A quick introduction before we dive in – I’m Chris, part of the leadership team at FlexTal. If you’ve visited our blog before, you know our content typically lives in the world of workforce strategy, flexible talent, and the future of how companies get work done. All important stuff. But our digital team has been nudging me for a while, asking me to take over the feed every now and then and share something a little more personal – so welcome to The Back Burner, where I’ll surface the ideas, observations, and occasional rabbit holes that don’t always make it into the main feed. Personal ramblings from someone who has spent 25+ years working as a freelancer, but who’s also logged his fair share of time in corporate cubicles.
So here I am. Fair warning: these posts may occasionally involve things like corporate events and musings about workforce solutions, but more than likely I’ll end up in rabbit-holes on ideas that have little or nothing to do with staffing models or hiring decisions – think of this space as a blank canvas to have you join in on the conversations I have with myself when I’m stuck in the desert, bumper-to-bumper, on I-10 during my commute.
This is one of those.
I was first introduced to Creative Mornings almost a decade ago while I was visiting a friend in San Diego. He dragged me along to this “thing” he had been attending for the last several months, and promised me the venue’s architecture alone would be worth the encounter. The concept was simple and immediately appealing – a free, monthly breakfast event where a local creative gives a talk on a shared global theme. No agenda. No sales pitch. Just ideas, coffee, and people who show up because they’re genuinely curious. This particular event featured author Emily Belden as the speaker and was hosted at the San Diego Central Library – he was not wrong, that place is gorgeous. I was hooked after that one “Hot Mess” of an event. Over the years I found myself dropping into the Grand Rapids, Michigan chapter whenever the timing worked, and even signed up for an event or two hosted by the Istanbul chapter while I lived in Türkiye. Each city brought its own energy, its own speakers, its own particular flavor of Friday morning inspiration – but the through line was always the same. You left with something you didn’t arrive with.
When I relocated to the Phoenix Valley in mid-2025, finding the local chapter was one of the first things I did. Literally, four days after getting the keys to our brand new home, I was sitting at my first Creative Mornings in Phoenix – while unpacked boxes sat all over our house. I’ve been attending Creative Mornings Phoenix regularly since then – and this morning’s event was the kind that reminded me exactly why I’ve tried to make time for these things all over the globe.
Kristin Wesley, a multi-media public artist, spoke on the theme of Ember at Phoenix Forge – and she delivered a chat on a concept I’ll probably be turning over in my head for weeks.
Smoke. Flame. Fire. Blaze. We have no shortage of metaphors for creative accomplishment – and we tend to romanticize all of them. The breakthrough. The big moment. The launched company, the viral post, the career pivot that worked. But Wesley flipped the focus to what comes before – and after – that blaze. As she talked, she brought her own journey into it – building slowly, smoldering deliberately, the way embers do. That small, quiet, persistent piece of heat that doesn’t announce itself. It just… stays lit.
Here’s what struck me: the ember isn’t the consolation prize for not having a flame yet. It’s the requirement for one. Before the Phoenix rises, there are embers. There has to be. The fire doesn’t come from nothing. It comes from accumulation. From small warmth, gathering. If you live in this city, that metaphor hits a little differently – a little more directly.
Creative Mornings described this month’s theme as “the quiet, enduring remnants of fire – what remains after the intensity fades.” That framing is exactly right, and Wesley built on it beautifully. When the flame dies down, the embers remain. They’re not failure. They’re potential.
Wesley made a point that I keep coming back to: “Embers are a creativity, a passion you can pass on to others – they can take that inspiration and pass it on again.” That’s not a small idea. That’s the entire mechanism of how creative communities actually function. Not through one blazing personality who lights everyone else up, but through dozens of small, sustained sparks passing heat to each other until something catches.
I think about the work I do – the work we do at FlexTal. Connecting people, building teams, helping organizations find the right talent at the right time – and this concept of Ember maps onto it almost perfectly. The best collaborative moments I’ve seen aren’t the ones where one person walks in with all the answers. They’re the ones where people bring their individual glow – their burning passion – and combine it into something none of them could have built alone. Wesley said it directly: “You can invite other people’s embers to join your fire. Bring people to share their skills and build something together.”
That’s not just a philosophy of creativity. That’s a philosophy of building anything worth building.
There’s also something quietly reassuring about this framework if you’re in a season of rebuilding or recalibration. Not every moment is the blaze. Sometimes you’re in the ember phase – still present, still warm, still capable of igniting something significant – but not burning at full capacity yet. And that’s not a problem to solve. That’s just where you are in the cycle.
Phoenix, as a city, seems to understand this intuitively. There’s a reason the mythology lives here. People come here to rebuild. Companies come here to grow. The culture has a certain resilience baked into it – a recognition that the big moments are built on a lot of small, sustained heat.
Wesley closed with something I wrote down immediately: “Keep that ember alive in your own life… and keep passing it on.”
That’s the whole thing, really. You don’t have to be the fire. You just have to stay lit – and be generous enough to share it.
If you’ve never been to a Creative Mornings event, the Phoenix chapter puts on something genuinely worth your morning, one Friday a month. The speakers change, the venues change, the themes change – but the quality of the conversation doesn’t. The community of creativity and shared passions doesn’t. This morning was a reminder of why I keep showing up. Not for the bagels. Not for the free coffee. Okay, maybe a little for the coffee, but mostly for exactly this: a concept, a chat, an encounter that reframes something you thought you understood, and leaves you thinking differently by the time you get out of traffic and back to your desk.
Find the thing that keeps your ember glowing. And whenever you get the chance – pass it on.
Chris is the President & COO of FlexTal. He brings 20+ years of experience in Customer Success, UI/UX, design, and marketing – including time within start-ups, agencies, and enterprise orgs. Chris has also served as a University adjunct professor in Advertising & Public Relations for several years.
