Three commitments across twelve years, none of them paid, all of them formative. The same instinct runs through each one: read a situation you don't fully control, and act before anyone tells you to.
A Bronze Medallion surf lifesaver through high school, on patrol at the busiest beach in the country. Four years of reading a crowded surf and acting on incomplete information, usually before anyone signalled that anything was wrong. Some of the best people I've ever met, and whom I still look up to in their ability to manage people. Steady over 8 hours so that we were action-ready in the 30 seconds that might count.
A month with a team constructing sustainable housing for families in stilt villages most exposed to climate risk, work aligned to UN Sustainable Development Goal target 4.7. It was the first time I saw how much of an outcome is decided before anyone picks up a tool.
The North Melbourne shelter was over capacity, so the kittens came to me instead. Five rescues over twelve months, taken in between four and six weeks old and handed back once they were big enough to be desexed and rehomed. All five found homes, which is the point, and I miss every one of them. (My most recent foster, Stormi, pictured above.)
None of it was planned as a theme. Looking back, the thread is obvious. I'm pulled toward situations where noticing something early, and acting on it, changes how things turn out. A crowded beach, a stilt village, a shelter over capacity. The setting keeps changing, the instinct doesn't.