Wandering
The Opposite of Focus
You know that feeling that you get when you are heading on vacation? Where your mind starts to wander. You can’t focus on anything but the trip ahead. That’s me writing this newsletter today.
This is also an announcement that my next two Now New Next newsletters will pause until I find what I am looking for (my favorite U2 song).
My wife and I are heading to the UK. Her for the first time, me for the 3rd time, but the first time beyond London. I am going for three different modalities, a topic I wrote about in February.
BUSINESS AND IDEATION
The first part of the trip is to see old friends and engage with new business acquaintances while exploring the city of London. I have always been bad at blending business meetings with exploring a new city. The Midwest in me was always about optimizing meetings.
My past executive life was always focused on preparation, productive meetings, and an occasional dinner or drinks - a very structured and compartmentalized approach to optimize the time spent with as many business touch points as possible. Time was money. That was how I was conditioned.
It took years to unwind this hyperfocus to realize that I was not truly living my best life. I was living the treadmill life of corporate productivity and worried about optimizing my value to the company.
As a solopreneur, that focus is even more intense, because it is your money. Your cash flow. Your missed opportunities. You are the company.
So, I compromised. I made only six meetings, two per day while in London. That way I could justify the expense of this trip beyond the mere vacation elements of it. It tamed the Midwest in me and allowed for the new expansive wanderer part to show up.
I know my best ideas come from not thinking about the work or the solution. The ideas happen while being in a different mindset and that low-grade humming of the subconscious engine keeps chugging in the background.
We intend to take in the museums, the pubs, the dining, and all of the quirkiness we can find. And, given our penchant for all things wine, we are excited to visit several of the English Sparkling wine houses that are making noise on the global bubbles scene as we migrate south out of London.
ANCESTRY ROOTS
It was always a bucket list to explore my ancestry in Cornwall. I am Cornish and a 4th generation Trevarthen. My great-grandfather came over from Cornwall - a miner - and landed in the Upper Peninsula Michigan in Copper Harbor (a mining town).
My grandfather migrated down to the factories in Flint, Michigan to find work and became a plant supervisor at AC Delco (the manufacturer of spark plugs for your GM vehicles). Hence, I was born in a GM town to a GM family.
Several years ago, I had a fortunate happenstance while at Comdex in Las Vegas. I physically bumped into another gentleman while moving through a crowd, which caused us to stop and mutually apologize for the collision. Looking at each other’s badges, we discovered we had the same last name. That does not happen with the name Trevarthen.
He was Larry Trevarthen. He had done a lot more genealogy work than I had. He graciously shared his research back six generations. We think we aligned somewhere in the 5th or 6th generation. Trevarthen is a common surname in Cornwall. Who knew?
Larry provided me with documentation that shows a little church in St. Ives where my great-grandfather had been married before coming to the US. My wife and I plan to visit that town and that church while wandering through Cornwall.
I am both sullen and excited to explore this bucket list event. It was something my late brother and I wanted to do while we were both still healthy. Unfortunately, my brother did not hold up his end of the deal. I wrote about that in my Discernment post after his death a year ago.
So, Paul, this trip is for you.
DO WALES 2024
As mentioned in my previous posts on creating a word to define my New Year's Resolution, this year’s word is “Do”. And, as part of my exploration of Do and what all that entails, I remembered I had a few books from DO Books.
That led me to rediscover David Hieatt and his company DO Lectures. Do Lectures represents an amazing husband/wife story of building a business around writing, lectures, and sharing the collective wisdom of Doers, not to mention a rebirth of a jeans factory in Cardigan, Wales, UK.
This search led me to DO Wales 2024. I signed up to attend after writing an application and being accepted into the tribe. I had explained my New Year’s Resolution word of the year and being Cornish. It was a meant-to-be kind of collision - just like my experience with Larry Trevarthen above.
My journey to date led to signing on for the Do Microblog workshop. That spawned a relationship with a half dozen people from around the world, leading to several collaborations on my Narrative Mosaic project as well as seeing one of our cohort colleagues - Alice Ramsay blossom into giving her first TED Talk about her adventures on the Dutch Bike Path.
Another collision happened on a Zoom call between two Aussies and two Americans from the Micro Blog cohort. We exchanged the concept of “mateship”. A very relevant term in Australia, but not so much in America. That led to several posts by each of us on the subject matter. Karen’s version. Jo’s version. Sue D’s version. And mine. These posts led to a forthcoming discussion about mateship on Transform’s Spotlight series in August.
The other thing that happened as a result of signing up for Do Wales is that I happened to cross paths with Steve Jennings who is launching a new company called Yeu - a longevity play that he is building with his daughter. A 63-year-old entrepreneur working with his 32-year-old daughter. That gives me goosebumps. How cool is that?
The irony. Steve spoke at Do Wales nine years ago. The small world got smaller overnight. And now, we share the love of cycling and holding walk-and-talk meetings (something I am doing while in London) and the quest for living a healthier life going forward. [Note: this is a conundrum for lovers of wine and the various health commentaries around red wine in your daily health - that is for another post].
I am excited to attend Do Wales and meet 100 new people from different walks. And, one of my Microblog cohort colleagues Sue Deagle will be speaking at this event. She will have just completed a pilgrimage known as St. Olav’s Way in Norway with her son before he went to college.
WANDERING
Is wandering an art or a science? Or is it just a way of being? I continue to find my way along this wandering path. I meet cool people, doing cool shit. Each is a wanderer in their own right. Do you wander?
NOW (How you are realizing this today)
When you are stuck, how do you incorporate wandering into your day?
Do you make time to wander?
Can you wander for 14 minutes - 1x per week?
NEW (How you will realize this tomorrow)
I will identify places that allow me to wander and schedule one per week by July 1.
I will pull together a few brainstorm friends to go on a wander hike together for August.
I will convene a tribe of people who will wander with me on a regular basis to solve a stuckness issue.
NEXT (I see a world in which)
I see a world in which we will all benefit by just wandering when we feel stuck.
THE PAYOFF
"She is free in her wildness, she is a wanderess, a drop of free water. She knows nothing of borders and cares nothing for rules or customs." - Roman Payne
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