Because it’s never a bad time to have a revolution, let’s make a new year a great excuse! In the last 12 months, the false peak of shitty politics has been summited many times, we appear to be living in a time where the shit has hit the fan, the walls, the ceiling, the floor, with a huge steaming blob right in the delicious mojito of your life.
Something has to give – so it might as well be us.
Wait what? shouldn’t we hit the streets and rage against the machine and all its fetid produce? Well yes. But two and a half decades of variously raging, supporting raging, watching raging, raging a bit more has led to an Einstenian conclusion:
We can’t change the machine using the type of raging the machine encourages and permits.
(that’s a terrible paraphrase of this quote, by the way)
So all that raging is useless, without first raging at myself and understanding how, where and why I fit with the universe, the machine to be raged at, and everything. It’s not an easy process – it’s like taking up running – it hurts, you suck at it, it hurts more, you suck at it more, then one day after much hurt and sucking you’re actually feeling OK about running.
…until you forget to run for a week. Then you’re back in the hurt/suck pit. For far too long.
Revolutions require discipline.
So in the year of twenty nineteen what’s my revolution? How can I legitimately call for the year of the revolution, unless I engage with it myself?
I took a small step in the last calendar year – at the ripe young age of 44, deciding I needed help with my shit, asking for it, and actually paying real money for it. I can already feel it’s the most valuable thing I’ve done in ages. In the next 12 months I’ll expand on that, and keep working on myself and all the stuff I’ve tried to ignore/overcome/bury for years.
I left a lucrative startup job in order to pilot my own boat as an independent consultant. I have to just trust that it’s going to work. This is huge for me!
I also leaped headlong into taking ownership of a community I’ve benefitted from for years, organising an open source geospatial conference – for me this was big and uncomfortable, negotiating serious challenges, having to push ideas past people who I’ve never met, fusing multiple strategies and priorities, forging something new with 14 other people. In the next 12 months, I’m excited to continue my journey growing and nurturing this community in the Oceania region.
Finally, I acquired running shoes… the physical hurt/suck is, for me, a powerful reminder of the emotional and spiritual hurt/suck we all put off, fearing that part instead of looking past to what we will become by embracing and owning it.
Realistically, I have no idea what 2019 holds, and how anything might even be achieved. I’ll need to use this little word spew to remind myself every so often, and see how far things have progressed, regressed, or stayed still. It’s all OK.
Revolutions happen when we’re ready for them to happen
Happy 2019 – let’s all have the revolution we need!
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