Medium Short: Shifting Gears

Pouring pints, pondering, podcasting, decomplexifying

B. Lorraine Smith
5 min readSep 1, 2023
An early morning view of Lake Manitou in Northern Ontario where I’m enjoying a change of scene, if not exactly relaxing down time. (Photo by me.)

Welcome to the latest Medium Short, a weekly accountability practice highlighting what I’m up to along the unmarked trail to #IndustrialHealing. Quick heads up: this weekly update will soon only go to my (always free) newsletter mailing list so please make sure you’re signed up here*!

I sometimes joke that I need to study “how to take a vacation”. Case in point: I am staying on the beautiful shores of Lake Manitou in Northern Ontario as a change of scene from Montreal life.

But rather than being here to relax by the lake with various family members who live here and others who are up for a visit, I am slinging pints at my sister’s micro-brewery, reading about misguided leadership, setting up ways to simplify my work for greater impact, while training for a marathon.

Isn’t that what everyone does on their summer vacation? If not, I swear they’re missing out. Anyway here’s a bit about the week.

Pouring pints: hard but awesome

I worked at Split Rail last year, both in the taproom and doing some field research with local ingredient growers.

This year I’m just waitressing, filling in the labour gap as the summer students are back in school…

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B. Lorraine Smith

Former sustainability consultant replacing ESG with reality-based insights about corporate purpose and impact. https://www.blorrainesmith.com/