Recently, I wrote a book for technology professionals about systems thinking. While writing that book, I discovered how desperately I miss writing. Not writing for STEM – as a systems architect, I do that all the time. Writing as exploring, going deep. Writing as a practice that leads me away from the surface and down into what I can't yet fathom.
When I quit writing 20 years ago to pursue a career in information technology (following the freshly-baked, chocolate-chip cookie smell of scientific insight, informal logic and knowing that was less experiential) ... I didn't know that my path would converge. Software crafting is creative nonfiction, my best-loved genre. Storytelling through creating experiences. I didn't know I could not escape because I am that convergence.
Stress, for me, is not diving deeply into things. When I teach about information systems, I use the Iceberg Model. I describe what "digital transformation" really is. But the truth is – the iceberg model is wisdom. Wisdom is the habit of diving deeply, under the surface of constructed ideas and rules for living and (goddess knows) advertising jingles, into the chaotic entanglment of the real. I thought I was describing software but I was also describing myself. You, everything.
I need, and you probably do too, to take the blue pill. To arrive in the desert of the real, as Morpheus calls it. If I don't dive in (for me, that's through writing like this) before my day begins, I skim along the surface, dragged by the the tides of tasks and todos and emails unanswered and doctor's appointments overdue and invoices unsent. The gravity of pushing against socially-constructed entropy. (Actual entropy is the beautiful truth of the universe. The soul of the machine that is reality.)
I can easily spend the whole day, the whole fucking day, stage dressing my life. Constructing productivity with all the correct accruements. I juggle; I'm a juggler. I stay on top of things. I get shit done. I really do get shit done; it's kind of a marvel. I enjoy it and my skills are valuable.
Increasingly though, my question is ... valuable to whom? I see that too often, we are George Jetson. We believe that we can "keep up" with the relentless flow of doing things. We must! And if we do, we arrive. Arrive where? Where does that journey lead?
That path, my friends, does not lead to insight or richness of time. The path leads nowhere. I enjoy jumping on the hamster wheel, getting shit done. Like Joan Dideon, I am a "resistant rearranger of things."
“The impulse to write things down is a peculiarly compulsive one, inexplicable to those who do not share it, useful only accidentally, only secondarily, in the way that any compulsion tries to justify itself. [...] Keepers of private notebooks are a different breed altogether, lonely and resistant rearrangers of things, anxious malcontents, children afflicted apparently at birth with some presentiment of loss.”
A presentiment of loss that keeps me running from it's arrival. Like most people, the running is a horizontal life -- which can only be superficial. What would it mean to live a vertical life, go up and down instead, dive in and resurface?
I crave, now, a journey that might lead me towards deep, meaningful and matterful work. Rather than a light at the end of the tunnel, what if it's more productive to seek rabbit holes and wardrobes and multiverses and insights blurred by incomprehensibility. I don't mean get all woowoo and psuedo science, I mean acknowledge that Sapiens still don't understand how the universe works.
Is this journey even possible? Can I create, think, share what I learn, become rich in knowledge experiences without drowning? (Drowning because we can't survive without food and shelter and air, we can't live down there. Or can we?)
This blog / newsletter / community space is a simple manifestation of a simple practice: show up. Most days, make a bit of space to go deep. I don't know where the practice will lead. I hope the outcome nourishes and inspires the explorer in you. I hope you'll join me. Because it's dark down there and I don't want to go alone.