In the early 1980s, I started thinking that my father had “gone soft.” He wasn’t as achievement oriented or hard-driving as I knew him to be, and I was wondering what had happened. I didn’t have the courage, gumption, or wherewithal to ask Dad what had changed before he died in 1985 at age 55, and I have often wondered what he would have said had I asked.

So, I had a field day reading “Aging Well—Surprising Guideposts to a Happier Life.” The author, George Vaillant, describes in great detail the adult development process. The data and anecdotes are drawn from the Harvard Study of Adult Development—the longest running longitudinal study in the world. Comprising three different cohorts, the ongoing study includes members of the study were born in 1910, 1920, and in the 1930s.

Many findings in the book are surprising—for example, the results suggest that what goes right in childhood predicts the future far better than what goes wrong. Wow. Imagine the effect this idea could have in the courtrooms of the U.S. Another finding, by the time you are 50, the factors that predict successful aging (aside from your genes…) are within your control. The early life factors are no longer relevant. It seems that those who age successfully are masters at re-inventing themselves and at different times in life different adjustments and adaptations are appropriate.

Particularly interesting, I thought, was the detailed description of adult development. Vaillant expands Erik Erikson’s model and suggests that unlike child development,
which is for the most part sequential and predictable, where stage 1 must occur and be completed before stage 2, adult development is a set of six tasks that can be worked on in any order and concurrently. During early adulthood, the three primary tasks are:

• Identity—developing a sense of one’s self


• Intimacy—developing an interdependent reciprocal committed relationship that lasts for a decade or more


• Career consolidation—establishing a social identity

In later adulthood the tasks are:

• Generativity—Guiding and caring for specific individuals in the next generation, while respecting their autonomy


• Keeping the meaning—Conserving the principles of the past


• Integrity—Accepting one’s life as it is and as it was even in the face of death

I think what I observed in my father was his working on those last three tasks. And I think I’m observing myself working on those same tasks now. And I wouldn't have understood any of this twenty years ago.

The things you do not have to say, make you rich.

Saying the things you do not have to say, weakens your talk.

Hearing the things you do not have to hear, dulls your hearing.

And the things you know before you hear them, these are you, and this is why you are in the world.

And this being an age in which publicizing the private has never been more rewarded, a fair number of parents are hoping their blogs will attract the attention of book publishers.
...
And of course the more parents blog, the less likely they are to get the attention and validation they seem to crave.

Hochman's conclusion seems to be that blogging parents are selfish individuals seeking attention and validation and a generous book deal. I think there are many reasons that people blog and there are many different senses of propriety. And I think calling someone selfish is oh, so boring and juvenile. Read getupgrrl's excellent post about Selfishness: A Brief Analysis of a Puzzling Pattern.

[This tool] "... can create almost lyrical connections between ideas. I'm now working on a project that involves the history of the London sewers. The other day I ran a search that included the word ''sewage'' several times. Because the software knows the word ''waste'' is often used alongside ''sewage'' it directed me to a quote that explained the way bones evolved in vertebrate bodies: by repurposing the calcium waste products created by the metabolism of cells.

That might seem like an errant result, but it sent me off on a long and fruitful tangent into the way complex systems -- whether cities or bodies -- find productive uses for the waste they create. It's still early, but I may well get an entire chapter out of that little spark of an idea.

Now, strictly speaking, who is responsible for that initial idea? Was it me or the software? It sounds like a facetious question, but I mean it seriously. Obviously, the computer wasn't conscious of the idea taking shape, and I supplied the conceptual glue that linked the London sewers to cell metabolism. But I'm not at all confident I would have made the initial connection without the help of the software. The idea was a true collaboration, two very different kinds of intelligence playing off each other, one carbon-based, the other silicon.

Steven's description of the genesis of a new chapter as the result of a seemingly loose connection between disparate ideas reminds me of how Mary and I "think" together. At the end of an hour or two together, we are often surprised at the many tacks we have taken, the many tangents we have followed, and the many connections we have made. Sometimes we have something coherent and tangible to show for our thinking together; sometimes not. In all cases, it is a true collaboration, two very different kinds of intelligence playing off each other, both carbon-based.

Dictionary.com defines identity as

The collective aspect of the set of characteristics by which a thing is definitively recognizable or known.

Evelyn is quite eloquent and seems to share her personal perspective easily. I got hooked both on her writing and the way she weaves themes together, drawing on books, quotations, poems and other sources that catch my eye. Since June, I have follow her thoughts and links to all sorts of new places I didn't know I wanted to visit, but I am glad I did.

In yesterday's post, Evelyn mentions that she previously had a different blog. Curious, I went to see what her blogging looked like in an earlier incarnation, and I came across these quotes from her March 13, 2003 posting:

I consider myself a futurist. I have a good track record of being about one or two years ahead of the curve or even the "early majority", but I don’t necessarily believe we predict the future as much as we create it. Alan Kay had it right when he said, “The best way to predict the future is to create it."

...The Support Economy posits that future wealth creation lies in individual space. Unmet market needs (and a market is comprised of a bunch of individuals) create market opportunities.

...With “individual space" as the hub I see an individual’s digital identity becoming the nucleus of the orbit of services and support revolving around the individual. In my view, digital identity encompasses much more than an individual’s username and password or even their biometric fingerprint. It encompasses the personas, roles, attributes and information that uniquely describe and reference a particular individual and their needs, desires, interests, expression, and more.

I get the sense that she is right about being a couple years ahead of the curve, and that she is indeed able to predict by creating. I have a lot of background reading of her older postings to do - up until now I have read her in present tense only. We may not have fulfilled the promise of digital identity yet (I can't tell - need to catch up!), but I recognize what she was getting at nearly two years ago is very much aligned with where I want to go - to be able to use technology in ways that help me use my skills and resources in relationship with others.

Way back in 1996, I read this quote by Scott McNealy -- CEO Sun Microsystems. It's as powerful and meaningful today as it was in 1996. In parenthesis is the word people. I think in terms of people, not computers. So, I inserted . . . people.

"When computers (people) are networked, their power multiplies geometrically. Not only can people share all that information inside their machines, but they can reach out and instantly tap the power of other machines (people), essentially making the entire network their computer."

I'm moving more and more towards eliminating paper files where I can, and this post by Jack Vinson gives me hope that good solutions for organizing and finding electronic information - personal knowledge management (to supplement my brain and my Gmail brain) - are not far off. Jack includes a link to an article with this ultimate goal:

What do we envision in referring to the lifetime personal Web space (LPWS)? Imagine a magnificently equipped (with software, communication, search, and multimedia tools), beehive-configured Web space that possesses sufficient organizational plasticity to accommodate the user’s developmental capacities and needs across a lifetime. The LPWS will thus be organized more like our brains than our file cabinets.

Sounds like just the thing to me...

and that which comes to me as fruit
goes as seed.

The most difficult thing in the world is to listen, to see. We don't want to see. Do you think a capitalist wants to see what is good in the communist system? Do you think a rich man wants to look at poor people? We don't want to look, because if we do, we may change. We don't want to look. If you look, you lose control of the life that you are so precariously holding together. And so in order to wake up, the one thing you need the most is not energy, or strength, or youthfulness, or even great intelligence. The one thing you need most of all is the readiness to learn something new. The chances that you will wake up are directly in proportion to the amount of truth you can take without running away. How much are you ready to take? How much of everything you've held dear are you ready to have shattered, without running away? How ready are you to think of something unfamiliar?

This is a fairly small book, and could be read quite quickly I suppose, but I read it very slowly. It is one of my most dog-eared books. I spent the year with it, in bite-sized doses, and it provoked a lot of thinking. Judy shared with me that her book of last year was I Will Not Die an Unlived Life - by Dawna Markova. This author explores how people can continue to feel powerless and live habitual lives - or they can make the choice to follow their passion. Judy described reading through this book 3 times, and how it gave her something new each time. We both intend to read each other's book recommendation, and it sounds like there is some commonality in message and inspiration.

Now, I have a habit of leaving myself voicemail on things I don't want to forget - and I usually do so in a very direct manner - no fussing around to leave a message to me from me, So after lunching with Judy I left myself a message that just says "I will not die an unlived life". It is very striking to hear that message to myself on the voicemail, so I haven't erased it. The intention was to remind me to look up the book, but surely it means more. Coincidentally, I got another message over the weekend, this time from a faculty member of my diversity practitioner program. We have a website for the class where we can post messages and share resources. The posting from the weekend was the poem by Markova which begins the story of the book above:

I will not die an unlived life
I will not live in fear
of falling or catching fire
I choose to inhabit my days,
to allow my living to open me,
to make me less afraid,
more accessible
to loosen my heart
until it becomes a wing
a torch, a promise
I choose to risk significance
to live so that which came to me as a seed
goes on to the next as a blossom,
and that which came to me as blossom
goes as fruit.

With some expert help over the holiday period (thanks Pop, Barb & Kerry!) I finally found a reasonably-priced out-of-the-box solution - a new system with Windows XP. I got the initial set up done last week (take out of the box and plug in!) but then was busy with some facilitation work, so I did not get it fully loaded with all the settings and software that I would like - just up and running enough to correspond with clients and get deadlines met. I hope to get further into customizing and transferring this week. I am also looking into an overall back-up plan for both Mac & Windows, so would love suggestions from those who mess with both. There are plenty of folks who may wonder why I am working with both, and suffice to say right now - because that is what I have. I want to be bilingual and can't achieve that without working through it.

Q: What should the title of the book be?

A: For now, I'm going to call it "the red couch project." Cause I hate the names we came up with earlier this week. "Conversational Marketing" sounds lame. "Corporate Weblogging Manifesto" is just as lame, plus it sounds like we copied the idea from the Cluetrain guys. "Blogging in business?" Please.

Anyway, if Seth Godin can do a book called "the Purple Cow" we can do a book called "The Red Couch."

I think my interpretation still works.

Last year about this time, I was talking to a friend about how stressful it is for me to receive gifts. I asked her if she experiences "gift anxiety." Until that moment, I had never heard of nor considered the phrase "gift anxiety"--it just rolled off my tongue. And as soon as it did, I realized how apt a phrase it is to describe what I feel about receiving gifts. To my surprise, Martha knew exactly what I meant. Amazing. We went on for several minutes, waxing poetic, about strategies we've employed to deal with this "gift anxiety." Strategies such as scouring the house looking for gifts before Christmas day so that we'd be prepared to feign an appropriate reaction, or thanking the recipient profusely for a lovely wrapped gift and saying that we'd put it under the tree--we couldn't possibly open a gift before Christmas Day, or protesting at the suggestion that someone should want to give us a gift.

I think I can trace my "gift anxiety" back to early childhood days when my reaction to gifts wasn't what the gift-giver was looking for. Wanting to please others, I had to develop a way of giving the gift-giver what she wanted. And in so doing, I buried part of myself. And developed a severe case of gift anxiety. Which now I can laugh about. As I open gifts. In front of the gift giver. With sweat beads on my upper lip.

They have great coffee, and the other beverages that I haven't yet sampled sound good too. They have fresh focaccia bread with a tasty choice of sandwich options. They even have free wifi - so if I get there early I can catch up on my laptop.

But most of all they have a great sense of service as exhibited by owner Kimberly McGowan. She's always been friendly but I didn't know her name and she didn't know mine. Yesterday she was in the right place at the right time.

I've held meetings with different people at the cafe several times in the last few weeks, but had not taken note of the operating hours. This time I had arranged to meet a group of independent business owners for a management roundtable at 4 p.m.. I got there at 3:58 and found a distinct lack of cars in the shopping center's parking lot. It was then that I found out that the cafe closes at 3:30. The shopping center is predominantly populated by restaurants , but I had never caught on to the fact that most of the activity there happens around the breakfast/lunch hours. As the group gathered, my convenient meeting place was looking like a bust, and we began trying to figure out where we could reconvene close by. Kimberly noticed us in the parking lot, and invited us to come on in even though she was "officially" closed. We didn't have to relocate and we had the place to ourselves! She graciously welcomed us in, took our drink orders, and we got down to work. Jim quite wisely recognized that Kimberly might be interested in our discussion as yet another independent business owner, and invited her to join us. So now we have a new friend, possibly an expanded group, and we still have a convenient place to meet.

Thanks Kimberly! Y'all stop in and see her!