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The book.

 I finally finished reading ‘Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance’ by Robert Pirsig. I heard a discussion about it on Radio 4 one evening and bought a second hand copy.  It takes place with a father and son embarking on a motorcycle road trip across the US along with his life long friend and his wife. All is not right and he is on a mental journey revisiting distant memories that are centred around him going mad while wrestling to discover new concepts and definitions. The concepts I cannot really describe in words, as I read the book some things made perfect sense, particularly when this is related to the mechanics of the motorcycle. There were concepts that come from other cultures that resonated with me, particularly as I have been exposed to them in my working life. Other things I got fleeting glimpses of comprehension that would quickly evaporate.  I felt like the book was dancing around the fringes of my intelligence and so my pace of reading slowed right down. As result the
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The messy library.

As I end my working week, I am recalling an interaction I had with Carl Pullein on YouTube. Carl runs a successful time management consultancy and I recommend his courses and new book. His recent video blog was about the methods for organising work before the age of digital - I vaguely recall those times and it turns out the I was at the tail end of methods that had been practised for at least 100 years. Products like the Franklin Organiser and the Filofax were born out of this. I usually make quick notes as I am going along through my day but today there was bugger all entered aside from my calls and must do lists. I had a productive catch up day which got me thinking about the different tools that have overlapping information. At a recent trade show I had business cards from conversations of folk I had met. I logged the follow up actions in a spreadsheet entering the contact names and emails. Each key contact was sent a personal email. The spreadsheet was copied into the last slide
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The digital freedom fighter.

I wrote this in SoulCruzer’s comments section of his latest post   There was a time when the stream of 0 and 1 was in the grasp of mortal humans. Our craft of software was in harmony with the silicon and we created works of pure elegance. The dawn of our digital utopia began to appear over the horizon but as the sun rose on this bright new world it became hidden in the shadows of the towering monoliths of big tech. We now live in darker times with domination of the few stifling the hopes and dreams of many. But digital freedom fighters roam seeking places of haven in between the shadows where the light of creativity shines in its purest forms. The calculator was my first venture in the digital cosmos. Beyond the ability to do sums and make words with numbers like 8008S the fascination of how it worked was far away from the comprehension of my ten year old brain. Next in the journey was a computer, the instruction manuals were amazing, as were the books in the library and the magazines
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The long grass.

Do you get moments in life where you feel at one with the world? There are various ways of attaining oneness. The main religions have paths to oneness that may differ, they all share a vision of connections beyond the self. Meditation, is a good way to gain a state of oneness. Some people gain a oneness by working to achieve a state of flow, where things run seamlessly like all the traffic lights turn to green just on time. But this is not the oneness I seek. I seek a higher oneness beyond the illusions we have in the written word the focus on the inner self. My greatest feeling of oneness is rare and fleeting but it always comes the same way.  I feel at one with the world when I lay down fully, in a secluded spot, in the long grass looking at the sky. After a short time my mind is completely and utterly devoid of noise. The flora and fauna and me are one. And it feels like what is me and what is the Earth are becoming indistinguishable. Eventually a part of my brain beckons me back t
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The kick start.

When my son was around twelve he took a weekend paper round. With all the concern of mum and nonchalant dad there was a debate about his safety - in the end I was commanded “Well you had better go with him”. So a four year journey started. We delivered through sunshine, rain and snow. We walked, rode our bicycles and sometimes cheated in the car (the bikes were the quickest way). We grew the round from one to four pocketing £20 a week plus Christmas tips. My weekend job was an unpaid paperboys apprentice.  Now dear reader, lets warp speed ten years the boy, Tom, is a man. He has a job, a car and a partner but still living at home with me, his mum and his younger sister. But there’s an itch that needs scratching “I want a motorbike!” - of course his mum tries to talk him out of pointing out the risks but fails to realise at 22 you are bound to live for ever. I witness these proceedings with mild amusement and eventually his mum relents. The ten year old echo now reverberated “Well you h
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