​A Shamanic Astrologer Once Told Me

Blog By:
Christopher Daniels,
Nuclear Fusion App
COO

--
​
In 2018, A Shamanic Astrologer Once Told me that it was Soul’s Purpose to Redefine How Organizations Operate.

No pressure … also that statement sounds a little egoistic and self-involved. I remember hearing that and thinking, “that sounds cool, I like organizations”. I thought that soul purpose related to theatre and the nonprofit community theatre I served as Executive Director. I began pouring energy to explore how we could do things differently and dismantle conventional theatre practices; questioning why they existed and not accepting the answer, “because that is how they are done”.

Fast forward to 2023, during a sunny day in Tahoe City, my BFF and fellow fusionist Jes Daylover, and I are tripping out in the backyard of this beautiful cabin and she asks me to join the Nuclear Fusion team. Now for those of you unaware, Jes and I have a lot of institutional baggage in our illustrious almost 20 year friendship. We have started and lost interest in a million creative projects (thank you ADHD), we have formed and dissolved several businesses, and most notably our personal and professional relationship exploded in 2017; a rupture that neither one of us thought possible to repair.

The rupture occurred over the Utility Players, Reno’s #1 Comedy Troupe; a troupe that Jes founded and led since 2009 and I troupe that moved across the country to join. Years of toxic culture, conflict avoidance, lack of accountability, and low emotional intelligence on the part of everyone involved, led to a pretty dramatic and devastating breakup. It took years of repair to rebuild some semblance of trust and even then that trust was delicate and fragile. We collaborated only a couple of times over the years, instead choosing to prioritize our personal friendship.

So on that sunny day in 2023, when Jes asked me to be a part of Nuclear Fusion, it felt like coming home; it felt right. And then fear and doubt began to creep into me. Were we just repeating the same mistakes from our past? We both had grown and healed so much from that fateful day and yet the fear was there; like some flamboyant Gollum guffawing in the corner. And then Jes said something that changed everything, “I want to run this business differently; I want to give us a chance to do things differently.”

She told me she was inspired by entrepreneurs she had seen on Tiktok that prioritized equity and collective decision-making. She mentioned that her Chief Engineer, Rishi, recommended this book “Reinventing Organizations” and that she wanted to model Nuclear Fusion after an evolutionary organization (more on that later). What Jes didn’t know is (A) my shamanic astrology reading (B) that since that reading, I had been exploring non-hierarchical models of leadership and organizing in the nonprofit I currently led.

​Suddenly, I saw it all. The threads that tied us, that everything that had happened to me, had happened to us, was leading to this moment. I saw it all so clearly … or maybe it was the LSD. Regardless, I said yes, purchased the book, and began the process of fulfilling my destiny (or some shit like that).

---