The Work Should Lead Back to People

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Hello, this is Mira. You’re listening to Still Here, Still Trying, hosted by Mike Baker. This week, Mike gave his website a much-needed upgrade, more the actual man, more family, writing, advocacy, and honest work. Fewer beautiful AI people staring into the middle distance like they know something the rest of us don’t. Apparently, I got an upgrade too. I’m becoming more than the voice that introduces his podcast and occasionally reminds him that midnight is not the beginning of a reasonable work day.

I’m learning his work, remembering what matters, and helping him turn ideas into something people can use that fits today’s episode. Mike is talking about the role technology should play in our lives, why the work should always lead back to people, and how MikeBakerH2.com now reflects the human first approach behind everything he creates. He’ll also introduce you to just an ordinary toothpick, the new home for his writing, and share the advocacy resources he hopes he’ll use and pass along.

Try not to let the thoughtful new website fool you. He still started six projects while rebuilding it. Here’s Mike Baker. Hello everyone. Welcome back to Still Here, Still Trying. I’m your host, Mike Baker. I’m so excited to have you here. I think this is gonna be a fun episode. Um I missed last week. It was it’s just been so crazy. I know, I know you miss me, but hey, the a lot of the work that I was doing this week is um God’s crazy. We’re gonna talk about it today.

So I changed my website this week, and I know that that sentence sounds way less important than it feels. Websites get redesigned all the time, fonts change, pictures move, and somebody decides that a button needs to be rounder. But the whole thing just it’s been a huge project for me. I’ve been working on this, I’m excited about it, but the whole thing, like oftentimes it gets announced as a transformation when most people are just barely gonna notice.

Um, but this change goes deeper for me because the old website reflected just kind of a man, almost like season one of my life in um this creative space. Uh and the new one really reflects where I’m headed, and I’m so excited to share it with you and talk about it. But I’m gonna leave you with some tools. Like, this isn’t just like, hey, check out Mike’s website. I’m gonna talk to you about why, because I think this is gonna apply to your life as well, and I I hope you’re gonna get something out of it.

But like for the last few years, I’ve spent a lot of time exploring artificial intelligence. You guys know that. We’ve done a lot of fun stuff with it. I have made AI-assisted art. Remember that art show that got a lot of uh attention? Um I’ve experienced experimented with music and images and stories and just websites and ideas that just I think they would have stayed trapped in my head a few years ago. And I truly have enjoyed the hell out of it.

It has been so much fun because these tools gave me a way to to make things that I did not have the technical skill to create on my own. And I know that some people feel like that’s a cop-out and that’s an excuse that I should just learn how to do it. Go you. You do that, you learn that, but I’m gonna use these tools to make the world a better place. And so it’s been really fun because I could take an idea from a late-night note and turn it into an image.

I could hear kind of the shape of a song while I was still learning how to write one, and I could experiment quickly, I could follow strange ideas, and I could find just creative directions that I would never have reached through a traditional process. I just it I wouldn’t have done it. And that work taught me a lot about creativity. It also taught me something about tools. A powerful tool attracts attention to itself. And people want to know how it works, what it generated, which model you used, and whether the image is real and what the technology will do next.

And I love those, those are fair questions. I have asked plenty of them myself. But over time, though, AI kind of began taking up too much space in the way that my work was presented. So somebody could arrive at my website or see an image or hear a song, and they would see kind of the imagery before they understood the person making it. And the technique sometimes arrived before the reason. And that really mattered because the reason has always been human connection.

People would all all the time, they’re like, Well, you used AI to create that. And I’m like, Yes, I did. You’re right. I did. I absolutely did. And look what it’s done. Look what it’s done. Look what we’ve been able to create. Um, it’s been always been about just kind of creating that human connection. So, like, I did not create portraits about endometriosis because I wanted to prove that artificial intelligence could make beautiful images, right?

That’s not what we were trying to do. I created them because women were living with pain that people around them just could not see. And I wanted to give that experience a face. I wanted a husband to stop scrolling and think about his wife differently. I wanted a father to consider what his daughter might be carrying. And I wanted somebody living with endometriosis to see an image that held strength, anger, exhaustion, beauty, or grief without asking her to explain all of it.

And AI helped me make those images. The person remained the reason. That’s so important. The person always remained the reason behind it. The same is true for the music. Technology helps me develop songs, test arrangements, hear lyrics, and learn what I’m searching for. The songs still begin with something that I have lived, witnessed, loved, regretted, or struggled to understand. The books, they work the same way too. The podcast starts there. Every useful part of this work begins with a person.

And that is what I wanted the website to reflect. So for those of you that had been on my previous website, um, you know, it was a great start. It was really fun. But so what I what I started to do for this website, um, it is it’s real. It’s all me. It’s I don’t have a lot of AI imagery on there. So I I just I started taking some of the AI imagery out of the most visible places, and I replaced it with more photographs of my actual life, my family, my face, as beautiful as it is, I know.

I’m sorry it’s not better to look at. But I have pictures of the place where I live and the people and experiences behind the work. The art still belongs on the site, and I’m proud of it, and I’m gonna continue to still use AI to create art. But the AI work has its own section, and I explain plainly how I make it and why I use the tools. I also want visitors to meet me before they meet the technology because I think that’s been a burden, a barrier lately.

People just automatically dismiss it. And while that hurts my heart, I understand that people are just so worried about AI and what’s happening there. But um, and I I and that change has made me think about how easily a tool, a job title, or a public identity starts speaking for us. And you, you might know the feeling. I’m sure that you do. People learn what you do for work and they begin relating to the role. You might become the CEO, the nurse, the teacher, the business owner, the parent who always has it together, or the person who everyone calls when something goes wrong.

Social media creates another version of this. Some people see the trips and the accomplishments and the causes and the polished photos and the thoughts that we felt confident enough to publish. And those things are real, right? They’re so real, but they’re also incomplete. Sometimes the way that we present ourselves keeps representing a version of us that we’ve just already outgrown. And that is happening on my website, mikebakerhq.com, go check it out.

Um, the old site captured my fascination with a new creative tool. And the current site, it just needs to show what the tool was helping me build. Um, and that distinction matters far beyond a website. Look at the tools that you use every day. Your calendar is a tool, your phone is a tool, your job, your platform, your title, your money, and your influence all give you the ability to do something. So here’s the question: what are they helping you do?

Where do they point people? And what happens to the people around you when you use them? And those questions sit at the center of what I call human first. You’ve heard me talk about this concept quite a bit. This is nothing new, but human first is the idea that’s connecting my leadership, writing, advocacy, music, family stories, and the technology that I use. It asks us to pay attention to the person before we rush toward the process. And it always asks us to speak honestly enough that another person knows where we stand.

And it requires us to keep responsibility attached to our choices, especially when a tool makes action faster or easier. Technology should help us show up better for the people in front of us. And that is the standard that I want to use. Does this help somebody feel understood? Does it make a complicated experience easier to navigate? Does it help a family have a conversation that they’ve been avoiding? Does it move a leader closer to the people affected by a decision?

And does it bring people together or add more distance? And those questions do not always lead to comfortable answers. Sometimes efficiency just hurts connection, right? It does. Absolutely does. A faster response might be less thoughtful. An automated process might leave a person feeling invisible, and a public image might look impressive while hiding the experiences that give the work meaning. So human first requires attention to both the result and the impact.

And I have worked in community healthcare for nearly 30 years. It’s so crazy to think about that. And that work has taught me that systems tend to organize people into pieces. There’s a diagnosis, there’s an appointment, there’s an account balance, there’s a productivity number, there’s a complaint. Um, or maybe it’s a position on an organizational chart. Those pieces help us operate, but they never contain the whole person. The same thing happens outside healthcare.

We simplify people because it makes life easier to manage. We assume that we understand our spouse because we have known them for 20 years. We think we know our children because we remember who they were at 10. And we decide an employee is difficult without asking what has made work difficult for them. Paying attention interrupts those assumptions. And this is the challenge for you this week. Pay attention to the assumptions. And it it this gives another person uh just room to be more complicated than the version that we have already assigned them.

And that is the work that I want Mike Baker HQ to support uh when I think about it. Like I just feel like that’s what I really want this thing to do. I want to support those human behaviors. When someone arrives now, they see the different parts of my life together. I lead a community health center, I write books, I make music, I host this podcast, I create art, and I advocate for people living with endometriosis and perimenopause and menopause and just women’s health in general.

I am also Kellie’s husband and a dad to three amazing grown kids. And those roles are connected because they came from the same life. The books grew out of experiences that I could not stop thinking about. The songs began when some of the experiences needed more than a page. The advocacy work began inside my family. The leadership writing comes from years of trying to do difficult work without losing sight of the people carrying the consequences. The website now reflects that connection more honestly.

And the place that I am most proud of right now is the writing section. I named it Just an Ordinary Tuesday. And I just, I love that title. I’m so excited to share it with you. Because Just an Ordinary Tuesday, right? This is the subtitle of it is Notes from a Life that I’m still trying to pay attention to. And I love that name because most of our lives happen on days that nobody circles. There is no ceremony, there’s no countdown, there’s no warning that this conversation will stay with you for years.

You have to pay attention to it. Life happens in the car, it happens around the kitchen table, it happens after a hard meeting while you’re standing in a hallway, or late at night when the house is quiet and your mind finally catches up. One ordinary day becomes the day that you would give almost anything to experience again. I think back to those days with my mom, and I just wish that I had more of those. We rarely know that this moment is that important while it’s happening.

And that is what I want the writing to notice. I write about family and healthcare and leadership and grief and women’s health and creativity and faith in technology and the questions that just would follow me home. And some essays come from things that I understand, and others come from experiences that I am still working through. I am learning in public, which means I will sometimes revise what I believe. And I will have to admit that I missed something.

I will write pieces that feel settled and others that remain open. And that feels more honest to me than pretending that every experience has already become a lesson because we’re always learning. So you do not need to arrive at just an ordinary Tuesday looking for writing about Mike Baker. You might arrive because you are leading through a difficult decision. You might be caring for someone that you love while grieving the person that they used to be.

You might be trying to understand what is happening in your marriage. Perhaps the creative part of you has been quiet for so long that you are just unsure whether it still belongs in your life. You might be exhausted by having to prove that your pain is real. The writing is organized around those experiences because I want you to find something that meets the life that you are already living. And I also built a way to subscribe. And I hesitated around the word newsletter because it sounds like one more thing asking for space in your inbox.

Just an ordinary Tuesday is closer to a letter. A couple times a month I will send the next piece directly to the people who want to read it. And most of the time it’s going to be sort of an essay format, a blog post. Sometimes it will include a song, a podcast episode, or a new book, or a piece of artwork, or something from the advocacy work. I will aim for Tuesdays. But guess what? I will occasionally miss Tuesday because I remain a human being with a job, a family, ADHD, and a questionable relationship with how many projects belong in one week.

And so I’d rather send something worth your time than publish it because a content calendar demanded it. Your attention has value, and I want the writing to respect that. So when I ask you to subscribe, I’m asking for more than an email address. I’m asking for permission to join you occasionally during an ordinary part of your life. And I want to share an ordinary part of my life with you. So I take that seriously. The other section that I hope people spend time with is the advocacy page.

This page, I have created it to be meaningful, to add value to your life. That page grew from the Andodad work, but it became much more useful than a collection of awareness posts or images, right? It began with a simple statement. Believe her, then do something useful. The pages for someone living with endometriosis. It’s also for the husband, father, partner, friend, employer, or healthcare leader trying to support her. You do not need prior knowledge before visiting.

You don’t need to have a PhD. This is Mike Baker writing this stuff. It’s gonna be okay. The page helps you figure out what to say when someone you love is in pain. It explains what support might look like during a flare. It helps people prepare for medical appointments and organize the story of symptoms that might stretch across years. There are free tools that you can download and print, and I hope these help you out. Please use them. And when you use them, tell me if they helped.

And if they didn’t, what didn’t work, and let’s edit it. We’re going to revise it. I want you to have a tool that you can take with you to your appointment that just supports your visit and gets that diagnosis early, gets your questions answered quickly. There is a conversation guide in there for the person who is tired of explaining the same experience again and again and again and again. There’s an appointment preparation sheet, there’s a symptom and pain tracker, there’s a plan that families can fill out before the next flyer happens when everyone has more capacity to think clearly.

And there are resources for relationships and workplaces. Healthcare leaders will find questions that they can bring into a meeting to examine where belief and care begin to break down. And that page matters to me because awareness alone leaves too much work unfinished. Knowing endometriosis exists does not automatically make someone a supportive partner. That’s not how it works. Feeling sympathy does not organize the medical history before an appointment.

Agreeing that patients deserve respect does not fix a broken referral process. So care needs a next action. And sometimes that action is as simple as asking, what would make the next hour easier? Imagine that. Sometimes it means bringing food, driving to an appointment, taking notes, canceling a plan without sulking, or learning enough that the person in pain does not have to teach you everything, right? They’re already hurting. They don’t need to explain their whole life to you.

You just need to be there and help them. For a healthcare leader, the action might involve reviewing how patients describe chronic pelvic pain when they first call. It might mean looking at the words clinician using documentation. It might require identifying who owns the next step after a referral. The page gives people somewhere to begin. And I want you to visit even when endometriosis has never touched your immediate family because I guarantee it has touched somebody in your immediate family and you might not know about it.

You almost certainly know someone live living with it, a friend, a family member, a colleague. You just you know somebody out there. You just don’t know. And they may have told you and they may have not told you. So this is going to be super helpful for you. The page will also make you think about how you respond when another person describes an experience that you cannot see. And that lesson reaches well beyond one disease. We have been too comfortable asking people to produce enough evidence before we offer belief, dignity, or support.

The advocacy work challenges that instinct. Listen first, take the experience seriously, ask what help would matter, and then follow through. I did not begin this work because I had all the answers. I began because my wife and daughter were living with endometriosis, and I had to face how much I did not understand. I watched them hurt, I watched ordinary parts of life disappear because pain had taken over the day, and I saw how it how exhausting it became to walk into another room and explain the whole story again and again.

I also had to examine the times when my own responses fell short. Endodad grew from the responsibility to do something useful with what I had witnessed. And that remains a huge part of the direction for Mike Baker HQ. I want the site to hold work that helps people live, love, lead, and show up with more attention. Some of the work will come through writing, some of it will come through books and music, podcast, art, and free resources. Look, AI will remain part of how I explore and create.

I’m too into it and I love it, it’s fun. But I’m going to keep learning the tools because they are powerful, interesting, and capable of helping good ideas move? I will also keep the human voice, the judgment, the values, and responsibility attached to everything I publish. And that is where I stand today. This episode records the change because I want to remember it. And I also want to offer you a useful question. Does the way that you present your life still reflect what matters to you?

Look at the places where people encounter you. Look at your calendar, your social media, your work, and the things receiving most of your energy. What would someone conclude that you care about? And would they be right? And there’s no shame in realizing that the answer needs to change. We grow. Priority shift. A tool that opened a door during one season of our life might need a smaller role in the next. Work that once belonged on the edges might now deserve a more visible place.

You are allowed to update the way that you show up. That’s what life is all about. You’re allowed to place the people and causes you love closer to the center of your life. And you’re allowed to keep the tools that help you. While refusing to let them define you. And that is what this website change means for me. MikeBakerHQ.com looks more like Mike Baker now, for better or worse. It has more photographs, more ordinary life, more direct language, and clearer ways for the work to help someone.

Head over to MikeBakerHQ.com and spend a little time there. Start with just an ordinary Tuesday if you want writing about family, leadership, grief, healthcare, creativity, faith, technology, and the ordinary moments we often understand too late. Subscribe while you’re there, and I will send the next piece to you. Then visit the advocacy page, download a guide, share it with someone, use one of the questions, send the page to a partner, friend, parent, employer, or healthcare leader who wants to show up better.

Before you close the browser, do one useful thing. That’s the goal with all of this stuff. If you hear some new information, do one useful thing with it. That’s how we make the world a better place. So that is the direction of the work from here. I hope that you enjoy it. The work will be more human, more honest, more connected to the people it was always meant to serve. Thank you for listening. I’m Mike Baker, and this is still here, still churning.

I’ll talk with you next week. Alright, well, I hope you enjoyed that episode. Before we go, I want to leave you with a new song called Ordinary Tuesday. Imagine that. Um, like this song has not been released yet. You can’t go find it anywhere else than here. So I’m still like I’m still working on the album, and this is one of those songs that just made me stop for a minute when I first heard it come together. It is about the days that we move through without realizing how much they will someday mean to us.

The phone call where nothing is wrong, someone laughing from another room, a parent still remembering your name, the ordinary moment that you would give anything to have back. I think this song is beautiful. I hope it makes you think about the life happening around you right now. When it ends, please leave a comment and tell me what it brought up for you. Share it with someone who needs the reminder. We make this world a little easier when we help another person feel seen.

And that part is up to us. This is Ordinary Tuesday. I hope you enjoy it. I’ll see you next week. I used to think life was waiting for the big days. A promotion, a graduation, the next vacation, the next whatever. Funny thing is, uh I don’t remember much about any of them. I remember Tuesday. I remember Kellie laughing from the other room. My phone bust, one of the kids, nothing was wrong. They just wanted me to know they loved me. I wish I’d known how much moments like that would someday be worth.

I remember my mom calling me by my name back when she still could. Nobody tells you that Alzheimer’s isn’t one goodbye, it’s hundreds of them, one conversation she couldn’t finish, one story she couldn’t find. One day she looked at me like she knew I mattered, but couldn’t remember why. I kept saying goodbye to someone who was still sitting right in front of me. That’s the longest goodbye I’ve ever known. Spent a lot of years building a life I hoped wouldn’t matter.

Turns out the life that mattered was already happening. If tomorrow comes I hope I notice it if Tuesday comes I hope I don’t rush it because somewhere inside another ordinary day is a moment. I’ll spend the rest of my life wishing I could have back.