Meet Diana Lundin

We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Diana Lundin a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Diana, really happy you were able to join us today and we’re looking forward to sharing your story and insights with our readers. Let’s start with the heart of it all – purpose. How did you find your purpose?

Finding my purpose was a journey deep within, triggered by an inspiring professional conference followed by really looking at what I want at the age I was when I began seeking, which was at 64. I wrote down in my journal not so much the things I wanted to accomplish as much as who I wanted to be and do in the later chapters of my life. And for me, it came down to combining my interests in photography, journalism, writing, animals and climate change. Most importantly, to do these works within what interested me in the goal of service. And that led me into a very interesting direction, one I’m exploring today.

Thanks for sharing that. So, before we get any further into our conversation, can you tell our readers a bit about yourself and what you’re working on?

I was a professional journalist for 15 years, starting with community newspapers out of college and on through the Los Angeles Daily News where I was a feature writer, so I wrote a lot. Through the years, I evolved into where I am now, a highly skilled dog and cat photographer. But then I get this tug, to live bolder, a life more of service, to answer the call to adventure. And that’s exactly what I did.
My former business coach put out a plea for volunteers to help move her animal sanctuary from Oregon to Maine in two school buses. This childless cat lady signed up and I drove one of the two buses, the one filled with 110 birds of all kinds (the second had 20 sheep, a llama, and alpaca).
And I got a lot of adventure. I wrote a three-part series about the journey, which had everything you want with no one getting killed by rookie bus drivers. Well. There was the one chicken death we discovered when we unloaded in Maine. The poor old hen, retired from years of being a factory egg layer, died on the very last day; really, just hours from the promised land and we had a moment for her. But the trip was boring and exciting in the way that adventures can be. We had storms and breakdowns and pestilence and while it was very smelly in my bus… both buses, really… it was incredibly successful in that — who moves a sanctuary across the country? There have been some sanctuary moves because of climate but only one other known one that moved their sanctuary from California to New York in tractor-trailers. It was a big accomplishment and I was super proud of it.
Meanwhile… I am still a dog and cat photographer and I love it. But I want to spend time writing again, journalistically and narratively, and finding a way to be of service. Journalism has always had a pull on me since I was in junior high. And it’s back.

If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?

I think the most important quality any one can have is curiosity. Your curiosity leads you to follow something interesting. There can be an entire universe into that something you find interesting, a path to explore for as long as you like, to deep dive as far as you want. To sound like a cliche, new horizons. But your curiosity leads you to a kind of joy. And if it doesn’t, stop it and find something that leads you to joy!
I’ve learned you have to be willing to be lousy at something. Talent only takes you so far. You have to allow yourself to have a beginner’s mind, to understand, yeah, I suck at this now but it’s only because I haven’t practiced it, I haven’t developed the skills it takes to achieve what I want to achieve. Skills are developed through repetition, through practice, through sucking. If you have an interest in something, be humble about where you’re at, and find ways to learn. In the beginning, I thought I was a pretty good photographer. Boy, was I wrong. Oh sure, I had a bit of an eye but I lacked skills. When I realized I wasn’t that good, I took note of things I did like. I wrote it down and then I began learning those skills. I mean, you can YouTube anything these days, right?
Finally, you should get into a relationship with yourself, an honest one. Have I been doing that all my life? Uh, no. But when I did, it was really amazing to me what I was doing and what I knew and what I wanted. That came from, I know a lot of you aren’t going to want to hear this, journaling. Yep, this writer resisted writing about myself for so long, it was like meeting someone new, the good, the bad and the ugly. But it was okay. In the beginning, I maybe wrote a sentence about the weather. Now it’s very different, it’s become so useful in my self-discovery. And I write a lot, almost every day and occasionally several times a day. It’s changed everything about my life.
Oh, and just be yourself, just authentically you. You’ll attract the people you want to be around and who want to be around you and let everyone just self-select themselves out the door.

One of our goals is to help like-minded folks with similar goals connect and so before we go we want to ask if you are looking to partner or collab with others – and if so, what would make the ideal collaborator or partner?

Oh lordy, yes, I am looking for people to collaborate with! You know, I’ve been a sole proprietor since 2011 in my photography business but that’s a long time to go without co-workers. I miss them. I just had dinner with a former colleague and it just reminded me how that relationship was forged, how strong it remains even if we are not in each other’s orbits on a daily basis. And how nobody danced to Tina Turner’s Proud Mary like we could.
And the pandemic sure took a bite out of my social life. Now I’m out all the time, meeting new people, trying to develop relationships based on fun and mutual interests. My interests these days have to do with climate change and animal welfare and writing and photography and taking those things in various combinations and mashing them into something interesting.
My dream is to work with a sidekick within a small team on an idea ready to take off and that we do good and it’s important but fun work. Is that a unicorn? I like unicorns and I want mine. I’m easy to find. I’m the Diana Lundin who is not the attorney on Google. Or I’m at diana@dianalundin.com and if you have a project that you think my skills can benefit, particularly as it involves climate change or animal welfare, I’m all ears.

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Diana Lundin

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