weird

As I've been trying to plot a course over the last year, there have been constant reassessments about direction. Attempts at stability have failed, for better or worse, and the way forward remains unclear. There's always potential over the horizon, be it a job interview here or the promise of writing gigs in the future. As my social networks continue expanding and proving more potentially fruitful than ever, there remains the issue of the lack of fruit. Meanwhile, time flies like an arrow and fruit flies like a banana. Connections aren't the issue, commitment is - and therefore connections are the issue. All of this came into focus as I just completed reading Seth Godin's, 'We Are All Weird'. The shift to weird as opposed to mass markets is one that inherits directly, whether Seth read it or not, Pierre Levy's 'Collective Intelligence: Mankind's Emerging World in Cyberspace' as related to the prediction of molecularization.

Seth's book put it all into a bit more of a focused context. The problem of picking a business direction, at least in my experience, is often skewed by the need to assure that there is a market - and clearly, the larger the market the less risk involved - something Seth didn't get into. In fact, Seth didn't really touch on the risks involved at all - simply putting out there that there are changes in the way markets work. While Seth writes that the mass market is dead, I look at the statistics for Fox and wonder how dead mass media actually is. It's clear that mass media is no longer dominant in some areas. It's also clear that the subgroups of weird that Seth writes about are not just markets but demographics - and demographics translates to politics (he alludes to that with the Tea Party as a reference) as well as democracy. To be clear, I wrote politics and democracy as separate things because they are separate things. I'm not that interested in politics but do believe that democracy might be a good idea if we could ever get past politics.

On a more personal note, the dilemma of KnowProSE LLC vs employment remains unchanged. The jobs I appy for I obviously want; I drove 444 miles last week for one job interview - something a person would not do if they did not want a position. Still, that's up in the air and no decision has been made yet. On the flip side, right after I got back from the interview I helped edit/write something for pay. Paying work always takes precedence.

As far as direction, it's not something that I'm alone in. Mike DeWolfe pointed me at his 'Purpose Party' entry as an example. Liz Strauss, in conversation, leaned me toward the path of making roads instead of filling potholes -  and somewhere else made the point that past successes tend to point to a direction. On the surface, that is problematic for myself since my successes are diverse - but in thought the past successes share commonalities - particularly at seeing things other people don't see because of their Somebody Else's Problem field or because their education and experience blind them to solutions. The trouble with the latter is that the education and experience blinds them to solutions presented.

But back to successes. Failures, too, have commonalities. When I think of failures in business, I look mostly at my father and his generation. The one Uncle I had who I considered successful had his own failings, but he accomplished his goals - something I explained to his youngest son last year when we were having the mandatory 'gripe about the previous generation' meeting, held every day that we had to deal with some of the artifacts left behind. The successes met, though, were things that typically transcended money. My father, for instance, was successful in repairing just about anything electromechanical and if he had walked the Earth another 10 years, that likely would have included computers. One Uncle who had a printery did make some poor decisions but in the end he assured that all 4 of his children had a good launch into life. The youngest Uncle did his best to assure that his son, who more differed from than differing, could move ahead somehow. The Uncle who was given the most was the least successful; he sacrificed himself out of love for his parents and now is a bedridden man - a well of sorrows for the things he did not get to do that he so wanted to.

Success, you see, is more than money. Success is a warm and full feeling that you get. Money doesn't give you that - but it sure makes the potential for it more possible. Financially, my parents were not successful. The people I know who have financial wealth and are successful are quite rare; most are simply wealthy but lack success aside from inheritance. The trouble, of course, is that you have to be successful at something that pays the bills and allows for future success. In this economy (or lack thereof), that can be a real challenge. Further, I've seen people finding financial success where they had little business doing so - they capitalize on something, hire a few people who happen to be really good at what they do and fear those people.

And now back to weird. As someone plotting a course on a map where no one has circumnavigated, there's the usual worry of falling off the edge of the map. This can be seen as pessimism when it creates paralysis and fear of success; it can be seen as optimism when there's an adventuring spirit. It's the balance that has to be struck and that balance has to be weird. Weird is about niches. Weird is about finding the voids and filling them - not like potholes but like building a road to a destination people want to go to.

It's time to re-awaken the weirding way.