The Wayward Celt

… but…

I WILL be back to blogging once per week in 2012. The latter three months in 2011 became a bit hectic for me which resulted in an emotional depletion of energy, which in turn meant I had no energy left to write. This became overly evident to me in my vain failed attempt to do NaNoWriMo this year. I’d thought that forcing myself to write would jump start me back into the habit, but alas, it just proved too much this time round and I ran out of gas by day 15 without hopes of completion, nor inspiration to continue.

Odd, though, since I HAVE been inspired to blog and write… the muse has been working in my head, just the time and energy seem to have found other venues. Wouldn’t it be nice for the muse to bring her own energy reserves along for the ride, so that when inspiration hits you also have the energy to put the words to paper? Ah, to be so lucky.

That all said, my 2011 goal was to blog once per week, and in general I almost accomplished that… here… If you add in the 3 Drunken Celts blog, and my work blog (in which I posted on average about 3.75 times per week), then I think I actually blew my goal out of the water. But I can’t, in good conscience, claim my work blog as part of the goal since the spirit of it was to blog personally and flex a more creative muscle than I am able to at work. So, I’m maintaining that goal for 2012 as well: one personal blog of some substance, per week, all year, no exceptions, no excuses. If 2012 shapes out to be as interesting as it seems from my present viewpoint, I shouldn’t be worrying about a lack of topics to discuss or experiences to relay.

I am hoping that with some added focus I can make this coming year the year of “Very BIG THINGS” for me, see some of my efforts start to pay off, and possibly become one of those few critical pivotal years in my life…. we shall see.

I’ll leave you with this: one of my recent photographs taken from within my home office on a rather chilly day, the ice had built up a bit overnight on the roof below my window, and then the sun peaked out… perhaps this will also be the year in which I take my photography to a new level as well…

A study in texture:

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 For those who may be asking what this all is, here’s a link to explain it all:  http://nanowrimo.org/en/about/whatisnano

National Novel Writing Month starts today and ends Nov.30th with a goal of a 50k word novel by the end. You can follow my word count updates over at http://nanowrimo.org/en/participants/acdntlpoet

I’ve updated my profile over on NaNoWriMo.org in the hopes that taking baby steps now will give me enough motivation to really dig in and give this another go. I DID participate back in 2007, and even pulled out a ‘win’ by producing over 50k words in under a month, but what I produced wasn’t even worth trying to edit in order to salvage anything….

I’m hopeful that this time around, even if I don’t ‘win’, that I’ll at least produce something a bit more workable. At the very least, I’ll consider this month a win if it gets me writing again. This year I think I am going to take a dramatically different approach and not focus on an overarching novella plot, rather take a decidedly “Joyce-ean” approach ala “Dubliners” and work on vignettes, or simply short stories to string together with a larger concept later on.

I found, after 2007′s attempt, that I don’t do well with larger fiction works. That single lesson is what will be driving this year’s attempt. Not to say it will be non-fiction, but rather I will only be working with short pieces and will see how, or even if, they can be strung together into a novella of sorts during the editing period in December and beyond. For now, however, the focus is JUST on producing the words not ensuring the quality.

Are you participating too? If so, add me as a buddy on the site so we can keep each other honest and motivated Of course, I’ll also likely be blogging here about it too, as I learned I tend to blog more when I am busy writing already. Sometimes writing for different purposes helps drive the creativity even more.

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It’s been less than 24 hours since WCPDX wrapped up, so I’m still processing a lot of what I heard over the course of the weekend. Still, it was within the first hour that I knew my time would be well spent here. Thankfully so, too, as I was fresh off a PDXWhisky tasting event from the night before (in bed around midnight and up at 6am for WCPDX made for a bit of a rough start Saturday morning…. thank gods for five-hour energy drinks and social anxiety induced adrenaline!).

The biggest takeaway for me was actually specific to running ‘barcamp’ style events: motivating people to lead sessions isn’t something you can control or drive, the participants need to be passionate about a topic and self motivated to put their session on the board.

The second takeaway was much more WordPress focused: “Child themes” are apparently not WordPress themes for children, but rather a more development focused capability for further customization of your site. Who knew?

Over the course of the two days, I jotted down notes on my iPad to log some of the bits that stuck out to me about the entire event. Oddly, none of these were really WordPress specific… though that is likely since I didn’t come in to the conference with specific WP questions or goals… that in mind, here are some lessons learned from a participant’s point of view. Some off these were learned because of perceived failures, some because of successes, but all are lessons we can bring back and implement to improve and maintain success… please forgive the disjointed nature:

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WCPDX: Unconference best practices / lessons learned / general notes and observations: 

1. Be crisp. Start session with topic explanation in 3 words, then poll attendees for expectations and what they want to know.
2. Agenda organization is frantic from the start, but settles down later. Minimal topics in the first 30 minutes into the first session, but builds momentum with the day.
3. During first session, rest of schedule builds out heavily. If you want to present, don’t wait.
4. On the fly schedule updates via web / twitter were brilliant. Define single online and single physical location to find schedules. Set centralized twitter account to help users enable text notifications for schedule changes during conference. Be mindful of using this account for things other than scheduling updates during session hours.
5. Participation is a lot of question/answer collaborative discussion; not a lot of push presentations, but there was a good balance of presentation to collaborative engagement.
6. Finding people to lead seemed like it may have been tough at times but there was no real lack of desired topics. (how to identify SMEs?)
7. WCPDX 2011 was heavily developer driven, which will likely be useful to me down the line. 50% plus in the audience make-up. Appreciated addition of scheduled keynote overlap when main was dev-centric.
8. First session seems like a rough start/just getting the feel.
9. Felt bad for not coming with a topic to lead. Will need to prepare for future camps. I had ideas but nothing solid to present, just general topics and didn’t want to cram the schedule with a nebulous idea… wondering how to motivate people like me to lead not just attend.
10. Topics shift quickly based on attendee feedback; some sessions were listed as one thing and quickly changed to something connected but generally different.
11. At one point I realized was in wrong session (I had forgotten the right room number and went to the wrong one), but found leaving to be difficult due to the perception that simply leaving would mean I was unhappy with a session which simply wasn’t relevant to me… Need to define an unconference better in the beginning, define etiquette and level set from the start, make it easy for participants to navigate and engage without feeling as though they are being rude.
12. Need multiple text editor capabilities to easily switch note taking topics and ideas. iPad multi-task capabilities came in handy for this.
13. Prepared sessions are good, but I found open dialog and conversation on guided topics are better. Facilitator vs. Presenter.
14. Free rooms are essential to allow for people to ad hoc hack, blog, etc. Make space available with tables.
15. Bring business cards.

All in all, the event was an outstanding success for me as a participant. Like after most conferences where you are focused and learning about specific topics that challenge your current skill sets or provide new exciting ways of accomplishing your goals, I am on a high and excited to make some changes to my sites. I am sure the euphoric buzz will wear off soon enough, but the stuff I learned won’t deteriorate with it.

I am once again re-invigorated with desire to improve my WordPress driven sites (I own and maintain 3 of them), and am looking to revamp at least one of them to make it more functional for the user base. I even found some great tools over the weekend (like the EditFlow plugin from http://editflow.org/) to really help bring my sites up a notch and ensure that my content is the reason people don’t stay on my sites, not the site itself Yes, that was self-deprecating humour to make a point, I really hope my content isn’t that bad!

I also found that my iPad was the perfect tool for a conference event like WordCampPDX. It is light and nimble and easily woken from sleep. Having it at the ready-made keeping up to date on the unconference scheduling easy, and checking out resources mentioned during session allowed me an efficient way to set the content for later review, or even just install a them or plugin on the fly as we were discussing it. Brilliant.

Plus, I was able to easily follow the conversations occurring on Twitter under the #WCPDX hash tag, which allowed me to connect with a few of the event attendees in the same sessions or conflicting sessions I couldn’t get to. While that made for a very busy day in terms of communications, it really skyrocketed my experience at WCPDX by enabling two-way real-time feedback in sidebar discussions concurrent with live sessions, or off in ad hoc meet ups for more in-depth conversations. I can’t imagine attending any conference without my iPad and constant twitter feed going. Not only did it make the conference more efficient and effective for me, but it also allowed me to discover and connect with some cool new people!

For those of you I met at #WCPDX: thanks for making it a great weekend! If you haven’t already, check out www.acdntlpoet.com and connect with me in the other social web spaces so we can continue the great conversations!

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In an attempt to get my habit back and return to honing my creativity and craft once again, I conjured a few fun tweets. Rather than post them to Twitter and flood that feed as well as FB, I figured I’d be better off just posting here and adding some additional context around them.

- The words in my head, chaotic mess of phrases, unable to focus. #LamentationsOfAWannabeWriter #MetaHaiku

The sad thing about the lines above: total Haiku failure. the last line is 6 syllables not 5. I guess that points out the complete lack of focus and attention to detail I am lamenting. I had actually posted that one out to Twitter and Facebook too. As an apology, I have re-written it below:

• The words in my head, chaotic mess of phrases, nothing stays focused. #LamentationsOfAWannabeWriter #MetaHaiku

And I’ll continue on with the theme… here’s the rest of the haiku I wrote as an exercise which thankfully won’t make it out to twitter; instead are doomed to a silent death here:

• Disparate ideas, priorities shift away, words lost forever.
• Concrete imagery, abandoned for solace in, bursts of self reference.
• Word smithing punkers, provocative blogging trends, words still escape me.
• Ideas of brilliance, words alone changing cultures, please escape my mind.
• Repetitive pain, in my wrist as well as brain, imprisoned by rote.
• To write is to read, live the life you wish to write, to read is to write.
• No Gonzo twitter, Hunter S. Thompson I’m not, just really bad haiku.

Yeah, really bad haiku indeed, I know. I don’t post it here because I think it is anything more than horrible, but rather because I need to post as a motivation to write. You know… it flexes a muscle, one I’ve ignored for too long. Little by little, the more I flex, the more strength it will gain…. and sooner or later I’ll be back at the top of my game; ready to tackle bigger concepts. Ready to unlock the words, phrases, and ideas currently serving time in my head hoping for a reduced sentence for goo behaviour and released back into the world to grow and become productive members of society once again. Right now, though, they still aren’t playing nice together, and as the warden I’m forced to keep them under lock and key until they fall in line and start making some sense.
(how’s that for following bad haiku with an even worse metaphor? Yikes!)

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The good news? I should also have a few new blog posts over on the 3 Drunken Celts website over the next few weeks with tasting notes covering:

• The new Big Bottom Whiskey Portwood finish release compared to the first batch.
• The Bruichladdich 12yr and Hibikki 12yr.
• An update on my Woodinville “Age Your Own” kit now that the distillate has been 16 weeks on oak.
• September’s PDX Whisky tasting event (tomorrow night) with tasting notes on the Auchentoshan 3 Wood, Highland Park 15yr, Douglas Laing double barrel, and the Bowmore 20yr.

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And lest I forget, I should also have some good posts here surrounding the WordCampPDX event I will be attending this weekend.  This is an ‘unconference’ done in the barcamp style, so there’s no set agenda until we show up Saturday morning and make one. Should be an interesting time to learn more about WordPress, blogging, networking, and general best practices etc. I expect to have a write up on it all sometime next week to bring all the new information and ideas into some sort of cohesive collection of thoughts. Stay tuned

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I write the best blog posts ever… in my head… while showering.

But like the grime washing off of me, the words never make it to publication ( and most often not even to the keyboard).

In the past week alone I’ve washed away brilliant revelations on topics like self aggrandizing, the ROI of being awesome, ethics of community management (which actually made it to some Google plus comments instead), and journalistic integrity as a blogger. I had connected words to become sentences, and sentences to be full fledged ideas, only to be washed down the drain.

Of course those words, like the filth of living, come back to me soon enough and the cycle continues only to wash away the words again. One of these days I’ll learn to shower in the morning and let the words build to the afternoon when I can successfully put them to post.

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And no pictures to post this time either. For shame. While I could go on about how work has monopolized my energies these past few weeks, that is only a partial truth. All be told, my muse just isn’t here right now. But I am hopeful. There is light on the horizon.
Whiskies of the World is upon us! Next week I’ll be in flight to my yearly pilgrimage to San Francisco to attend the annual Whiskies of the World expo and sample some of the new drams coming out of my favourite distilleries, as well as learn some more about craft distilling this year in one of the additional classes being presented. I’ve not yet decided if I want to bring my new camera along, as I’m not sure I want that extra concern in the environment, though it would help me document each of the drams I taste and take notes on. We’ll see. I expect a lengthy report to come of this year, just as years past, so look forward to another chapter of “The Gospels according to Seamus” to hit the 3DC website in the week or two after the grand tasting.
I have other things I need to get done as well, like finish my hand crank phone conversion and blog about it, but that’s stalled out for the time being while other priorities take precedence. I also have grand plans to write more, which will hopefully come to fruition as spring descends upon us. I’m fully engulfed by the motorcycle road trip itch again, so likely that will lend to some fun travel blogs as well in the coming months. Just gotta figure out where to go

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Ah, yes, the long awaited update on my weekend. I know you don’t really care about what I did over the Dec. 3rd-5th weekend, you just want to know what it was like to meet my birth mother. So, I’ll try not to bore you with a chronological listing of everything we did, but rather try and intersperse perspective and reflections throughout this tale of three days. Someday I’ll post further on the back story, but until then you’ll have to be satisfied with the present story…

Friday morning, Jean and I caught an early flight to Denver where my half-sister (henceforth referred to as “Kally” or “my sister” for simplicity) picked us up and we headed out to spend the afternoon in Colorado Springs. You’d have never known that Kally and I didn’t grow up together; the banter was in full swing by the time we were exiting the short term parking at Denver International. Kally even went as far as asking the parking booth attendant if it was too late to send us back (admittedly deserved on my part, but still). That should give you an idea of what was to come.

First stop was the “Garden of the Gods” in Colorado Springs; an absolutely stunning rock park. Such a distinctly different terrain than what what Jean and I are used to from SoCal or Oregon. It was around this time when we realized that Jean and I left our camera in the hotel room, so we stole Kally’s camera for the day as we drove through the ‘garden’ snapping away shots out of the sunroof and passenger window.

From the garden, we moseyed on over to a small wine shop for a tasting, and then over to the Miramont Castle for a self guided tour of a very interesting architectural build. I thoroughly enjoyed the fact that Kally shares similar interests. That alone made for a great afternoon, and we saw some fantastic sights to boot! A win/win in my book

By the time we were done with the tour of Miramont Castle, it was close enough to dinner time that we had to head back to the Denver metro area so we’d be there in time to meet up with Debby (my birth mom, hereafter referred to as Debby or just mom for simplicity). We had a bit of a drive ahead of us from Colorado Springs, back up to Denver to meet Debby, giving us time to digest the gravitas of the impending meeting. At one point Kally had asked me if I was nervous. I can report back with all honesty, that I was a startled by this question; not because she asked, but rather because it hadn’t even occurred to me to be nervous. I am also happy to say that the act of realizing I wasn’t previously nervous did not suddenly cause me to be nervous.

Having some time to think, I realized fairly quickly that I had social media to thank for my comfort level. Not to sound like an apologist for things like Twitter, Facebook, or email, but it is precisely due to these three tools which allowed me to connect with Debby long before we actually met in person. The discourse we shared the months prior to meeting in person, along with the passive views into each others lives, really set me at ease and with a comfort level in meeting which just made it feel like I was getting together with an old friend for dinner, much lower on the gravitas scale than meeting my birth mom for the first (ok, technically second) time in my life.

Well, we arrived at Undici early, and Debby was running a tad late due to work issues (seriously, ALWAYS the way when you have something planned), so Jean, Kally, and I sat at the bar for happy hour and enjoyed some cocktails. Looking back on it now, I’m happy I was able to have a drink before hand as doing so did loosen me up a bit. I guess I was mildly nervous after all, even though I couldn’t discern any tangible change which would have indicated any level of nervousness.

We were seated in an area which provided me with a good view to the front, so I was able to see Debby as she walked before she saw me. I took this opportunity to have a little fun and walked up to her, addressing her in my ‘professional’ tone, noting, “Excuse me, ma’am, but I believe your table is waiting for you over this way”… a quick pleased to meet you and hug later and we were on our way to the table. Now, most people will take a moment and hesitate before realizing I am not staff… not Debby. The recognition was immediate; so much so that I doubt she processed what I’d actually said until we were halfway to the table. There was undeniably, no doubt, clear as day, who we were.

Throughout dinner I’d catch myself,  and the other three at any one given time, staring in awe at the similarities we shared. While Kally and I are very similar, a fact that was a constant source of amusement for us all on her trip out to meet us in Oregon, Debby and I are even more strikingly similar; a theme which would permeate the rest of the evening, and weekend for that matter. While Kally and I share interests and other personality traits, Debby and I seem to share those even more deeply to the point where attitude and personality start to manifest in shared mannerisms and expressions. At various points during dinner Debby and I would catch ourselves holding our hands in the precise fashion as the other while listening to Jean or Kally talk, completely unaware that we were mimicking each other unintentionally. Which was fine until Jean pointed it out resulting in Debby and I both became acutely aware of it for the rest of the night to the delight of the other two.

Dinner was spectacular, but for once I won’t drivel on about the food or wine. That, obviously, wasn’t the point to this particular meal. Nor will I blather on about our after dinner drinks (also spectacular) at a small wine bar called Paris later that evening. What I will say, is that the night was far more than I could have hoped for or even expected. I went to bed that night with a satisfaction that I didn’t fully know I desired or needed. My intent for the trip to Denver had been fully realized and successful beyond my imagination. And to think, this was only Friday; we still had two days in town with both Kally and Debby to enjoy the area and each other’s company. It was all icing from this point on…

Saturday morning did come a bit early, even with sleeping in by an hour. The excitement for the day, however, got us moving in no time. We met up with Kally at her place after Debby picked us up from the hotel. On the docket for the day: Estes Park. First up was the drive out, opting for the Peak to Peak route which was ultimately gorgeous if not a tad perilous at parts. Ok, I may be exaggerating a bit, but it really was a beautiful drive. Coming down into Estes Park, we had an amazing view of the Stanley Hotel, which we had discovered on the drive in is where we were going to be having brunch. While I was excited for this, Jean was ecstatic to visit the Stanley as she is a serious fan of Steven King and the Stanley is, of course, where he was inspired and ultimately wrote the Shining.
We had an excellent brunch, and the moseyed down to take a tour of the hotel. Having been on a number of tours of historic buildings previously, I was pleasantly surprised at the length and breadth of the tour given at the Stanley. If you ever find yourself in Estes Park, take the tour. You won’t be disappointed. We sure weren’t!

The rest of the day was spent in Estes doing a little shopping to punctuate our stops at two different tasting rooms for some wine. Hey, it was chilly! We had to warm up somehow And of course we sought out and found the infamous Elk of Estes Park… the herds of them just wandering the city causing raucous after amusing and damaging raucous. In our case, however, we just watched them stop traffic as they crossed one of the main roads. From there, we dined in the early evening at the Rock Inn, another fabulous dinner replete with more amusing conversation (which honestly never really ceased throughout the day). It is funny how Kally and I, not having met until this year, can so easily fall into the jokingly bickering and relentless needling so often seen with siblings who grew up together; only made even more poignant when Debby rolls her eyes and laughs with/at the two of us.

After dinner, Kally drove us all back to Denver, where she left to go dancing and give Debby, Jean, and I more time together. This provided us with what I think was one of the most telling points of the entire weekend, as Debby asked if we’d like to go to a Christmas party being hosted by some of her friends at their house in the Cherry Hills / Greenwood Village area. I noted when she asked that this was a tough question for her (later confirmed directly that it was), and while my initial fear of new people and social situations crept up a bit, I was more honoured that Debby was comfortable enough with me that she’d want to introduce me (and Jean of course) to her friends. So away we went to meet her friends.

While initially, we had all intended to stay for a brief time to say hello, meet everyone and maybe have a drink, I have to say that Debby’s friends were so warm and welcoming to both Jean and I, that we ended up staying far later than anyone of us had expected. The conversation flowed the entire time as both Debby and I answered initial questions, and then Jean jumped in the mix as we talked through some of the story about how we came to find each other. It was such an interesting time for me to be asked those questions and have the other side standing directly next to me to round out the stories. Two things really struck me from meeting everyone: 1. how honestly interested people were in the story behind our meeting, and 2. how quickly they all accepted me and made me feel right at home. And while I know Debby wasn’t “showing me off”, it still felt really good to know that she thought highly enough of me to want her friends to meet me, and conversely that I am important enough for her to want me to meet her friends. That simple encounter spoke volumes about how we were all feeling about meeting for the first time; comfortable is really the only word to describe it all.

Sunday came a bit too early again, but this time accompanied by a bout of real nervousness: we were meeting two of my three nephews for brunch. Yep, two of Kally’s kids, Chase and Jeremy, were going to be dining with us. Not being great with kids, I was nervous about how to interact, but also simply because… well… because the realization had just struck me a few days prior: I have nephews. Not sure why I didn’t realize this before, since Kally has spoken of them often in our email correspondence over the past year. I guess my brain just never processed it before.

Luckily, the kids have the same attitude, sense of humour, and demeanor of their mom and grandma. They had me laughing up a storm and ganging up with them against their mom. Hey, I had to make up for years of missing out on tormenting my sister, right? I’m sure that helped ingratiate myself to the two boys. We had a great time at brunch, and I hope to think that Jeremy and Chase did too. Touch to say with a 15 year old and 10 year old respectively, though I’d wager that Jeremy and I connected at some level over music on the ride to drop him off at his dad’s. And while I am sure they are both a terrible handful for Kally at times, they really struck me as good kids from the short time we had with them.

From brunch we all reconvened at Debby’s after dropping the kids off, and headed up to Creekside winery for an afternoon of winetasting.(See, I TOLD you we all had shared interests!) This was some of the best wine of the trip (to my palette). Because of how their tasting room is set up, we sat at a table and all ordered a different flight from their tasting menu which made for a nice leisurely afternoon tasting. Very enjoyable. Of course we may have been too leisurely as we spent more time than intended there and didn’t have time to explore the rest of the area. We all headed back down the mountain and parted ways with Kally just before dinner.

Debby took us out to dinner at one of her favourite spots called La Loma in the northwest Denver area. She opted to take us there because we’d been noting how tough it is to find -good- Mexican food in Oregon. I’ll tell you it didn’t disappoint. And neither did the conversation, still. We found so much to talk about that what had been plenty of time to have dinner and get us to the airport, turned in to an “oh wow, we need to go” moment. Not late mind you, just not exactly early either.

And this is where our weekend effectively ends, folks; at Denver International, standing on the sidewalk saying good-bye after having only met around 36 hours prior. But not a bittersweet good-bye. Nothing like that at all. It was the simple good bye of people who don’t see an end, but rather the beginning of something larger than themselves. We ended on a high, and I’ve stayed there since.

So, when people ask what it was like to meet my birth mother for the first time in 37 (or so) years… I can honestly say, it was interesting, enlightening, wonderful, and spectacular. I am a better person for knowing both Kally and Debby, who they are and the depth of what I share with them… and now you all know what I mean when I say that.

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I hope you understand, I like you. I don’t think I am smarter than you, nor do I think you are stupid.  If that were the case I wouldn’t associate with you, let alone call you “friends”. I do not consider myself above reproach, nor infallable*. We all have our faults, we all make mistakes, but I am noticing a very disturbing trend: a backlash against proper spelling, grammar, and punctuation.

Call me the grammar police, or the spelling cops, but I draw the line at Nazi. Really? I am not condemning you to the gas chambers because you left out an Oxford comma, or decided that comma was spelled coma (a distinction that can very easily outline the importance of spelling on its own). Yes, I may demand your use of proper English, and yes I likely will point it out when you fail to do so. But labeling me as a Nazi is uncalled for (unless you want me goose-stepping all over your dangling participles).

I come to you today, however, not to demand that you improve your spelling or grammatical skills; no I come to you today to implore you to simply stop this growing trend of hate against people who expect communication at a higher level than ‘pre-school’. I know that you, my friends, are better than that. When we speak with each other, I hear the voices of intelligent thought. There are times, however, when I read your Facebook posts or Twitter statuses, and even emails and sigh heavily at the impression you are giving to the rest of the world. It makes me sad because I know you for the intelligent people you are, but that intelligence is simply not reflected when you make such obvious spelling or grammatical errors. People will judge you on your written communication skills; like it or not.

So please, take this to heart: I am not seeking attention when I correct you, I am trying to help you learn. I want you to use proper spelling, grammar, and punctuation so that others may see the intelligence you truly hold and not miss your real message. From a much more selfish side, I simply want to understand what you are trying to say without having to translate through improper structure or spelling issues. We are all inundated with information nowadays, so efficiency and clarity of communication is even more essential now. Proper use of spelling, grammar, and punctuation is critical to these end goals.

To be clear, it isn’t perfection I seek, but rather incremental improvement from our present state. We can all stand to improve our communication skills, and today seems like the perfect day to start!

*See what I did there? An intentional misspelling to prove a point!

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… I expect to not only get OUT during my vacation, but to write as well. And not just measly little blog posts, but real, substantive stuff. Some of which will likely be posted, some probably not, but all in all I expect to see a sharp upswing in posts here either during my week off, or within the week after my return depending on access, etc.

Last night Jean and I met up with Kerri at one of our new favourite downtown finds: Veritable Quandary. We had an outstanding dinner, as expected, and found ourselves engaged in deep conversation for the majority of the evening. It turned into a very relaxing and enjoyable three hour dinner and drinks. During this time we covered a gamut of topics, one of which speaks to my plan for next week….  writing.

I know I have at least one story to tell, but I need time and energy to focus. Time and energy I never have during the work week, and the weekends I’d rather be recovering than ‘working’ on a book/short/story/blog/whatever. I expect next week to find that energy and time and dig in deep with as much as I can to put down as many words to (virtual) paper as possible. What comes of it, is again, anyone’s guess. Which story comes out is also a bit up in the air, though I more distinct ideas about that. In any case, expect me to be fairly silent and then inundate you with posts.

As for my trip…. well, I may even enable Facebook places for the week. Who knows, stranger things have happened

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It is amusing how some things can be right under your nose for so long, then the oddest little things brings them all to light.

Case in point: Ben Zander apparently shares the motto of the 3 Drunken Celts, albeit phrased a tad differently: “Don’t take yourself so goddamned seriously.” (The 3DC motto being “Never forget the funny“, I am sure you can see the similarities here.)

Of course the real funny for me in all this is the path I took to find this out: I began reading Seth Godin’s “Linchpin” as a recommendation from a colleague and collaborator in the social media spaces (my former boss, Kelly Smith). Kelly had read the book previously and found it had some key insights for us in how we may improve our collective efforts…. as well as our own individual paths.

While reading, I came to page 50 of “Linchpin” and was amused to find reference to one of my best friends employers, Ben Zander. It seems Seth is quite the fan of Ben (and Roz) Zander, as I came to find on page 59…. and even more so as I spoke to my friend about the discovery as I figured she’d be amused. And rightly so, it turns out Ben and Seth are quite good friends.

Bemused even more, I relate the story to Kelly, who of course reminds me that she is also a huge fan of Ben’s, and had even referenced him a few times in some older blog posts after he had spoken at the Rational Developer’s Conference back in 2006 (sadly two yeas before I joined Rational). During our chat, she pointed me to the following minimalist blog posting:
Remember Rule 6

And so the loop was closed for me, and the funny not forgotten.

Truly, what a small world this is; and able to deliver such a serendipitous message right when I needed it (As a tangent, perfectly in keeping with our organization’s KCS ideals of knowledge ‘just-in-time’!). Sometimes it is surprising what a struggle it can be to not take myself so “goddamned seriously”. Thank you Ben, and the 3DC for being this constant reminder!

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