Work - Space

Coming back to the blog at the start of the year coincides with an attempt to tidy my office. Both are workspaces, and both rather cluttered. But the clutter may be a feature of the work, not a fault within it.

When i started writing, the Blog was the central space of my work: today it sits as part of a constellation: nearly twenty books, the Substack sites, videos, and my day to day practice. It’s a landscape that i have created for myself to be creative within. So not an accidental way of working, but an evolving and partly deliberate one.

The practice of #WorkingOutLoud is unusual in that vulnerability and failure are intrinsic to the deal. It’s not a tidy journey and, as such, a sense of frustration, confusion, and even loss can be features of my everyday work. Trying to pull ideas to together, trying to make sense of things, trying to explain them.

I was very conscious of this at the end of last year, writing ‘Engines of Engagement: a curious book about Generative AI’, where i wrote a section on Social Learning that nobody else liked or understood. Or perhaps they understood it but did not like it because of that understanding.

Whatever the case, i just could not figure it out: i reworked it, then entirely rewrote it, and then just abandoned it, before finally creating a much shorter section that seemed to land ok. But the experience was challenging as i could ‘feel’ in my head the things i wanted to say – and to me the words looked ok – but clearly they did not tell the story that i wished to tell.

#WorkingOutLoud is to have a workspace where one may try new language, new vocabulary and ideas, a space to craft and create, but also to get confused and lost. For me, it’s valuable, although quite why so many people kindly follow it i am never sure.

There are few answers here, although i would argue that there is some of the potential to find them: cognitively the act of #WorkingOutLoud is one of expansion and connection – diverse scraps of ideas within a diverse landscape – leading to diverse stories.

This is not a space of convergence, and nor is it a particularly performative one: my intention is my own understanding, and whilst i welcome company, i do not seek to please it.

I have written previously that books, for me, are written for me. They are part of my ‘sense making’, and whilst i dearly hope that others find value in them, i have very little control over whether they truly do.

A constant feature of my work is that i seek to remain uncertain and off balance: i am not looking for the comfort of clarity at the macro level – although finding it at the micro is what gives me enough energy to proceed. I recognise intrinsic in this is that there is not end point to my exploration. I will be forever lost, but curious within it. And, i hope, curious in good company.