Chris Heuer's Insytes

Well, maybe its me looking back, but only because I want to learn from what I just left behind to inform where I am going…

I am for the first time in a long time sitting in a moment that is pretty near the present.  For most of my life, like many of you I am sure, I invested a lot of energy into worrying about the future over which I have little control, or regretting my mistakes made along the way.  I have learned from the books I have read on Buddhist and Zen principles a scant little, but this one thing was driven home in all the works:

be here now

So simple, yet so hard – especially for an ADD rattled mind that would be equally happy facilitating a large conversation between a few hundred people or having tea with one of our wise elders learning their life lessons.

I guess it really is just about getting older, gaining more perspective from experience.  As I turn 40 this summer, the number just weights heavy on me, eventhough it is still looming in the distance some 4+ months from now.  So I clearly see the only thing I can do is type the next word and the next.  While I could of course now delete those words, or edit them, I can’t have the first seconds back in which they were typed.  I can only be here now, as I was there then and as I will be when I am there.

OK.  Philosophical rants aside, I have a new accupuncturist at Kaiser Permanente and the guy is fantastic – not only has he helped relieve the rotator cuff pain, but he must have hit my ‘bliss’ spot on my forehead because each time I leave, I feel more grounded then ever before, more here, more here now.  Don’t get me wrong, I am still blurting and hitting the hot button still causes a reaction more times then not, but it is bettter.  Better still, I feel healthier.

But there is another element of that too, which is Grace Di’Laura, a great administrative manager, but more importantly a great person who has the crucial ability to think, to question tasks so that she can perform them more effectively and efficiently.  It’s so crucial and so few people have this talent – great questions mark the beginning of great conversations, and great conversations lead to innovation.  Ultimately, the implementation of those innovations will lead to transformation… of organizations, of people, of communities and even of entire societies.

To get back to the story, the reason for being so extraordinarily pleased with Grace is that she has helped me get near to the ever elusive inbox zero.  So if you dont hear from me on some email you sent in the next week or so, please do followup again – clearing through 10,000 or so emails from the last year or so took several weeks to do and I am sure it was not done without missing something important (in fact, we just deleted everything prior to January 1 actually ;).  But the feeling of being able to let go of all those old emails I knew I wanted to respond to, but couldn’t, due to the 24 hr daily time limit… Grace freed me from those and so much more already in the first couple of months.  We are really going to miss her when she goes to law school this summer.

Of course, this is also why I am able to be here now better then ever before.  Unfortunately, it has meant that I spent the majority of the last week clearing up old open issues, preparing to file taxes (ok, Kristie’s doing more of that then me, but it still takes energy), dealing with settling old debts, completing a project for a client, doing the weekly Social Media Club work, getting the social media workshop series redesigned and now finally thinking that each Friday should be my day to create content and nothing else. OK, maybe a lunch meeting, like I just did with Timo Heuer, family from the old country 🙂

I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the great time we had at WoolfCamp, where I got to debut my Tweet Story which we will be publishing next week.  WoolfCamp was a bit different this year, but still held its charm – coming together with a group of kindred spirits to honor Virginia Woolf and the writer inside us all.  Given the difficult times we have all seen it was just as much about being together, celebraring our humanity and our community, as it was about talking about topics of mutual interest.  Kristie and I were so glad we made it down there, though bummed we missed StartupWeekend SF.

If you care, which you probably dont, I allso made some progress on a few different businesses we are starting up to build some residual income sources, more to come on that shortly.

Now, next week will be all about catching up on the Social Media Buyers Guide Project and getting into final production mode for the workshops we are doing in Birmingham, Hamburg, Paris and London.  Still trying to see if we can do something small in London – maybe our friends at the Paul Young Foundation can let us borrow their main room for the afternoon?

As long as I am writing about it, I should mention that we are now embarking on producing a lot of events, so I am starting to look for sponsors from communications agencies and social media technology vendors.  If you want to get in front of the people who are implementing social media solutions in their organizations and I don’t call you next week, please do reach out to me.

Next week’s Social Media Club Question of the Week (#SMCQ5) is going to be a good one I think.  Something along the lines of our responsibility to check our facts, ensure we are clear when something is opinion and when we are stating facts and the general harm that can be caused by intentionally ignoring such important ethical tenets, as we saw yet another detractor of social media club do this past week. C’est la vie.  Some people will just never get it and we can’t do much to help them except continue to explain what it is we really stand for and continue to live the values that we find to be important.

Also next week is the beginning of regular 24 Hour Fitness visits – finally feeling healthy enough to get that back into the routine.

So that’s my first Weekly Look Forward, thanks for stopping by.  Hope your week ahead is a good one.

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• Social Media Club Workshop Series (socialmediaclub.org)