When I was younger, my imagination went wild in the late hours of the night. My loving parents, younger sister and brother were the recipients of my many midnight knocks as I looked for comfort post my imagination's overtime run. Looking back I can trace the roots of my late night preteen fright cycle. I've always read anything that I could get my hands on. I remember quietly sneaking Stephen King novels across the librarian's desk and nodding when she asked if I was old enough to read these books. I remember, unbeknownst to my parents, watching every classic 1980s horror movie in my friend's basement. From Children of the Corn, to The Shining, there isn't a slasher film from that era that I can't recount. My young mind would take these scary stories and twist them into my dreams haunting me to no end. While my family has always been supportive, their patience often wore thin at night, leading to a firm "Go back to sleep SLS" message. However, my little brother consistently offered comfort with his kind words: "It's okay, sis. Which story got you tonight?" His reassurance would calm my imaginative mind as I launched into dramatic retellings of my dreams, omitting the scariest parts so not to frighten him. This helped me settle down, and our conversations would eventually lull us both back to sleep.

Unknowingly my sweet younger brother at the tender age of four was helping me cognitively process my nightmares. Fortunately these dreams were fuelled by what I was watching and reading, not living, yet they were powerful and had an impact on my subconscious mind. While I admit to holding lingering anxiety about cornfields and hotel hallways, I know as an adult these feelings were the result of those creepy films. I also know that sleep is still tricky for me. My mind still runs marathons in the late-night hours, and while I do love finding creative flow when the rest of the world sleeps, I understand how important sleep is for health and longevity.

My original intention in thinking about this latest spin was to create a case for a spring reset of slowing down and reviewing key priorities to better align with trending topics of leadership wellbeing and longevity. Interestingly, as I explore these topics, I realize that reflexive thinking might be a crucial aspect of leadership longevity. While our profession brings tremendous joy and endless hope, it's important to recognize the many challenges educational leaders face daily. The mantra I started my career with, 'first one in, last one out,' isn't necessarily helpful in the 21st century, where technology operates 24/7. Learning to navigate new global realities and move forward during unsettling times can be strenuous and a bit frightening for today's educators. It's worth the investment of precious time for educational leaders to slow down and understand why some things may feel overwhelming or scary.

This short spin is my honest and unsophisticated attempt to process the reality of balancing a complex portfolio with the desire for leadership longevity. I understand the working smarter not harder movement but the necessity of holding a deep, committed work ethic to fulfill the obligations of serving school communities is not to be underscored. Time and presence are critical for educational leaders. They need to be physically present and actively involved, working alongside teachers, education assistants, and others serving our school communities. However, taking time away to recalibrate and recharge is also essential for maintaining personal health and mental well-being. So, how can educational leaders cognitively process and navigate the depth and complexity of our work to ensure we are in it for the long game?

After several decades in educational leadership, maintaining a healthy balance is still a struggle. My mind runs at a fiery speed and my sensitive soul holds hurts. At times I think these are attributes that leaders need, yet the vulnerability I feel in sharing this startles and unsettles me. In the spirit of disruption and expansion, I am deciding not to hit delete on the sentence above and to intentionally model how important it is to better understand ourselves as leaders and humans. As a person who prides herself on never being sick or tired, a friend recently pointed out that I was sick all winter. My first response to him was "nope, not true" as I quickly dismissed our conversation with annoyance. His honest words have haunted me as I realize that my investment in over the counter cold meds was at an all time high this past winter. My response to illness has always been one of determination and stubbornness to just suck it up, push harder and go further as I tightly hold the "too shall will pass" torch. Clearly these mantras aren't working well for me either.

I am learning that navigating the path to leadership longevity is a dynamic process of grasping understanding and reflexive thinking. Realizing that something needs more attention demands intention, discipline and slowing down to create thought space. Reflecting on experiences will help position surface changes but deeper, lasting change requires reflexivity. Reflexive thinking requires examining your way of being in the world and looking at patterns in your experiences. It is a tricky construct to pin down and is often autocorrected to reflective thinking. Reflexivity is a state of thinking and being (Barrett, 2021). It about noticing how you change and how you grow. It is a "self-referential loop of turning back on yourself" (Barrett, 2021) to consider how your own presence and perspective influences others around you. In the spirit of this spin, I will be honest and share that reflexive thinking intimidates me. As someone who finds both critical and constructive feedback difficult, the level of vulnerability and introspection required for reflexivity feels daunting.

Serving a community in a leadership role should never be taken lightly, as it often involves a certain level of fear. The work of educational leadership is not for the faint of heart, the scope of responsibility can be scary and runs deep. Addressing fear in educational leadership is crucial. Lasting leaders exhibit caution, humility, empathy, and relatability, along with a continuous drive for improvement. Educational leaders frequently face conflicts between their roles and values, compelling them to deeply understand themselves, their beliefs and their actions. According to Bolton (2009) reflexive contemplation requires:

1. Recognizing authority over and responsibility for personal and professional identity, values, actions and feelings.
2. Willingness to stay with uncertainty, unpredictability, doubt and questioning.
3. Contestation of lack of diversity, imbalance of power and the constraining influence of managerialism.

This form of personal examination of one's thoughts requires consideration of one's blindspots. Technically, everyone with functional vision has a blind spot, a small area on the retina where the optic nerve connects, which is insensitive to light. This insensitivity means there are no light-sensitive cells in that spot, preventing the retina from seeing. Most of the time, we don't notice this because if both eyes are functioning properly, one eye compensates for the blind spot in the other. Figuratively, humans also have blindspots in our lives where we may be uninformed, lack insight or awareness about certain areas of our behaviour or personality. These blindspots can present as biases when we make assumptions obstructing our view of our own behaviour or that of others. In leadership, a professional blindspot refers to an area of our work life that we may be unaware that negatively impacts ourselves or others. In the spirit of reflexive practice, educational leaders can take this quick self audit to help identify blindspots in leadership style.

1. How do my colleagues really experience my leadership?
2. What's the hardest piece of feedback I've received? How did I respond?
3. How do others perceive me? What would my colleagues miss about me if I left my organization?
4. What can I change in my professional context? How can I work better with what I cannot change?
5. Why do I become stressed and how does it impact my life professionally, and personally? Can I match these stressors to given social, cultural and/or political structures?

So, what are you afraid of? In writing this spin, I am realizing that over the years I've become hesitant to actively seek feedback. This is true of positive and negative feedback, unless I fully trust the source then I'm cautious about how I internalize it. This is the result of a few bumps and lasting bruises over the years, where feedback has come without trust, knowledge, or security of the source. Random, unsolicited feedback can be hurtful rather than helpful. It's important to note this caution—the old idiom 'be careful what you ask for' rings true.

Moving into spring, alongside of more thoughtful time management, I am curious about asking trusted colleagues for their unfiltered insights to improve and better serve my community. Knowing that the best leaders actively seek feedback to enhance their skills and to grow, this can't be left to chance or be positioned as a scary thing to avoid. Leadership longevity is about reflexivity, continual growth, self attention and capitalizing courageous self-awareness. It is also about dreaming big and taking risks to better serve our students and schools. This is about bravely running the long game and enjoying every step of the journey. As spring 2025 launches, it's go time—what are you afraid of?

Author's Note: While this spin focuses on educational leadership, it could easily be reconstructed to examine the realities of teachers, educational assistants, support staff and other's working in the public sector committed to serving communities. Also, once again in the spirit of author integrity, generative AI tools were used on parts of this spin to ensure reader clarity and conciseness.