My first outage in nearly sixteen years of publishing these
Conversations For Transformation essays twice a week, occurred recently
when I declared a sabbatical effective immediately Thursday May 9, 2019
which ended on Thursday May 30, 2019 (Thursday being both the start and
end date, is merely co-incidental).
Some said "You deserve a break"; others said "It's a well-earned
rest.". I love you for your
love and kindness
and consideration, and Thank You. But I want to be clear about this:
the sabbatical didn't come from needing a break or rest. And I
eschew
"downtime". It was never that. A break? A break from what?
No, it was a warranty outage sponsored by
IBM
(International Business Machines)
/ Lenovo for my L440 laptop computer with which I create this
Conversations For Transformation website, that prompted the sabbatical.
My L440 is a machine that's functioned flawlessly for five years (an
aeon of time in the world of tech) and after all that,
only required some trim
tightening
(hardly surprising, given the intense workouts my relentless pounding
has given
all the computers
I've ever worked with since 1969).
Look: engaging in Conversations For Transformation is living. If
we need to take vacations to get away from our
business as
usual
lives, we go to
the beach
to experience living unfettered and unencumbered. But living an
unfettered and unencumbered life is what engaging in Conversations For
Transformation brings forth. Indeed I would have liked to avoid
declaring the sabbatical altogether. What I'm
committed
to and engaged in actually calls me to go in exactly the opposite
direction.
Without my L440, my technical prowess was obviously massively
diminished. Yes I do have a backup. It's my earlier, eleven year old
IBM
/ Lenovo T61 laptop, replete with the once cutting-edge Windows
XP (eXPerience) operating system, now almost
unusable as an
internet
navigation tool (my, how quickly tech evolves ...) yet still capable of
running all my good ol' ancient DOS (Disk
Operating System) editor and all the related green
screen softwares with which I write these Conversations For
Transformation essays. With it, I could do some basic foundational but
not yet ready for prime time work, which would have to be assembled
into something more promising later. For that, what I also needed was a
stack of A4 sheets of paper on my desk, a notepad at the end of the
lane of
the swimming pool in which I
train,
and a stack of post-it notes on my car's dashboard on
which I made (at any and all hours of day and night) notes about what
to implement when my L440 returned.
The sabbatical revealed something profound for me, which is: there's a
distinct space of being Conversations For Transformation
ie of living them; and then there's a space of writing ie
of speaking Conversations For Transformation. And between the two is a
laser-thin
line
(like being and action,
they're distinct ... yet inseparable).
Without my L440, the latter was limited. But I noticed the former (and
this is interesting) never fluctuated. Being Conversations
For Transformation is where the rubber meets the road. Spoken
rigorously, I require my L440 to implement what I share freely on the
internet,
coming from
our relationship with
Werner.
But
that relationship with
Werner
requires nothing. It's whole and complete and sufficient in and of
itself. In a word, it's Life ie it's my life. And my life, I already
got. So there's nothing I have to do, to get it. In other words,
writing these Conversations For Transformation shares my experience;
yet doing so isn't required for me to get it. That said, when you share
your experience of transformation, it's proof positive that you got it
in the first place. Really. Unshared, whatever it is ain't
transformation.
Sorry.
Now my L440 is returned, its trim new.
IBM
/ Lenovo basically gave me back a brand new laptop (buy the best, and
cry
only once). Sabbatical's over. Back to work!
