Regular readers will have noticed a recent downturn in the quality of my blog posts – especially the quality of my analysis of issues and announcements, etc. (if there ever was any quality, ha ha!)
In fact some, such as the launch of the Facebook API, I didn’t even get around to investigating to any real detail that would enable me to pass judgement on.
The reason for this is that I have a lot on my mind right now with a number of important commitments behind the scenes that require my attention.
One is BarCampLondon (sadly now full, sorry), which is requiring twice the amount of time I thought it would. It’s something that I’ve really wanted to do, and I think has the potential to be a really amazing event. All I can do is set up the framework – it’s down to the attendees to make it great… but I feel I owe it to everyone to ensure I give it the best foundation possible.
The other commitment I’ll refrain from detailing, for now at least, but suffice to say it’s the one that is creating a lot of nervous energy and thus sapping a lot of the will needed to maintain the blog (and other things). It all culminates on Thursday, which may or may not be the end of it.
“First there is a mountain, then is no mountain, then there is” – that’s this site’s current slogan (I change them regularly as you will know).
It’s a Zen Buddhism proverb that was first bought to my attention of the crazy-manic-irreverent Iain Lee show on LBC 97.3 (which I listen to every day). The folk musician Donovan sang this line in a song by the same name, and Iain plays the soundbite (somewhat mockingly) regularly as part of his crazy antics.
He invited Donavan onto his show to explain it, and it turns out you can interpret it at any level you want. There is a deep Zen philosophical interpretation that if you look at something and see it all the time you forget that you see it and then you don’t see it at all.
However the more superficial interpretation that life is about life’s obstacles and challenges – you tackle one, successfully overcome it/achieve it and then there for a while it’s as if there are no challenges. But of course, at the top of the mountain you actually spot the next mountain to climb… the next obstacle that life has thrown at you.
I actually prefer the latter, as it resonates with where I am right now – for various reasons I won’t go into… but anyone who knows me well may be able to identify some of what that’s all about.
I’m sorry for being a bit cryptic but I wanted to make a post just to explain why some of the posts I’ve made recently haven’t been to the same standard that I know I can do when I’m working on 100%.
Cheers,
Ben
PS: For those who are interested, the proverb has also been used to describe what I’ve always called ‘the hype-curve’ – the sudden rise, deflation and then gradual rise of the rate of adoption of a new ‘cool’ product or service. I think I still prefer the hype-curve name, but I thought I’d include it as it was an interesting find during some googling searching.