Michael Chilcutt

Now in my mid-50s and beginning to imagine life after almost 30 years in public education, I find myself looking back—not out of nostalgia, but in order to understand what comes next. Reflection, at this stage, feels less like an ending and more like a continuation.

When I look at my life so far, I see it through three primary lenses: Learning, Leadership, and Legacy.

These lenses have always existed simultaneously, though each has taken precedence at different points. I tend to think of my life in roughly 30-year sections. In the first 30 years, learning was firmly at the helm—absorbing ideas, developing skills, and trying to make sense of the world and my place in it. In the second 30, leadership moved to the forefront, particularly through my work in education, where responsibility shifted from personal growth to collective impact. Now, as I enter what I think of as the final third, my attention is increasingly drawn to legacy.

As an artist, legacy carries particular weight. Many believe that one of the deepest motivations for creating art is the desire to leave something behind—to extend ourselves beyond our own lifetimes, to remain in conversation with the world after we are gone. Whether or not that is true in any literal sense, there is comfort in knowing that what we make can outlast us, carrying forward ideas, questions, and fragments of who we were.

This blog lives at the intersection of those three lenses—learning, leadership, and legacy—and serves as a space to think out loud about what it means to keep becoming, even as we take stock of what has already been.

This is also a place to start a dialogue. I hope you will join.