Finished Roads

Back at the start of the 21st Century a few years after discovering this new space called the World-Wide Web in 1998, I had changed my name on a discussion board to "Work-In-Progress".  The year 2000 was when I first accosted by this concept that Tom Peters had promoted and that had gone viral called Brand You.  I took an immediate distaste to it and my response was not pay it any due regard.  The peculiar thing about calling myself "Work-In-Progress" is that when people began to reply on the online discussion board I was a member of, they would call me "Work-In-Progress".  Over time it had become clear to me that people actually viewed this as a name and I was actually being branded as that.  While this is satisfying to know that people mean well, it was also slightly disturbing how they could adjust so quickly.

In the hip-hop world today, we see it in the names of Eminem, 50 Cent,  Lady Gaga, Sting, Snoop Dog, Future, as we did back then with Ziggy Stardust and his other made up name David Bowie.  So naturally I dropped "Work-In-Progress" because the original idea of that was to name my process, not myself !!!  Yet the chief difference between those names including Ziggy Stardust was that these were all finished objects and people followed these finished roads.  Work-in-Progress was never meant to be a finished road - it was meant to signify a road that will keep on building and not be in a state of completion.   Next year represents my 20th year online and I am still very much work-in-progress, though I am not carrying that as a name.  I know when it is well and good and drop a name in this overly personal brand medicated world.

Finished Roads are what people want and the good news is that no matter which direction I take my learning journey, my name can never be transcribed as "Finished Roads".  It is of course very good to have finished roads because we need them for purposes of travel and direction.  It is good to celebrate those that paved our way and allowed us to find common directions, for that is a part and parcel of the roads we build - so by itself "Finished Roads" is a strong metaphor. The problem is when people point to something and say "Life is that?" when the reality is life is an unfinished unravelling - that is why when I watch a movie like Koyaanisqatsi, I am not going to see the same thing as someone who wants the grounding of a Finished Road :

Mindwalk is a thoughtful movie operating at a speed that is far removed from a FInished Road or even a finished good.  It was not that our kids had different interests but their definition of boring is predicated on the speed at which they relate to media, which is very fast paced today.  This failure to be satisfied by slowness or by stuff which requires one to think more deeply or equally to reflect as pure reflection is a symptom of the culture we have seen evolve over the last 20 years - which is still predicated on a culture of making a point, of delivering soundbites and which now has elected a President whose "genius" was that he worked out that to get a mass of people to vote for him, he simply needs to hold well marketed rallies supported by tweeting, and create enough confusion to feed of the resulting media ratings - and thus he did not change the nature of the political process, he simply ran a truck through it.

So Finished Roads is not what I am building here and I can't offer a soundbite or care if this brands me in a certain way - because that is what others think, and clearly by now it is very apparent that I get less and less worked up on what others think that I am doing.  I know what I am doing, I am on an unfinished road called my life and it is still a great exploration - even if I am no longer called that name "Work-in-Progress".