It's just ridiculous, I come back to it every year, this numbering, this ever increasing number that is attached to me.  This morning it was suddenly 47.  What does it mean?  Everything and nothing it appears.

It does *feel* like a shift, I suppose it means "late forties" rather than "mid-forties" but still.  Anyway.

I'm just going to get on and enjoy another day, occasionally liking the lovely Wall posts on Facebook that remind me how wide and amazing my network of friends is; hanging out with a beautiful woman; watching "It's a Wonderful Life", because it is...

Here's something.  I wrote this last month when making the transition to settling in London for a couple of months.  In fact, writing it helped confirm the transition for me, it seemed to mark the end of something.

Enjoy. Pass it on to anyone who you think might get something from it.  Let me know what you think. etc.  I've made it available under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike licence so you can redistribute it, remix it, produce it in new formats, sample from it, whatever as long as you say where you got it from.

Click here to download:

reflections.pdf (116 KB)

(download)

Click here to download:

reflections.pdf (116 KB)

I'd like to make it available in other formats.  I need some collaborators to help me understand this self-publishing lark a bit better and to actually get it out of the door. If e-books and paper self-publishing is something you've done, and you'd like to help, give me a shout.

I've been hanging around this place called the Centre for Creative Collaboration for a couple of years now.  I think I'm just about getting the message: you can dig deeper, bigger (and depending on your definition, more interesting) holes in the sand if you do it with other people. Doh!

The two big projects I've worked on while here: Tuttle2Texas and Please Look After This Englishman have been looking at generating a new kind of narrative, blurring the distinctions between audience, funders and participants and presenting the results in a variety of formats and media.

I want to take this a bit further, applying the general methodology that I've aspired to follow:

• come up with something interesting to do with interesting people;
• blog about it as you go taking some direction from people on the internet;
• create content in various media as you go;
• present what happened in some summary form or forms (a play, a book, a film, an e-book etc.)

So far, I've defaulted to doing things myself, although I've had some great collaborators, my tendency has been to keep it small and only ask for help when it was really really needed.  Now I want to open them up much wider and make collaboration the norm. 

I've at least three projects that have been bumbling around in my brain for a while that I want to apply this to.  I want to get going on them, but I don't want to do them just by myself.  So I'm going to write up briefs for all of them and then ask for volunteers to help in the following areas (there may be more!):

• talking things through, open up hypotheses, react to the idea, tell us where it's wrong, where it's right, what you'd  do with it if you were able to give it time;
• looking at the themes that emerge, identify new audiences, funding streams, participants and other interested parties; 
• work on creating content, writing things up, shooting video, recording audio, taking pics, curating outside content relevant to the themes and writing about it on the blog;
• editing and producing said content;
• recruiting participants and building relationships with them;
• designing and producing "end content" ie taking what we have and productizing it;
• desiging ways of rewarding contributions in financial and other terms;
• managing all the bits and bobs: documenting decisions, managing cashflows, keeping track of contributors and remuneration; and
• reviewing and improving the process and overall methodology

My intention is to publish "Calls for Collaborators"  (an important principle is that collaborators needn't necessarily be based in London or even the UK) and that we'll refine this approach as we learn how it works.  In the meantime, your thoughts on all of this (ie your collaboration on the final bullet point of this last list) would be most welcome.  Talk to me, people.

I applied for a job a week or so ago (I know!) As part of that I had to update my CV.  I've become a bit stupid about that, thinking I somehow didn't need a CV, that my Linked-in profile was good enough, given I'm a forward-thinking social web geezer. Stupid, not only because you can never have good enough well-targeted, easy-to-read marketing materials, but also because the process of updating one's CV is a valuable exercise in thinking about one's experience and how to frame it, how it makes sense now that one is a little bit further down the road.

Anyway, I included the following under "Key Skills and Knowledge".   They're all important bits of what I can do, what I like to do, what I'm really good and well-practiced at.  And they're all things that I shrug off because they're easy and straightforward for me.  What I forget is that the things that are probably most valuable in my portfolio of talents are those things that I find easy but lots of otther people find very hard - duhh!

Breaking New Ground - comfortable at the edge of innovation and the dealing with the uncertainty of commercial and not-for-profit startup environments by iterative prototyping. Happiest doing those things that “everyone knows” can’t be done.

Facilitating Collaborative Work - a prodigious networker, relationship-builder and subtle facilitator. Creating, managing and developing highly effective inter-disciplinary teams. Coaching and mentoring individuals in personal productivity and effectiveness.

Building Inclusive Community - proactively managing relationships within an organisation as well as with customers, collaborators, service-users and wider stakeholders.

I'm going to be settled in SW17 at least until the end of January.  Let's see how things are by then.  It's a bit odd, I haven't quite got my head round the idea that I'm not going anywhere else for 8 weeks or so.  I'm looking forward to continuing to have adventures even though I'm going back to the same bed every night.

I need your help with making sure that settling doesn't fall into stagnation.  I need to continue to generate cashflow, my costs are relatively low, but my income is even lower :) 

You'll have seen I'm working on a little book about my #llobo travels so far

I'm doing shows at #c4cc about Please Look After This Englishman which was a pre-cursor to #llobo

I have some community-minded documentary film-projects in mind to get going on.  Still at the waffly half-baked stage but watch this space.

I'm working on a bunch of slidedecks.  I've realised that I'm no longer in the habit of having presentations ready to take out and talk about what I do.  I've been doing some cool and fascinating, inspiring stuff in the last couple of years, but effectively I've been doing it all very very quietly - I want to get out and talk about #c4cc, #tuttle, #llobo and generally what I've learned more widely.  Let me know if you have a captive bunch of folk you'd like me to whip up into a frenzy, or something.

I'm looking at short-term artists residencies like the one I've done at #c4cc.

I'm available for shortish pieces of work in London and the South East  (and I suppose anywhere you like really) - if you don't know what I do, then you haven't been laughing hard enough at me struggling to explain it.  Have a look at my about page and my CV

Let me know if any of that makes you go "oh, hello, come and work with me"

Photo by Patrick Hadfield

I've got a last-minute slot to do my show about this year's American trip at #C4CC again tomorrow night.  I'm working on some other dates too but if you're around in London it would be great to see you, do bring a friend! And remember #C4CC can't serve booze, so bring a beverage or two to keep you warm :)

Too late to be messing around with paid ticketing so just let me know you're coming here: http://plateshow02.eventbrite.com I'll be passing the hat for pecuniary contributions.

UPDATE: it was cool, people came, we had fun!  I'm going to do it all over again next week: 

I'm reading Bruce Chatwin's The Songlines, as #llobo's tend to do. Actually I'd avoided reading it till now because I didn't want it to unduly influence my thinking about my own wanderings.  Which it now is, of course, but that's another story.

Having raised the idea and let it percolate through me for a week or so, I know now that I really do want to settle for a while but I'm not sure how to do it.  I need to switch gear somehow and start doing things differently.  I trust that I'll get direction by putting it through the same process that I've been using all along, which is to say here what I want and the options I can see, ask you all for help and go with what comes back.  On Friday night I was singing the praises of this process, which did get me all the way from San Francisco to New York City in a month with lots of fun and adventure along the way, but somehow I'd forgotten that it can be applied to whatever I'm doing.

So, what do I want?

I want somewhere to live in London for the next two or three months, starting as soon as possible (yes I could move in tomorrow) and on to mid-February at least.  After all, for the last two years, in March I've been setting out to conquer the USA, so that feels like a good window.  I also want a reliable income that covers my basic needs.

I've learned that there are certain minimum things that I need above and beyond a roof over my head:

• I'm not highly fussed about location as long as it's safe, clean and warm.  I can live right in the middle of the city but have found that living any further out than Zone 3 means too much of a commute for me.  I use public transport a lot and I like the freedom of being able to purchase a weekly travelcard.  I do prefer being in the South and West of London because that's where my beloved and a lot of my support network is, but I'm glad to say that in the last year I have shed much prejudice and strong attachment to the area in which I live.  Before, I felt very identified with having a postcode that started with W or SW...
• I need at least the privacy of a space with a door that I can close.  I live best when I can sleep when I need to and not feel obliged either to stay up later or to get up earlier than I feel like in the day.  I also live best when I can comfortably practice prayer and meditation in a private space.
• If there have to be animals around, then count me as a cat person.  I am not a dog hater, but I don't really get them.  Dog-sitting would feel like very hard work to me.  To the best of my knowledge I have no allergies to any type of pet.
• Much of my work and social activity is internet-enabled.  Access to a stable, fast and relatively high-capacity internet connection, beyond that provided by my phone contract is important.
• I need regular exercise above and beyond walking.  I like to swim.  I'd love to be able to swim most days.
• I need to be able to make music and make a noise from time to time.  I get very cranky if I spend more than a few days without getting my ukulele out and singing without worrying about what the neighbours will think or whether I'm disturbing anyone.
• I have found in the last four months that I need an absolute minimum £2,100 (before tax) a month to live comfortably.  That includes travel and storage of my stuff, which would reduce if I were able to find a place to pause and unpack for a while, but it doesn't include any rent or utility bills.  
• I have no regular income or savings at the moment, but I'm in that chicken and egg position of finding it difficult to commit to regular work without a regular home and vice versa.  So the opportunity to gain either one would help.

To me, the ideal solution sounds like a 2-3 month house-sit for someone who's going somewhere for the winter and some work that provides me with a basic income but also time to write and create (I've got a whole bunch of stuff to download from my brain from the last few months!)  However, I know that my imagination in these circumstances can be severely limited, I'm up for all sorts of suggestions.

I'm going to stop worrying about this now and let you do your thing.