Hermetic thoughts

Hermes, by Trois Têtes

It has been over two years since I last posted on this blog, and indeed since I wrote at length on any topic not directly related to delivering projects for Weaver Digital or Elastik Mobile. It's a realisation that is quite sobering for me, as my desire to crystalise thoughts into prose has never really lapsed.

Naturally, I blame Twitter in part for my prosaic absence: it has seduced me into bite-sizing my thoughts, and worse, sidelining altogether those of them that refuse to squeeze themselves into a 140-character mould. Then again, my professional focus over the last five years has shifted progressively from an abstract, quasi-academic concern with Digital Identity, via wide-eyed startup entrepreneurialism (Blog Friends), to the delivery of strategic, design and development solutions for paying clients. Chipping away diligently at the Weaver coal face, it has been easy to forget to look up occasionally at the sky, be it blue or cloudy, and simply ponder. And a blog is nothing without pondering.

But enough of the retrospective angst. A new year brings new energies, and I have set an intention to revive and re-invigorate Weaverluke (the blog, and hopefully thereby the man) in 2011.

When I founded i-together Ltd as a vehicle for my startup projects (Blog Friends was the only i-together project to see the light of day, but a number of its abortive predecessors taught me much about technology, business and people), I was inspired by a vision of a world where networked technology helped people to live richer and more fulfilled lives — by empowering them to express themselves simultaneously as unique and self-determining individuals on one hand and as participants in diverse and multi-dimensional communities and groups on the other.

As my thirties have unfolded (I'm 38 now), I have lost some of my evangelic zeal about the blue-skies, "let's invent an amazing new technology that will revolutionalise the way we live our lives and relate to one another" i-together vision. Rather, what I have found is that I am increasingly interested in learning to live my own life according to i-together principals: exploring and expressing my individual character and spirit, while also learning to work and interact more effectively and creatively with others, within Weaver's team, with clients, with friends, family and my partner. And, critically, seeking an understanding of how the individual and collective aspects of my life can interact in such a way as to yield more than the sum of the parts. The change begins with oneself. Such a simple insight, but hard won indeed.

There's another nuance of the i-together vision that I have begun to appreciate more as time goes on: the power of separateness within wholeness. Implicit in the "i" of i-together, but not really acknowledged properly by me for a long time, is my personal need to clearly separate my alone, internal time from my sociable, collaborative time. I have started to learn the power of maintaining a hermetic seal, as it were, between these two realms of my life — of allowing the potential energy flow between my private and social worlds to build, in the process spinning up new creative energies in the vacuum between the two that may flow into both.

The recognition of my need to maintain a clearer separation between personal and sociable spaces may have implications for the kind of professional work I focus upon, and also the way that I manage the work itself. Strategic consultancy generally allows for a nice separation of a phase of engagement with the client from a period of reflection, analysis and synthesising of project findings in a way that, for example, a website design and build project, with the myriad change requests that invariably come with the territory, does not. And my Inbox Zero policy with email, much as it appeals to my compulsive nature, does tend to furnish my day with a constant stream of interruptions. Finding more opportunities to delegate, and more wholeheartedly — without losing oversight of the key aspects of Weaver's operations — could also play a part. The truth is, though, I don't know yet what practical changes are required, if any. Perhaps a shift of intention will suffice?

Weaver's revirtualisation at the close of 2010 — we moved out of our Soho offices, for a number of reasons I won't dwell on here — is certainly resonant with my personal shift of focus. It has been a time for me to draw back and reflect, taking stock of the amazing variety of projects I have been fortunate to lead at Weaver in the last few months and years, and renewing Weaver's focus according to the insights that emerge from that stock-taking process. Weaver's forthcoming new website will embody much of this change of focus, although it will no doubt continue to evolve along with our clarity around what Weaver is and what it is for.

So, there we have it. A nicely long and rambling, navel-perusing post to kick this blog back into life. Few may read to the end of this post, but here it is for those who do.

Hermes, messenger of the gods. A fun part to aspire to play.