The Lab

Finding My Voice

I look for other people who share my ideas. When I don’t find common ground, I hold onto those ideas even tighter. I have an experience that validates those ideas. The things I have learned have come through a great deal of trial and error, but also successes. I have gleaned much wisdom from those who have come before, but I have also been blazing trails in the wild, in obscure places, where I have been trying new things.

Returning to civilization, I discover that the landscape has changed. People seem to be speaking a different dialect and I need to learn new vocabularies, phrases, inflections and intonations. As an alien, an exile in a foreign land, I have a constant feeling that I am different, a social misfit, disconnected from the wider community. If I assimilate, I fear that I will lose the part of me that makes me unique, the distinct differences that I have come to value. Others do not appear to have the same appreciation for the rituals I follow and the goods I have to offer. They have difficulty imagining how to integrate these strange tools and practices into their daily lives. In fact, the thought does not cross their minds. They have their own culture and customs, their own dietary practices and traditions, their own daily rituals and ways of living.

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Insomnia

I couldn’t sleep after I woke up close to 1:30 am (I think—I can’t remember exactly). I don’t know if insomnia is something that just happens more when you get older, but I think I’ve always had problems with insomnia for as long as I can remember. Thankfully, it is intermittent. If I’m awake one night, I am so tired by the next night that it is not a problem getting to sleep.

This morning, I got up just after 3:00 am. I grabbed my iPad and headed down to the basement, which is where our family relaxes. Last year, we thought we might be moving to Vancouver. We put our house up for sale and we were looking around for somewhere closer to Downtown Vancouver to move to. Our realtor provided a service that included staging the home to increase the chance of a sale. We decided that this would be a good opportunity to buy some new furniture that we would take with us to the new home. And, since we would very likely be downsizing, we would get rid of furniture that we did not intend to take with us and use the some of the remaining furniture to stage the rest of the rooms. In this way, we finally made our basement into a much more usable and comfortable space.

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Derailment: A Cautionary Tale

The first course in the Adult Degree Completion program that I am taking at Trinity Western University explores leadership as a learning process. Bill George’s book, True North, starts by describing the journey to authentic leadership, but before delving too deeply into the why and how, warns us about the risks that come with a leadership role.

We can learn from our own mistakes, but it would be far better not to repeat the same mistakes others have made, but to learn from the mistakes of others.

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A journey, not a destination

I wouldn’t necessarily call myself a leader. On the other hand, I wouldn’t call myself a follower either. “I am a rock. I am an island.”

I am an individualist looking for a community. But I’ve been living in my own head for way too long and I often don’t know how to play well with others. That’s not to say that I don’t try my best to be a team player and get along with others. But there is a point at which I start to say to myself, “There has got to be a better way.” And I feel myself starting to disengage when I make my opinions known and I feel like I am not being heard. Am I being too abrasive or annoying, or am I simply an ineffective salesman? Perhaps, influencing is not my gift.

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Have you been living in a cave?

I wouldn’t recommend asking this question of anyone other than myself. It assumes a depth of knowledge about a particular subject that is expected to be of common knowledge.

And I wonder if people these days would be less prone to ask such a question, since the choices for entertainments and media consumption are so vast that we can longer assume shared experiences as we may have in the age of mass media. We are moving well beyond the borders of the age of mass media, where the power of the media came from its ability to direct the flow of public discourse to some degree by the choices made in the editing process. When newspapers were a dominant form of mass communication, the daily question was about what should occupy the coveted position on the front page of the paper?

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Perspective

Perspective is one of the first things that you learn when you begin to discover more about drawing and art. I think it might have been when I was in elementary school in grade 3 that I first learned about the idea of a vanishing point on the horizon which serves as a reference point for the angles in a drawing, giving the image a sense of depth and the illusion of realism. As drawing technique becomes more advanced and complex, artists may further enhance their work with two-point and three-point perspective drawing.

As you learn more about the concept, you discover how revolutionary the idea was in the development of art. Now, we take for granted the craft of image making, as cameras have become ubiquitous. At the time of the Renaissance, the discovery, or rediscovery, of perspective was a very significant advancement in the science and mathematics of optics and its application to the art and craft of painting.

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The Best Laid Plans

Ideas are not innovative unless they are realized (Johansson, The Medici Effect).

But little Mouse, you are not alone,
In proving foresight may be vain:
The best laid schemes of mice and men
Go often awry,
And leave us nothing but grief and pain,
For promised joy!

Still you are blest, compared with me!
The present only touches you:
But oh! I backward cast my eye,
On prospects dreary!
And forward, though I cannot see,
I guess and fear!

“To a Mouse, on Turning Her Up in Her Nest with the Plough, November, 1785, a poem by Robert Burns.

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Identity Crisis

So, let’s not pull any punches here. I am facing an identity crisis. It’s been a long standing issue. I have this strange feeling that I do not belong here: a stranger in a strange land.

• I am half east and half west.
• I am half spiritual and half secular.
• I am part religious zealot and part scientific realist.
• I am part print designer and part web developer.
• I am creative and I am analytical.
• I am over the hill and I am starting over.
• I am a traditionalist with subversive leanings.
• I am an introvert and I am compelled to tell everyone.
• Half one thing, half another, but not quite whole.
• I am all these things and none of them.

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Liberal Arts

The theme of the last few days has seemed to revolve around higher education and the liberal arts. I have been entertaining the idea of finishing the degree I started at Trinity Western University back in 1992-1994. At the time, I was working towards a BA in Communications with a minor in Fine Arts, but I didn’t finish, as financial independence became a higher priority and I started work at Force Four.

For the past couple years, Trinity Western University has been offering an Adult Degree Completion program, which can be completed in as little as 18 months. Students graduate with a Bachelor of Arts in Leadership. The courses are taken one at a time, and each course is about 6 weeks long. Classes are three hours, once a week. Homework is estimated to be around 8 to 12 hours a week.

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The Why Question

I’m getting into some new habits this year to exercise both my mind and my body.

Mind

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Signed, Anonymous

Yesterday, I mentioned that I am okay with being anonymous.

I see myself as anonymous in the creative world. That may not necessarily be the reality. But, for myself at this time, it is the right place to be.

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Decide what to do with the time

Today is my first day of work on my own.

I decided that my last day at work for Domain7 would be December 31, 2012, so that the new year would be a completely new year for me.

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Reinventing myself

I’m thinking about what I am going to do on January 1, 2013. I have given my notice at work, announcing that December 31, 2012 will be my last day at Domain7. A mixture of panic and excitement are fueling some crazy ideas about what I might possibly do with what previously seemed like such a scarce commodity: time. How do I make the best use of that time?

Time is Opportunity

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