When I read posts and articles written by business people, I am honestly amazed that they accomplish anything. Validate this. Test that. Measure this. Validate it again. Have a meeting. Let’s meet to brainstorm about the meeting. Honestly, it’s like watching water flowing down a drain. I try not to judge, but it’s difficult because I used to be in that environment and saw the gaping hole at its core. No, I’m not talking about all companies as I haven’t worked at every company in existence. But I am talking about those industries (like manufacturing) that are among the slowest to change in socially positive ways. I keep hoping that someone in that group will get it right. Whatever “it” is supposed to be. Performance based solely on ROI are words that aren’t in my active vocabulary (not that they ever were). When I worked in the corporate world, I was a humanist fighting against a mechanized engine. Parts were interchangeable, but the design stayed stagnant. It’s no wonder why things are falling apart all around them. They forgot that innovation is that very necessary lifeblood for new creations to provide growth and transformation opportunities.
If you think that creative writing is a challenge, then you’ve never written a contract, have you? I have written contracts, and it can be equated to time travel. As a matter of fact, if the legal departments in any company managed to patent time travel that is quantifiable, then they’d never have to write another contract again. Why? Because they can go to the future or past to manipulate things to guarantee a win for them. Frightening thought, isn’t it? The mental gymnastics finally got to me, so I had to change my writing path. But that wasn’t the final straw for me. No, that came when I had to carefully review every document some legal person handed over for me to sign, because there was always some clause stating that everything I came up with was their intellectual property “in perpetuity”. Though how it could be their intellectual property when it came from MY head was never clear to me. And forever is a very long time when they’ll probably move on from my creations as soon as they actually gained ownership of it. Yes, that was the straw that broke the back of every camel that was within the same planetary system as me. After a very long sentence, I have had enough and want to make my own creations without any limitations.
To me, writing is all about creating the impossible. Or the entertaining. Or the novel (pun intended). It’s not about rehashing the old with a few select word changes. Anyone can do that, and many already do. Yesterday, I passed on the story of Kai Nagata. Today, I’m passing on the pronouncement from Hugh MacLeod that he’s taking back his words. They are just two people trudging into this growing group of the disillusioned who no longer want to play this empty game of dominance at all costs. They’re no longer willing to sell their soul to the devil in order to achieve unimaginable riches. But they’re also lucky because they’re already recognized because of an earlier persona. There are many, many more out there who are doing the same thing, albeit much more quietly because they haven’t figured out the trick to getting heard above all of the white noise. But give them time, because they’re not giving up. That’s how innovation happens. No matter how many times you’re kicked or you fail, you pick yourself back up and keep moving along the path you set for yourself. If it’s what you love and what you’re passionate about, then it’s not really so hard to keep creating. After all, each creation gives you back a little of what others tried to take from you in the first place.
