. Something is either arriving or I’m about to decide what I’m walking toward. Both feel true at the same time. Both feel enormous.And today, Friday morning, I sat down at the table by the window to have my breakfast.<figure id="figure-fuodxipgvmod7lu4t"><img id="fuodxipgvmod7lu4t" src="https://cdn.durable.co/covers/36Gn1vgOmTGGQvjXc1iD3lcsYUTVU2RM2eqGFYkbsoNcFL5WjbQ8U6hoTdkBbupK.jpg" alt="" title="" class="object-cover bg-gray-100 rounded-2xl md:rounded-3xl lg:rounded-4xl" style="aspect-ratio: 16/9; object-position: center center;" data-corners="default" data-aspect="16:9" data-caption="" data-positionx="undefined" data-positiony="undefined" data-fullwidth="false" data-mce-src="https://cdn.durable.co/covers/36Gn1vgOmTGGQvjXc1iD3lcsYUTVU2RM2eqGFYkbsoNcFL5WjbQ8U6hoTdkBbupK.jpg" data-mce-style="aspect-ratio: 16/9; object-position: center center;"></figure>I’ve been sitting here a lot during my sabbatical. Eight months in, I’ve learned things about this spot. How the light comes through in the morning, which birds show up first, what the trees look like right now in late April when everything is that specific shade of green that only lasts a few weeks. I notice things here I wouldn’t have noticed a year ago. Somewhere in these eight months I became someone who pays attention differently.My white dog settled next to me.And then, on the other side of the glass, maybe two feet away from me and one foot from her — a bunny.<figure id="figure-j68b36dm1amod7mbhd"><img id="j68b36dm1amod7mbhd" src="https://cdn.durable.co/covers/22cmGzPsYGB5KfU55MwonaNxXpQESJqqmZKdP0doDhgE0nVdF2EebWjXpyRKYgBB.jpg" alt="" title="" class="object-cover bg-gray-100 rounded-2xl md:rounded-3xl lg:rounded-4xl" style="aspect-ratio: 16/9; object-position: center center;" data-corners="default" data-aspect="16:9" data-caption="" data-positionx="undefined" data-positiony="undefined" data-fullwidth="false" data-mce-src="https://cdn.durable.co/covers/22cmGzPsYGB5KfU55MwonaNxXpQESJqqmZKdP0doDhgE0nVdF2EebWjXpyRKYgBB.jpg" data-mce-style="aspect-ratio: 16/9; object-position: center center;"></figure>We have dogs. Two of them. There are no bunnies in this backyard. And yet there he was, still and unhurried, not looking at me exactly, not looking away, just present in the way that small creatures sometimes are when they have decided, for reasons of their own, that this is where they will be for a while.Neither dog moved. Neither dog made a sound.I just watched him.Something about the bunny reached into childhood. A soft, half-formed thing, my grandfather, bunnies in cages, the feeling of small warm weight in my hands. I have very few memories from those early years. Since the sabbatical they’ve been returning slowly, on their own schedule, only when I’m open like this. I don’t fully know why it was him I felt in that moment. I just know I did. I started tearing up before I even understood why.He just sat there. Then he hopped, unhurried, a little further down the path. Stayed there another five minutes. Not going anywhere.Then the bunny went up the hill, one flash, and gone.And the moment he disappeared, my other dog appeared. As if on cue. She came to me, touched my hand, looked into my eyes, checked my energy the way dogs do when they already know. She didn’t chase what had just left. She just turned toward me. You still here? Good.She was part of it. I’m sure of that. The whole thing was one piece. The stillness, the bunny, and then her, walking me gently back into the room.A year ago I wouldn’t have given another thought. Georgia has bunnies. It wandered in, it left.But the sabbatical did something I didn’t entirely plan for. It made me permeable. I move slower now. I receive things; signs, stillness, the particular quality of a morning when nothing is scheduled and something small sits outside your window and doesn’t ask anything of you.Birds are messages now. The slow morning is a message. The bunny was a message.I don’t know exactly what it said. Maybe it didn’t need to say anything specific. Maybe my grandfather just wanted to sit with me for a few minutes, in the only form available to him now, on a Friday when I needed it.The sign on my wall says Stay awhile.He did.<figure id="figure-9wbtmlkwzomod7mrfw"><img id="9wbtmlkwzomod7mrfw" src="https://cdn.durable.co/covers/2dGBORezeeTfBm4B99kUem1lgISGoVZ5kq6mF0hTUiHYII5RiLHKJAHGg1mLx9tq.jpg" alt="" title="" class="object-cover bg-gray-100 rounded-2xl md:rounded-3xl lg:rounded-4xl" style="aspect-ratio: 3/2; object-position: 10% 25%;" data-corners="default" data-aspect="3:2" data-caption="" data-positionX="10%" data-positionY="25%" data-fullWidth="false"/></figure>

The Bunny

Original post written for <a data-mce-href="https://substack.com/home/post/p-194530887" href="https://substack.com/home/post/p-194530887">Substack </a>on 4/17/2026What a baseball game taught me about the trace we leave behindThere’s a certain kind of validation you can’t manufacture. You can’t script it, you can’t prompt it. It just lands, usually when you weren’t looking for it.The invitation arrived out of nowhere. My former company’s annual outing (a Braves game) and I was on the list as a plus-one. The kind of event I used to organize around, show up to, be fully present at and then one day, simply wasn’t part of anymore.When the invitation came, I hesitated for a moment. Should I? Would it be strange? But then I reminded myself: I left on my own terms. Good terms. And some of those people, my former direct reports, my colleagues, had become something closer to real friendships over time. Several of them had since been promoted or moved into broader roles. I was genuinely proud of them. I said yes.The timing was interesting. That Tuesday at the game, the following day I had a meeting that could shift the direction of my next chapter. I didn’t know yet how it would go. But Tuesday wasn’t the day to think about that.My friend met me at the entrance to the private section. And before I even made it ten steps inside, it started. Big eyes. Wide smiles. Hugs. What are you doing here? Wait! Did you rejoin? Am I missing something?I spent the first hour just walking around. Saying hello to the VP team, catching up with people I’d worked closely with, connecting with others I knew less well but had always liked. Everywhere I went, there was warmth. More than I expected, if I’m honest with myself.And then something surprised me.I was being introduced to a newer employees, people who joined after I left, who had never once worked with me. And the response when they heard my name: Oh my god, I’ve heard so much about you. I saw your photo in the directory.I didn’t know what to do with that. I stood there for a second, genuinely surprised.A few weeks earlier, I had written a piece about leading without authority, about how the real measure of leadership isn’t the title, it’s the trace you leave behind. Whether people move differently because of how you showed up. Whether the culture carries something of you in it, even after you’re gone.I always struggled to say that out loud about myself. It felt presumptuous. Like claiming something I hadn’t fully earned the right to claim.But that afternoon at the ballpark, I didn’t have to say it. It was just there. In the hugs, in the introductions, in the face of someone who knew my name before we’d ever met.The next day, in that important meeting, the question came up. How do you lead people? What does that look like for you?I didn’t reach for frameworks. I didn’t explain my philosophy or list my methods. I told the story of walking into that room.Because sometimes the proof arrives right when you need it. Quiet, unhurried, wearing baseball caps and holding beers. And all you have to do is receive it.<figure id="figure-lzt5pza9rrmo383w97"><img id="lzt5pza9rrmo383w97" src="https://cdn.durable.co/blocks/10CxN9Q2IGhNXUTWIovJU7eWLQxuWtvvvlJT50uYZk3xP1yvFcCD7Qmpd8x9h0La.png" alt="" title="" class="object-cover bg-gray-100 rounded-2xl md:rounded-3xl lg:rounded-4xl" style="aspect-ratio: 1/1; object-position: 40% 60%;" data-corners="default" data-aspect="1:1" data-caption="" data-positionX="40%" data-positionY="60%" data-fullWidth="false"/></figure>

The Proof Showed Up Uninvited

Original article posted on <a data-mce-href="https://substack.com/home/post/p-193805818" href="https://substack.com/home/post/p-193805818">Substack</a> 3/10/2026The fleas came first.We were mid-cycle on the treatment for our two dogs. Every pet owner knows the drill: specific timing, a protocol you have to follow or it doesn’t work but this time it did not work! So I scrubbed. The dogs, the floors, the furniture, the baseboards. All of it. Twice! The kind of task that arrives with no interest in your schedule.<figure id="figure-1ylp60zxdmnxmf4rb"><img id="1ylp60zxdmnxmf4rb" src="https://cdn.durable.co/covers/39wAxtcRMq7uVz6Yeu0v5ARlAqeQqfVsZJ4AiLS6p4EbNKhtKLBYNrnX12RGvUZq.jpg" alt="" title="" class="object-cover bg-gray-100 rounded-2xl md:rounded-3xl lg:rounded-4xl" style="aspect-ratio: 16/9; object-position: center center;" data-corners="default" data-aspect="16:9" data-caption="" data-positionx="undefined" data-positiony="undefined" data-fullwidth="false" data-mce-src="https://cdn.durable.co/covers/39wAxtcRMq7uVz6Yeu0v5ARlAqeQqfVsZJ4AiLS6p4EbNKhtKLBYNrnX12RGvUZq.jpg" data-mce-style="aspect-ratio: 16/9; object-position: center center;"></figure>&nbsp;Eight months ago this would have undone me. Not the work itself but the interruption of it. I would have been furious, powered through grinding my teeth, and collapsed somewhere on the other side. This time it just felt like an unexpected chore.&nbsp; We were also dog-sitting. A neighbor’s dog, five days, so three dogs total. We had him over before. Cute pup, easy to navigate but for some reason this time it felt harder. But then when his owner came to pick him up on the fifth day, he walked over, looked at her, and went straight back to his bed not wanting to leave. I actually laughed.He’d found rhythm in our place. Apparently he liked it.I’ve never seen that before. A dog choosing to stay. I stood there looking at him for a moment and didn’t entirely know what to make of it.&nbsp; &nbsp;<figure id="figure-20zjf1tovmnxmgby2" class=""><img id="20zjf1tovmnxmgby2" src="https://cdn.durable.co/covers/233XdRbfEnQrpSzcTj7Wx4jhlzwowdDwUvytluApdS6jcGCoYU4cQ6tZCMOJaTPO.jpg" alt="" title="" class="object-cover bg-gray-100 rounded-2xl md:rounded-3xl lg:rounded-4xl" style="aspect-ratio: 16/9; object-position: center center;" data-corners="default" data-aspect="16:9" data-caption="" data-positionx="undefined" data-positiony="undefined" data-fullwidth="false" data-mce-src="https://cdn.durable.co/covers/233XdRbfEnQrpSzcTj7Wx4jhlzwowdDwUvytluApdS6jcGCoYU4cQ6tZCMOJaTPO.jpg" data-mce-style="aspect-ratio: 16/9; object-position: center center;"></figure>To add to the pile, my husband and I, we started going to the gym regularly about 3 weeks ago. First time ever. Which comes with its own chaos. A new food regiment, a new schedule, and a body that has opinions about all of it. Loud ones. The kind you feel in places you forgot existed. This week it felt overwhelming and harder then before - I guess, the honeymoon period is over.&nbsp; On top of this the things started moving on the job front.The recruiter calls were good this week. Several of them, which hasn’t happened all at once like this before. Something felt different. I kept finding myself talking about <a data-mce-href="http://www.anthilles.com" href="http://www.anthilles.com">Anthilles</a>. Not just me, my background, the resume version of who I am. The company. What it does, who it’s for, what it’s built for. That shift is recent and it matters.But after the day of calls my brain would hit some invisible wall and just stop. I could feel it arriving. That particular exhaustion that isn’t about sleep, it’s about bandwidth. And instead of filing it away and plowing forward like I used to, I took the dogs out. Stood in the sun. Once I lay down on the couch in the middle of the afternoon and slept for forty minutes.The version of me from two years ago would have found that unacceptable.I’ve also been thinking about LinkedIn. I post carousels, an organized, educational content, built to demonstrate expertise. They haven’t been getting much traction. But when I write about what’s actually hard, what I don’t have figured out yet, people show up. I’m genuinely not sure what to do with that information. Whether it’s the algorithm or something more true about how we actually reach each other.Maybe both.&nbsp; And then, somewhere in the middle of all of it, I had a conversation with a colleague. An executive coach I’d connected with on LinkedIn. One of those conversations you don’t plan for and can’t quite explain afterward except to say that something shifted.He reflected back what he saw. The way I was holding this transition, staying open to what was coming in without abandoning what I’m building. He didn’t tell me what to do. He just named what was actually happening. And something in me that had started to chase, started to rush toward the next thing, just... stopped.A few days later another recruiter reached out who works specifically with PE-backed companies, organizations in transition, exactly the environments where this kind of work creates the most impact. It felt like an echo of that conversation. Like the patience had already started returning something.I don’t know what the path looks like yet. I’m not sure I’m supposed to yet.&nbsp; So that’s the week. Fleas. A gym. Three dogs and one who didn’t want to go home. Recruiter calls where I finally talked about the company, not just myself. A couch nap I didn’t feel guilty about. And one conversation that quietly put me back on the ground.I know this piece has no real arms and legs. It’s a hodgepodge of things that just happened. No reflections, no lessons.So I’m letting it all go. What was hard and tiring, I release. What was unexpected and wonderful, the teachers who showed up without warning, I hold with gratitude.And this weekend, when the sun shines and warms the earth, I will simply ground myself and trim the azalea bushes in the morning.And maybe buy myself a bike.<figure id="figure-uh0zxmuuzmnxmhiuj"><img id="uh0zxmuuzmnxmhiuj" src="https://cdn.durable.co/blocks/1euL1QMvgJT2EAuEpy9mZbTw16yGvwUMCj3Bz3IhbEEv3cRAaCtrcfLDrHFcRglX.jpg" alt="" title="" class="object-cover bg-gray-100 rounded-2xl md:rounded-3xl lg:rounded-4xl" style="aspect-ratio: 1/1; object-position: center center;" data-corners="default" data-aspect="1:1" data-caption="" data-positionX="undefined" data-positionY="undefined" data-fullWidth="false"/></figure>

The Fleas Came First

Original article created on <a data-mce-href="https://dorotaww.substack.com/p/the-forest-doesnt-know-about-your?r=1up3dt&amp;utm_campaign=post&amp;utm_medium=web&amp;triedRedirect=true" href="https://dorotaww.substack.com/p/the-forest-doesnt-know-about-your?r=1up3dt&amp;utm_campaign=post&amp;utm_medium=web&amp;triedRedirect=true">Substack</a> 4.04.2026El Yunque, Puerto Rico. And why I stood still.We arrived late.That’s how it started. Late to El Yunque, the only tropical rainforest in the US National Forest system, the only one in all of North America, and already there were hundreds of people on the trail ahead of us. All of them moving fast. All of them heading toward the waterfall. Toward the swimming hole under the waterfall. Toward the thing they came to see.&nbsp; I almost did the same.There’s a particular kind of anxiety that lives in transitions. I know it well right now. A new job on the horizon. A new chapter. The kind of change that makes you feel like you should be moving, deciding, preparing. Like standing still is the same as falling behind.But something stopped me on that trail.<figure id="figure-f6vy6ilzkmnj1nluj"><img id="f6vy6ilzkmnj1nluj" src="https://cdn.durable.co/covers/fT3q985X8OMBN7h7CnWoWMNaWHbbvZukVQL7igYHJZyWMOiMHld4CbKxLBV291sl.jpg" alt="" title="" class="object-cover bg-gray-100 rounded-2xl md:rounded-3xl lg:rounded-4xl" style="aspect-ratio: 1/1; object-position: center center;" data-corners="default" data-aspect="1:1" data-caption="" data-positionx="undefined" data-positiony="undefined" data-fullwidth="false" data-mce-src="https://cdn.durable.co/covers/fT3q985X8OMBN7h7CnWoWMNaWHbbvZukVQL7igYHJZyWMOiMHld4CbKxLBV291sl.jpg" data-mce-style="aspect-ratio: 1/1; object-position: center center;"></figure>I don’t know if it was the light coming through the canopy. Or the sound of the forest that is loud in a way that isn’t noise. Or maybe it was just the sheer scale of it. Trees that have been growing for longer than I’ve been anxious about anything.I stopped.I looked up.And for a moment, I wasn’t someone with a next chapter. I was just a visitor. A small one.Everything stopped.Not metaphorically. Actually stopped. The anxiety. The mental tabs I had open. The running list of things to figure out before the new phase starts. The noise that lives in my head when I’m in a transition. All of it just... went quiet.What took its place was peace. Real peace. The kind that settles into your body, not just your mind. I felt it in my chest. In my shoulders. In the way I was breathing without thinking about breathing.I was in the right place. At the right time. On the right timeline. Mine. Not ahead of it, not behind it. Exactly where I was supposed to be.I don’t say that lightly. I’m not someone who uses words like that easily. But that’s what I felt. A deep, bodily knowing that everything was in its right order. That I didn’t need to rush toward anything to prove that.Our nervous systems are not designed for the pace we ask of them. Constant decisions. Constant stimulation. Constant becoming. We don’t give them permission to reset. And then we wonder why we feel depleted even when things are going well.That forest reset me. In twenty minutes on a trail, it did what months of pushing forward couldn’t.There is something humbling about standing in a place that doesn’t need you. That was here before you. That will be here after. El Yunque has survived hurricanes, including Maria, which devastated it in 2017. It came back. Not the same, never the same, but alive. Green. Dense. Completely itself.I put my hand on a tree. <figure id="figure-zzsc4bf2jemnj1oe26"><img id="zzsc4bf2jemnj1oe26" src="https://cdn.durable.co/covers/20TVKhSwBLKrP5Dr8V8OVyuT2tQZjfDOiDrheqxLuzaEatMrfKSW16mlUEHydVG6.jpg" alt="" title="" class="object-cover bg-gray-100 rounded-2xl md:rounded-3xl lg:rounded-4xl" style="aspect-ratio: 1/1; object-position: center center;" data-corners="default" data-aspect="1:1" data-caption="" data-positionx="undefined" data-positiony="undefined" data-fullwidth="false" data-mce-src="https://cdn.durable.co/covers/20TVKhSwBLKrP5Dr8V8OVyuT2tQZjfDOiDrheqxLuzaEatMrfKSW16mlUEHydVG6.jpg" data-mce-style="aspect-ratio: 1/1; object-position: center center;"></figure>I don’t know why we do that. Touch old things. Maybe to feel that something has held on. Maybe to borrow a little of whatever it knows.This tree didn’t know about my transition. About the new path. About the version of myself I’m still becoming. It just stood there, massive, unhurried, covered in moss and vines and the evidence of surviving everything that had come its way.I stood there too. For longer than made sense if you had somewhere to be.<figure id="figure-htq4nln1xlmnj1p12i"><img id="htq4nln1xlmnj1p12i" src="https://cdn.durable.co/covers/19y9XUZHuMl9NJXFUi3BJ96QevKpxpV88T9uSOvybSceFQ25LMQzaBfRKPokcRiY.jpg" alt="" title="" class="object-cover bg-gray-100 rounded-2xl md:rounded-3xl lg:rounded-4xl" style="aspect-ratio: 1/1; object-position: 100% 75%;" data-corners="default" data-aspect="1:1" data-caption="" data-positionx="100%" data-positiony="75%" data-fullwidth="false" data-mce-src="https://cdn.durable.co/covers/19y9XUZHuMl9NJXFUi3BJ96QevKpxpV88T9uSOvybSceFQ25LMQzaBfRKPokcRiY.jpg" data-mce-style="aspect-ratio: 1/1; object-position: 100% 75%;"></figure>Here is what I know about transitions: they make you future-tense. Everything becomes about what’s next, what’s possible, what’s required. Your attention collapses into a narrow corridor pointed at the horizon.But you can’t lead from there. Not really.The best leaders I’ve seen, the ones who actually move organizations through change, aren’t the ones running fastest toward the waterfall. They’re the ones who pause. Who look up. Who let the moment ask something of them before they impose their agenda on it.That pause isn’t passivity. It’s the opposite.It’s presence. And presence is where everything actually begins.I walked out of El Yunque sweaty and a little muddy and deeply, unexpectedly settled. Not because anything had changed. The new job search was still there. The uncertainty was still there. My list of things to do was exactly as long.But I had remembered something. That I am not just a professional navigating a transition. I am a woman. A human. A visitor on this earth who gets to touch ancient trees in a rainforest in Puerto Rico and feel small in the best possible way.That’s not a distraction from the work. That’s what makes the work worth doing.&nbsp; At <a data-mce-href="http://www.anthilles.com" href="http://www.anthilles.com">Anthilles Consulting</a>, we work with leaders navigating exactly these moments — the transitions that ask you to be both decisive and grounded. If that resonates, I’d love to hear from you.<figure id="figure-ux175uegkmnj1qbkj"><img id="ux175uegkmnj1qbkj" src="https://cdn.durable.co/covers/1jkqQGFODHCJtUL9OHezRPxKsMLlw47g2UDBApiM8HrQuBuk9PPXHEviz6wE3j1N.jpg" alt="" title="" class="object-cover bg-gray-100 rounded-2xl md:rounded-3xl lg:rounded-4xl" style="aspect-ratio: 1/1; object-position: center center;" data-corners="default" data-aspect="1:1" data-caption="" data-positionX="undefined" data-positionY="undefined" data-fullWidth="false"/></figure>

The Forest Doesn't Know About Your Next Chapter

Original article written for <a data-mce-href="https://substack.com/home/post/p-192229142" href="https://substack.com/home/post/p-192229142">Substack </a>on 3.27.26The Government Failed. The Workers Didn’tIt started with Bad Bunny.My husband and I were watching the Super Bowl halftime show, and somewhere in the middle of it, we looked at each other and realized we had never been to Puerto Rico. That felt wrong. The show was extraordinary, but it was also controversial, the way anything becomes controversial now when it asks you to remember that Puerto Ricans are American citizens, that the island exists, that it has been underfunded and overlooked and hit by storms and is still, somehow, standing. We didn’t want to just watch. We wanted to show up. We booked the trip.<figure id="figure-32mck1o7xlmnerlru6"><img id="32mck1o7xlmnerlru6" src="https://cdn.durable.co/blocks/34ntqUTqfnJnt3DNjnlBh0OKuJfYkdEVljo76RVa2tH2uSNjj0HyAjqshoU0X8PR.jpg" alt="" title="" class="object-cover bg-gray-100 rounded-2xl md:rounded-3xl lg:rounded-4xl" style="aspect-ratio: 1/1; object-position: undefined undefined;" data-corners="default" data-aspect="1:1" data-caption="" data-positionx="undefined" data-positiony="undefined" data-fullwidth="false" data-mce-src="https://cdn.durable.co/blocks/34ntqUTqfnJnt3DNjnlBh0OKuJfYkdEVljo76RVa2tH2uSNjj0HyAjqshoU0X8PR.jpg" data-mce-style="aspect-ratio: 1/1; object-position: undefined undefined;"></figure>&nbsp;What we didn’t know when we booked was that by the time we traveled, we’d be in the middle of a partial government shutdown. TSA workers, underpaid always, now unpaid, were leaving in numbers. Who works thirty days without a paycheck? The week before we left, the news was reporting three-hour lines, then four, then five, then six. And then, a few days before we flew, the new announcement: ICE agents would be stationed at airports.We are both American citizens. That used to feel like a sentence that ended there. It doesn’t anymore. I grew up in post-communist Eastern Europe, in a place where the work of entire generations was built around one idea: this must never happen again. The Holocaust. The occupation. The slow dismantling of who people are allowed to be. History was not a subject we studied from a distance. It was a warning we carried close. The America I arrived in didn’t feel like that warning. It felt like its opposite. I don’t know how to explain what it is to watch that change, to absorb it in real time. It sits in the body differently than grief. It’s more like vertigo.We arrived at five in the morning. The domestic terminal was already busy, so we walked it, assessed, and made a decision: international terminal, fifteen minutes away. When we got there, the crowd was larger than I expected. We needed to check a bag, which meant two lines: one for check-in, then TSA security. As we joined the first queue I was already scanning, already thinking about how to move through this efficiently. That’s when I noticed a sign: TSA Pre-Check holders could check bags in a separate lane as long as they had the right tag. I found a worker and asked, and mid-conversation she told me to move; they were just opening a new register. We were there in seconds, third in line, bags checked in twenty minutes.Then came the TSA Pre-Check lane, which had become a general line that morning. We stood in it for a full hour, eating the sandwiches we’d packed before dawn, and honestly, we were fine. We were laughing. The line was long but it was moving, and something about that felt important. Despite everything, something was working.And then we got to her. A TSA worker stationed near the scanning booths, not just standing there but announcing, passport out, boarding pass ready, laptops, shoes, liquids, and everything she said cut through the noise and actually landed. People knew what to do. People were doing it. The line kept moving because she was making it move, reading the crowd, adjusting, staying completely present to what the moment needed. I don’t know how to describe the quality of her presence except to say she was leading without a title, without any formal authority over anyone in that line and it organized everything around her. When I reached her, I stopped and touched her arm and said thank you. She smiled and kept moving people through.One and a half hours after we arrived at that terminal, we were on the other side, walking, stretching our legs, finding somewhere to sit before the flight.Here is what I kept thinking about afterward. This chaos was manufactured. It didn’t have to exist. It exists because of choices made by people with enormous power who do not understand, or do not care, how organizations actually function, how people actually work, what it costs in human terms to run a system on fear and scarcity and public humiliation. And yet the workers showed up. Unpaid, or barely paid, or knowing their colleagues had already walked away, they showed up anyway, and they moved thousands of people through a broken system with competence and, in some cases, with real grace.I watched the lines in front of me, and almost no one said thank you. Not to the woman directing traffic, not to the man stopping and starting the flow to keep things moving, not to any of them. I noticed that. I notice it every time. There is something important in the gap between what those workers were given, a failed system, no support, impossible conditions, and what they produced. That gap is not small. It is, in fact, the whole thing. It is the proof that leadership is not what comes from the top. It is what people choose to bring to the work regardless of what’s coming from the top. When formal leadership fails, and it fails constantly, and spectacularly, and sometimes deliberately, it is the people on the ground who decide whether things hold together. They are not waiting to be told. They know what good looks like. They build it anyway. That is not a small thing. That is everything.At <a data-mce-href="http://www.anthilles.com" href="http://www.anthilles.com" data-mce-selected="inline-boundary">Anthilles Consulting</a>, we work with leaders navigating the moments when the system isn’t giving you what you need and you still have to move people forward. If this landed somewhere, I’d love to hear it.

The Government Failed. The Workers Didn’t

Original article written for <a data-mce-href="https://dorotaww.substack.com/p/the-question-that-stayed-with-me" href="https://dorotaww.substack.com/p/the-question-that-stayed-with-me">Substack</a> 3.20.2026Because some answers take longer than the conversationSomeone asked me recently how to lead without authority.More specifically, how do you get people to do things, to actually move, when you have no formal power over them?I answered. I said something true. But two days later the question is still sitting with me, turning over quietly, the way questions do when you know you left something important on the table.And the image that came to me, not during the conversation, but after, in the stillness, was my sons.&nbsp; They’re grown now. They live outside our home. But I keep going back to who they were in high school, and what I watched happen at our dinner table.They both played sports. One played football and wrestling. The other lacrosse and wrestling. And they would come home and tell us things, stories from the field, from the mat, and I would sit there across from them, food going cold on my plate, just completely arrested by what I was hearing.How they handled a conflict inside the team. How they showed up for a teammate after a brutal loss, or after someone made the error that cost them the point, cost them the win. The way they described it, the instinct they had for when to speak and when to just be there, it wasn’t something anyone had taught them. It was something they had grown into, quietly, through caring about the people next to them.<figure id="figure-jc1zp6o7ommyxlfqx"><img id="jc1zp6o7ommyxlfqx" src="https://cdn.durable.co/blocks/1bkmYhyYoO2frJvI5mGA1jz0qI6hGb1DYy6Kxgo7n1efZUGxVgXFvo3BtxUph0Ny.png" alt="" title="" class="object-cover bg-gray-100 rounded-2xl md:rounded-3xl lg:rounded-4xl" style="aspect-ratio: 1/1; object-position: center center;" data-corners="default" data-aspect="1:1" data-caption="" data-positionx="undefined" data-positiony="undefined" data-fullwidth="false" data-mce-src="https://cdn.durable.co/blocks/1bkmYhyYoO2frJvI5mGA1jz0qI6hGb1DYy6Kxgo7n1efZUGxVgXFvo3BtxUph0Ny.png" data-mce-style="aspect-ratio: 1/1; object-position: center center;"></figure>No title. No authority. Just presence, and the trust that had built up around it.And I remember thinking: this is it. This is actually it.The proof was in the house. Our home was always full with their friends spilling in on weekends, friendships forming that have lasted long past graduation, long past the teams that made them. That’s what real leadership leaves behind. Not compliance. People who want to stay close to you.&nbsp; Then I turned that thought toward my own work.I’ve spent years moving across organizations, helping departments get a handle on new processes, cleaning up old ones, leading teams through implementations and changes that disrupted everything they were used to. Consulting work, mostly. No direct reports. No formal authority over the people I was working with.And I kept hearing the same things.I wish you were my boss.I wish I worked for you.Are you hiring in your department anytime soon?And then the quiet version of it, people appearing in my doorway who had no reason to be there. No organizational connection to me. Just someone who needed to think something through and felt safe enough to come. Questions about conflict. About how to handle a difficult situation. About growth and what to do next.That’s what it looks like. That’s what leading without authority actually looks like.Not people complying. People choosing.&nbsp; So here is what I wish I had said in that conversation.Leadership without authority is not a technique. It’s not a communication style or a stakeholder management framework. It is a way of being with people that makes them feel, at a level they can’t always name, that they are safe.Safe to make a mistake in front of you. Safe to say the thing they’re actually afraid of. Safe to bring an idea that might be half-formed, or wrong, or exactly right. Safe to be the full, complicated, uncertain human being they are at work, which is the same human being they are everywhere else.It’s sitting with someone in their fear of change instead of pushing them past it. It’s listening; really listening, not listening while you prepare your response, and letting what they say actually land. It’s respecting what someone knows, even when what they know is inconvenient for the timeline. It’s caring enough about the person to tell them the truth.When you do that consistently, when people experience you that way over time, something happens that no authority structure can manufacture.They don’t do things because you told them to. They do things because they want to. Because the work feels worth doing. Because the team feels worth showing up for. Because you feel worth showing up for.You stop making people move. They just move.&nbsp; That’s what my sons understood on the field when they were seventeen.That’s what I’ve been doing, in my own way, for twenty years.And that’s the answer I should have given.&nbsp; Anthilles Consulting works with leaders navigating exactly this, the moments when formal authority isn’t enough, and something more real has to take its place. If this brought something up for you, I’d love to hear it.<figure id="figure-2ilksx5x7immyxmycz"><img id="2ilksx5x7immyxmycz" src="https://cdn.durable.co/blocks/153vLTdm0lr88jeQk4kSkodpffDFbg1pR9sN1nfxJv5X9VIqOl2BqwjXtWGun7ZR.jpg" alt="" title="" class="object-cover bg-gray-100 rounded-2xl md:rounded-3xl lg:rounded-4xl" style="aspect-ratio: 1/1; object-position: undefined undefined;" data-corners="default" data-aspect="1:1" data-caption="" data-positionX="undefined" data-positionY="undefined" data-fullWidth="false"/></figure>

The Question That Stayed With Me

Original article was created for <a data-mce-href="https://substack.com/home/post/p-190845725" href="https://substack.com/home/post/p-190845725">Substack</a> on 3/13/2026On the words that diminish, the words that hold, and what we owe the people in our care.I was getting ready for the hike in Poland when it happened.The comment was small. It always is. “Do you have another sweater? You’ll be cold.” Said in love, I have no doubt about that. But landing, as it always does, like a gentle correction. Like I hadn’t quite gotten it right. Like I still needed managing.&nbsp;I didn’t react the way I used to. Six months of a sabbatical and real inner work had changed something in my nervous system. The comment arrived and, for the first time I can remember, just passed through. I stayed warm. I stayed present. I let her love me in the language she had.But sitting there, I found myself thinking about something else entirely.How many leaders speak to their people exactly this way?* * *We do it without realizing. The small correction in the meeting, delivered in front of others, that was meant to help but landed as a verdict. The feedback that opens with what’s wrong before it ever acknowledges what’s right. The tone that says, underneath the words: I’m not sure you’ve got this. Let me fix it for you.“Do you have another sweater?” is not malicious. Neither is most of the language that slowly erodes someone’s confidence at work. It comes from care, from high standards, from wanting things done well. But intent does not determine impact. And when the people we lead hear those messages, drip by drip, meeting by meeting, something happens to them. They get smaller. They stop bringing ideas. They start waiting to be told rather than trusting themselves to act.We knock people down with our words far more often than we know. And we build them up far less than we think we do.I spent time in Poland with family I hadn’t seen in nearly two decades. My cousin and I talked about generational patterns, how the way we were spoken to becomes, without our awareness, the way we speak. It travels. It repeats. It shows up in our relationships, our parenting, our leadership. Until someone interrupts the pattern.That interruption is the work. And it doesn’t happen by accident.* * *My flight home had its own lesson waiting.My connection from Kraków was delayed. I missed my onward flight from Amsterdam to Atlanta. A year ago, that would have been a controlled implosion, frustration at the counter, resentment worn like a coat through the whole evening, a bad mood inflicted on anyone nearby.Instead, something different happened. I let it be what it was: an unexpected evening in a city I hadn’t seen since I was sixteen.<figure id="figure-dz4ue73rfmmp2r33w"><img id="dz4ue73rfmmp2r33w" src="https://cdn.durable.co/blocks/15XrYqd3ygsya0EUTMTvkXwwvXbUMoDVWE2c1pb4vS8ThsY3UmO8RKRzVBqc9Bmf.jpg" alt="" title="" class="object-cover bg-gray-100 rounded-2xl md:rounded-3xl lg:rounded-4xl" style="aspect-ratio: 1/1; object-position: center center;" data-corners="default" data-aspect="1:1" data-caption="" data-positionx="undefined" data-positiony="undefined" data-fullwidth="false" data-mce-src="https://cdn.durable.co/blocks/15XrYqd3ygsya0EUTMTvkXwwvXbUMoDVWE2c1pb4vS8ThsY3UmO8RKRzVBqc9Bmf.jpg" data-mce-style="aspect-ratio: 1/1; object-position: center center;"></figure>I reached out to a friend for recommendations. He gave me two places: a beautiful neighborhood café, and a no-frills bar near the red light district that locals actually go to. I walked out into the Amsterdam evening, canals lit and shimmering, weather just right, no agenda. A pint of cold beer. The best steak and fries I can remember. A long walk through streets full of life and color. Not a single moment of wishing I were somewhere else.<figure id="figure-m655r9kocammp2sjqg"><img id="m655r9kocammp2sjqg" src="https://cdn.durable.co/blocks/3b4RD6T5WJ54WHDa4rVikkqTuRmZB7kWJigLHeT93kTMws5RtGnRoEAjjInFBQkN.jpg" alt="" title="" class="object-cover bg-gray-100 rounded-2xl md:rounded-3xl lg:rounded-4xl" style="aspect-ratio: 1/1; object-position: center center;" data-corners="default" data-aspect="1:1" data-caption="" data-positionx="undefined" data-positiony="undefined" data-fullwidth="false" data-mce-src="https://cdn.durable.co/blocks/3b4RD6T5WJ54WHDa4rVikkqTuRmZB7kWJigLHeT93kTMws5RtGnRoEAjjInFBQkN.jpg" data-mce-style="aspect-ratio: 1/1; object-position: center center;"></figure>The next morning: a KLM comfort seat, good wine, ten hours to think. What had started as a disruption became one of the finest stretches of the whole trip.This is what regulation looks like in practice. Not the absence of difficulty, the ability to meet it without resistance. And it is every bit as relevant to the way we lead as it is to the way we travel.The leader who can stay steady when things go sideways, who doesn’t pass their anxiety down the org chart, who doesn’t make their team smaller with their reaction to a problem, that leader changes the room. They make it safe to bring bad news early. They make it possible for people to say “I don’t know” without fear. That is not a soft outcome. That is how organizations actually function well.* * *And then came the part that humbled me.In the Amsterdam duty free, I had carefully chosen gifts, chocolates, cheeses, things picked with specific people in mind. I loaded the bag into the overhead compartment. I deplaned in Atlanta. I left the bag on the plane.<figure id="figure-u16eapcyscmmp2tpig"><img id="u16eapcyscmmp2tpig" src="https://cdn.durable.co/blocks/362Hy5lxaIVXr9qKd21DYfpoNDBn7TtOd5Nrs5vcpbuQZWfKx1elHXFRDS6vEDdm.jpg" alt="" title="" class="object-cover bg-gray-100 rounded-2xl md:rounded-3xl lg:rounded-4xl" style="aspect-ratio: 1/1; object-position: center center;" data-corners="default" data-aspect="1:1" data-caption="" data-positionx="undefined" data-positiony="undefined" data-fullwidth="false" data-mce-src="https://cdn.durable.co/blocks/362Hy5lxaIVXr9qKd21DYfpoNDBn7TtOd5Nrs5vcpbuQZWfKx1elHXFRDS6vEDdm.jpg" data-mce-style="aspect-ratio: 1/1; object-position: center center;"></figure>Forty-five minutes later, I knew what had happened.I went to the <a data-mce-href="https://substack.com/@klmairlinesreservations871550?utm_source=global-search" href="https://substack.com/@klmairlinesreservations871550?utm_source=global-search">KLM </a>desk. They contacted the plane. The bag was already gone.What followed was one of the most instructive leadership failures I have experienced as a customer. <a data-mce-href="https://substack.com/@klmairlinesreservations871550?utm_source=global-search" href="https://substack.com/@klmairlinesreservations871550?utm_source=global-search">KLM</a> pointed me to the airport. <a data-mce-href="https://x.com/ATLairport" href="https://x.com/ATLairport">TSA</a> sent me to domestic lost and found. Domestic lost and found said they don’t handle international arrivals. The phone numbers on <a data-mce-href="https://x.com/KLM" href="https://x.com/KLM">KLM</a>’s website looped to a booking agent who told me to check with <a data-mce-href="https://x.com/ATLairport" href="https://x.com/ATLairport">local staff</a>. <a data-mce-href="https://x.com/ATLairport" href="https://x.com/ATLairport">Local staff</a> sent me back to <a data-mce-href="https://x.com/KLM" href="https://x.com/KLM">KLM</a>. Every single person was polite. Not one of them owned the problem.I spent two days trying to understand why this knocked me as flat as it did. The gifts themselves were replaceable. What I could not shake was what that experience felt like from the inside: helpless. Unmoored. Passed from desk to desk with the implicit message that my problem wasn’t quite anyone’s problem.It is the organizational version of the sweater comment. Not unkind. Just absent. No one had been trained, or perhaps given permission, to stay in the room with a person who needed help and had nowhere clear to go.Ownership is not a department. It is a posture. It is what you bring to the moment when someone is standing in front of you without a clear path forward. You don’t need to have the answer. You need to be willing to say: I don’t know either, but I am not going to hand you to someone else. We’ll figure this out.Nobody said that to me at the <a data-mce-href="https://x.com/ATLairport" href="https://x.com/ATLairport">Atlanta airport</a>. It is a small thing, and also not a small thing at all.* * *I have been sitting with all of this since I came home. Amsterdam arriving like a gift I didn’t earn. The lost chocolates. The two days it took me to come back to myself.What runs through all of it is the same thread: the words we choose, and the presence we bring, either build people up or quietly leave them smaller. At home. In the meeting room. At the service desk in a terminal.Leadership is not a title. It is the accumulation of small moments whether you stayed, whether you steadied the room, whether the person in front of you walked away feeling more capable or less.That is the work I care about. The kind that starts inside and extends outward. The kind that <a data-mce-href="http://www.anthilles.com" href="http://www.anthilles.com">Anthilles</a> was built to support, because no leader should have to figure out alone how to interrupt the patterns they inherited, and no team should be left standing in a corridor with nowhere to go.<figure id="figure-p3phssechommp2xhhn"><img id="p3phssechommp2xhhn" src="https://cdn.durable.co/blocks/30DLhLnfMCXphoJZ8fvv7ZTTCfGkKbZ3jLoA5FjtninfT4gQERl1uiC7OZuXbe3q.jpg" alt="" title="" class="object-cover bg-gray-100 rounded-2xl md:rounded-3xl lg:rounded-4xl" style="aspect-ratio: 16/9; object-position: center center;" data-corners="default" data-aspect="16:9" data-caption="" data-positionX="undefined" data-positionY="undefined" data-fullWidth="false"/></figure>

Going Back to Go Forward

Original article created for Substack on 3/07/2026What Going Home Teaches You About LeadershipBy the time you read this, I’m in Poland.I’m somewhere between a family dinner table and an emotional time machine, sitting with people I haven’t seen in 18 years, watching faces I knew as a child now etched with life, laughing at stories I’d half-forgotten, eating food that somehow still tastes exactly like I remembered.But let me start at the airport. I always seem to start at the airport.<figure id="figure-ljet5uzd7rmmp2gwej"><img id="ljet5uzd7rmmp2gwej" src="https://cdn.durable.co/blocks/371y0Pr0BJKU5szoP2brl5XQNQYAe4CpzHUSKS4FVOwqWDstZv0a7K5Zf6jvRvjX.png" alt="" title="" class="object-cover bg-gray-100 rounded-2xl md:rounded-3xl lg:rounded-4xl" style="aspect-ratio: 16/9; object-position: center center;" data-corners="default" data-aspect="16:9" data-caption="" data-positionx="undefined" data-positiony="undefined" data-fullwidth="false" data-mce-src="https://cdn.durable.co/blocks/371y0Pr0BJKU5szoP2brl5XQNQYAe4CpzHUSKS4FVOwqWDstZv0a7K5Zf6jvRvjX.png" data-mce-style="aspect-ratio: 16/9; object-position: center center;"></figure>&nbsp;A few months ago, I posted something on <a data-mce-href="https://www.linkedin.com/posts/dorotacastillo_i-just-had-a-realization-that-i-absolutely-share-7402794481605050369-dla5/?utm_source=share&amp;utm_medium=member_desktop&amp;rcm=ACoAAAH14SABgHxBnlDuGwGkdyuFh6pB8ZSYeXU" href="https://www.linkedin.com/posts/dorotacastillo_i-just-had-a-realization-that-i-absolutely-share-7402794481605050369-dla5/?utm_source=share&amp;utm_medium=member_desktop&amp;rcm=ACoAAAH14SABgHxBnlDuGwGkdyuFh6pB8ZSYeXU">LinkedIn</a> from an airport bar as I was heading to Chicago. Pre-flight drink in hand, heading to see old friends, I wrote about how airports give me this feeling I can’t quite shake: anticipation, possibility, movement. About how every person around you is in transition, heading somewhere new, leaving something behind. And how that mirrors almost exactly what happens inside organizations during mergers, acquisitions, and major change.The post resonated. A lot.But here’s what I didn’t fully say then, and what I understand better now, sitting in a completely different kind of airport, on a completely different kind of journey:There is a version of transition that isn’t about going somewhere new. It’s about going back.And going back, it turns out, might be the most clarifying thing a leader can do.<h3>What 18 Years of Distance Does</h3>I’ve been building <a data-mce-href="http://www.anthilles.com" href="http://www.anthilles.com">Anthilles Consulting</a> , working with executives navigating transformation, helping organizations bridge the gap between bold vision and human reality on the ground. I spend a lot of time thinking forward. Anticipating what’s next. Helping clients move.So this trip wasn’t just personal. It was a kind of confrontation with my own origin story.When you go years without seeing certain people, your memories quietly calcify into a version of them that feels permanent. The aunt who seemed impossibly old when you were a kid. The cousin who was five and still somehow running circles around everyone. The house that felt enormous. The neighborhood that seemed like the whole world.You keep that snapshot in amber and build your identity partly on top of it, without ever checking whether it still matches.And then you show up. And someone who was a child is now a fully formed adult with their own children. And the aunt is still there, smaller maybe, but with the same laugh. And the house is fine, but you realize the enormity was never about square footage.The world didn’t freeze. You were just far away.&nbsp; <h3>Why Leaders Stop Going Back</h3>Here’s what I’ve noticed in the executives I work with: somewhere between the climb and the arrival, many of them stop looking behind them.And I don’t mean this in a sentimental “remember your roots” way, I mean it practically.The higher you rise in an organization, the more you optimize for the next thing. The next quarter. The next acquisition. The next phase. There is enormous pressure on leaders to maintain forward momentum, to project confidence, to not look like you’re dwelling.But there’s an enormous cost to never returning to the baseline.When was the last time you went back to your frontline not to inspect, but to genuinely remember? When was the last time you sat with someone three levels below you and tried to feel what the organization felt like from their vantage point? When did you last revisit why you got into your industry in the first place not in a speech, but in the quiet of your own honest reflection?The executives who navigate transformation best, and I mean the ones who actually land their organizations in a better place than where they started, are almost always the ones who can hold both. Forward vision and backward clarity. Where we’re going and where we came from.<h3>&nbsp; The Airport Is Not the Destination</h3>I love airports. I’ve come to love them the way I love in-between moments, conversations that happen on long drives, confessions that come out during layovers, realizations that arrive when you’re too tired to filter them.There is something about being suspended between places that creates an unusual kind of honesty.In transformation work, I call this the transition gap, the space between when an organization announces a change and when that change is actually lived by the people inside it. Most leaders rush through this gap. They want to close it fast, get to the other side, declare success.But the transition gap is where the real work happens. It’s where people decide whether they trust you. It’s where culture either holds or fractures. It’s where the distance between what leadership said and what people actually experienced becomes visible.You can’t shortcut it. You can only be present in it.Reconnecting with family I haven’t seen in 18 years, there’s a transition gap here too. Eighteen years of unexperienced shared life. Eighteen years of change on both sides of the gap. The only way across isn’t a plan. It’s presence. It’s showing up and being willing to meet people where they actually are, not where your frozen memory placed them.That’s leadership too.<h3>&nbsp; What Going Home Teaches You That Going Somewhere New Cannot</h3>New destinations are exhilarating. New markets, new roles, new strategic directions, there is real value in the energy of the unfamiliar.But returning somewhere teaches you something different. It teaches you what has genuinely changed versus what you only believed had changed. It shows you which values survived the distance and which ones you quietly abandoned for convenience. It lets you measure yourself not against an imagined future self, but against who you actually were.That kind of feedback is hard to get anywhere else.At <a data-mce-href="http://www.anthilles.com" href="http://www.anthilles.com">Anthilles,</a> a lot of what I do is help leadership teams see their organizations with fresh eyes, the kind of eyes that neither idealize nor dismiss, but just see clearly. It turns out that clarity is a skill. And one of the best ways to practice it is to return somewhere you thought you already knew.The organization you’ve led for seven years. The client relationship you’ve managed for a decade. The team you promoted through three cycles. When did you last really look?<h3>&nbsp; The Drink at the Bar, Revisited</h3>Back in December, sitting at that Chicago airport bar, I wrote about how frontline employees are all sitting in their own version of the airport wondering: Where am I going? What happens to my career? Will I matter there?I still believe that. I still think the most underrated skill in organizational leadership is the ability to translate vision into personal relevance for every person who has to carry it out.But I’d add something now:The best leaders I know don’t just know where they’re taking their people. They know where they came from. They remember what it felt like before they had the answers when they were the one sitting in the departure lounge, uncertain.That memory isn’t weakness. It’s the compass that keeps you honest about what transformation actually costs the people inside it. And it’s the thing that makes you, in the end, not just a strategist, but someone worth following.&nbsp; I’ll be back home soon.Filled up with pierogi and old stories and the particular exhaustion that comes from feeling something you didn’t know you’d been missing.And I’ll sit back down at my desk, back to the work of helping executives build organizations that move forward, carrying all of it with me.The airports. The return. The 18 years in between.Because it turns out the best preparation for helping others navigate transition isn’t always knowing the destination.Sometimes it’s being willing to make the trip home.<figure id="figure-z5na88kcimmp2mh53"><img id="z5na88kcimmp2mh53" src="https://cdn.durable.co/blocks/eYA9IcEiTurbZ3dK8A2qo0iaDsRcj4rt8CaVfLuFM4GPSlitLPK2CEwFl9WEC6Zr.png" alt="" title="" class="object-cover bg-gray-100 rounded-2xl md:rounded-3xl lg:rounded-4xl" style="aspect-ratio: 16/9; object-position: center center;" data-corners="default" data-aspect="16:9" data-caption="" data-positionx="undefined" data-positiony="undefined" data-fullwidth="false" data-mce-src="https://cdn.durable.co/blocks/eYA9IcEiTurbZ3dK8A2qo0iaDsRcj4rt8CaVfLuFM4GPSlitLPK2CEwFl9WEC6Zr.png" data-mce-style="aspect-ratio: 16/9; object-position: center center;"></figure>

The Airport Bar and the 18-Year Gap

Why Serious Leaders Need Hobbies, and How I rebuilt creativity after years in executive modeArticle originally wrote for <a data-mce-href="https://dorotaww.substack.com/p/the-nervous-system-of-leadership-879?r=1up3dt&amp;utm_campaign=post&amp;utm_medium=web&amp;triedRedirect=true" href="https://dorotaww.substack.com/p/the-nervous-system-of-leadership-879?r=1up3dt&amp;utm_campaign=post&amp;utm_medium=web&amp;triedRedirect=true">Substack</a> 2.27.2026Last week, I <a data-mce-href="https://substack.com/@dorotaww/p-188628263" href="https://substack.com/@dorotaww/p-188628263">wrote</a> about the emotional shock of finding myself a true beginner again while exhibiting my artwork publicly. That experience opened a deeper question for me: if returning to novice energy is so powerful for leaders, how do we create it intentionally in our lives rather than waiting for it to happen by accident?I have been following <a data-mce-href="https://substack.com/@marinacooley?utm_source=global-search" href="https://substack.com/@marinacooley?utm_source=global-search">Marina Cooley</a> since she first started writing on Substack. One of her recurring themes is hobbies. Every time she wrote about them (the variety, the curiosity, the ease with which she seemed to move between interests), I felt something uncomfortable.Jealousy.Not because I didn’t admire her. But because I didn’t have that. I couldn’t even imagine having that.At the time, I was deep in the trenches of corporate life. My days were filled with decision-making, navigating chaos, mentoring leaders, regulating emotions, mine and everyone else’s. By the time I drove ninety minutes home, there was nothing left. I would walk into the house, eat dinner, and go straight to bed. Weekends were for groceries and recovery. Reading was the only thing that allowed me to momentarily escape and brace myself for the next week.For me, the answer began to emerge through something I once believed I did not have time for at all. Hobbies.<figure id="figure-lmwr0wkqummm4xvue1"><img id="lmwr0wkqummm4xvue1" src="https://cdn.durable.co/blocks/19ZySdjpGMLNo6VfxZarWxCPgnWJN1mwhJvRX6xvetOwK74td2Lz4s7P17CJ80fY.jpg" alt="" title="" class="object-cover bg-gray-100 rounded-2xl md:rounded-3xl lg:rounded-4xl" style="aspect-ratio: 16/9; object-position: center center;" data-corners="default" data-aspect="16:9" data-caption="" data-positionx="undefined" data-positiony="undefined" data-fullwidth="false" data-mce-src="https://cdn.durable.co/blocks/19ZySdjpGMLNo6VfxZarWxCPgnWJN1mwhJvRX6xvetOwK74td2Lz4s7P17CJ80fY.jpg" data-mce-style="aspect-ratio: 16/9; object-position: center center;"></figure>There was no room for hobbies.Then sabbatical happened.And almost immediately, something unexpected began to surface.When I couldn’t sleep, I started writing in five different journals at once, not structured entries, just whatever needed to come out. Then I began painting. At first sporadically, and then obsessively, sometimes two paintings a day. There was no system, no discipline, no strategic intention behind it. Just brush to canvas and an immediate calming effect I hadn’t felt in years.<figure id="figure-awa6vq62rmm4xwh5v"><img id="awa6vq62rmm4xwh5v" src="https://cdn.durable.co/blocks/230KXB4EdlF5faul6dMsrpoVFrZOHes81rK7iszmJhn1hpX678Kuv6W8zQxknGjr.jpg" alt="" title="" class="object-cover bg-gray-100 rounded-2xl md:rounded-3xl lg:rounded-4xl" style="aspect-ratio: 16/9; object-position: 30% 35%;" data-corners="default" data-aspect="16:9" data-caption="" data-positionx="30%" data-positiony="35%" data-fullwidth="false" data-mce-src="https://cdn.durable.co/blocks/230KXB4EdlF5faul6dMsrpoVFrZOHes81rK7iszmJhn1hpX678Kuv6W8zQxknGjr.jpg" data-mce-style="aspect-ratio: 16/9; object-position: 30% 35%;"></figure>Poetry followed the same way. Multiple poems within weeks, as if something unnamed had been waiting patiently for space. The output felt chaotic, unconfined, almost inconvenient and yet deeply regulating.And then, quietly, structure emerged.I felt the need to gather everything into one place. I built a website. I organized the paintings, the poetry, the writing. I revisited old LinkedIn articles and started a weekly Substack column because, quite frankly, I have too much to say to keep it to myself.Only then did I realize what had happened.These were my hobbies.Not imposed. Not scheduled. Not optimized.They surfaced the moment my nervous system finally came off high alert.In one of <a data-mce-href="https://substack.com/@marinacooley?utm_source=global-search" href="https://substack.com/@marinacooley?utm_source=global-search">Marina's </a>recent articles <a data-mce-href="https://substack.com/home/post/p-188443195" href="https://substack.com/home/post/p-188443195">Is bad WiFi going to keep him from Olympic Gold?</a>, she writes about Olympians. To us, their sport may look like artistry or play. But for them, it is contracts, rankings, funding, national expectations. The nervous system lives in a constant state of pressure. And that state cannot be sustained indefinitely. There must be something structurally different, something that allows the system to go “off duty.”It resonated immediately.Because I now know I was living in that same high-alert state for years. Leadership, at a high level, is emotional labor. It is cognitive intensity. It is constant evaluation and regulation. And while I loved it, my body never fully clocked out.Hobbies became my off-duty environment.I already touched on painting, poetry, and writing that are now my daily, weekly, and monthly rhythm. But wait, there is more! Reviving my Spanish and French and now learning Korean because of a K-drama obsession, forces me into imperfection again. Mahjong, which I now play with women who have forty years of experience, brings joy with almost no consequence attached. Astrology slows me down and stretches my thinking beyond quarterly metrics and operational structure. And baking traditional Polish pastries reconnects me to lineage and memory in a way no executive achievement ever could.<figure id="figure-aolft2zuksmm4xyklp"><img id="aolft2zuksmm4xyklp" src="https://cdn.durable.co/blocks/17Mo3flj4fR83Of443UeYIt6jPbI9G7C3v01zNOTGuVSTGjiZVA0vAxpSE3qHh10.jpg" alt="" title="" class="object-cover bg-gray-100 rounded-2xl md:rounded-3xl lg:rounded-4xl" style="aspect-ratio: 16/9; object-position: center center;" data-corners="default" data-aspect="16:9" data-caption="" data-positionx="undefined" data-positiony="undefined" data-fullwidth="false" data-mce-src="https://cdn.durable.co/blocks/17Mo3flj4fR83Of443UeYIt6jPbI9G7C3v01zNOTGuVSTGjiZVA0vAxpSE3qHh10.jpg" data-mce-style="aspect-ratio: 16/9; object-position: center center;"></figure>And then there is movement.Hiking returns me to presence in a way few things can. There is no optimization, no urgency — only the rhythm of breath, terrain, and time. Skiing does something similar, but through challenge instead of stillness. It demands focus, humility, and trust in the body rather than the intellect. Traveling extends that lesson even further. Stepping into new countries, languages, and cultural norms disrupts routine and perspective; it forces awareness, adaptability, and curiosity. In all three, I am reminded that progress is not always linear, that mastery cannot be rushed, and that growth often begins with disorientation.<figure id="figure-58rg9go1k7mm4xzj40"><img id="58rg9go1k7mm4xzj40" src="https://cdn.durable.co/blocks/3bSKognsveLb1BuFLj7GhngGqhkRmSC55cj7PDq9eRkSwC0TnQjtwKywNeFVI6L2.jpg" alt="" title="" class="object-cover bg-gray-100 rounded-2xl md:rounded-3xl lg:rounded-4xl" style="aspect-ratio: 1/1; object-position: center center;" data-corners="default" data-aspect="1:1" data-caption="" data-positionX="undefined" data-positionY="undefined" data-fullWidth="false"/></figure>None of these pursuits produce revenue. None of them improve my resume in any conventional way.But all of them improve my leadership.Because they returned me to beginner energy.They reminded me what it feels like not to know, not to excel immediately, not to have control. They reminded me how uncomfortable growth can feel in the body, how exposed and uncertain it is to step into something new.And that realization ties directly to the lesson from last week’s exhibition.Leadership is growth. Both personal growth and the growth of others. But we cannot cultivate a culture of development, mentoring, and expansion if we ourselves are no longer expanding. If we remain only in domains where we are experts, we slowly lose empathy for the emotional experience of learning.When we allow ourselves to slow down, to become novices again, to feel slightly out of place, we regain proximity to the vulnerability that our teams feel when they stretch.And that changes how we lead.As my sabbatical comes to a close, I know one thing with certainty: I will not give up my hobbies. They are not indulgences. They are not luxuries.They are structural protection for my nervous system and expansion for my leadership.And I am no longer jealous of anyone else’s.

The Nervous System of Leadership – Part Two

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Dorota Castillo Studio

Dorota Castillo Art & Poetry Studio is a personal creative space for intuitive painting and poetic expression. Dorota’s work explores inner transformation, symbolism, and emotion through color and movement, guided by process rather than perfection. Each piece invites reflection, resonance, and a felt connection beyond words.