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Inspired by Kin Lane’s post Having a Career I recently posted my own career story, and this blog post exchange inspired me so much that I reached out to Kin to record a conversation for the podcast. And so, two humans and two dogs assembled online to do just that. 

We chatted for an hour, and the conversation was so thought provoking! In addition, meeting the one and only Poppy R Lane (follow her on Instagram) was especially fun (my own dog eyed the bike side car with envy… ;)). Unfortunately the tech gods weren’t smiling and I didn’t manage to capture the conversation audio, resulting in no podcast. Sigh. 

Instead, I want to use this post to capture some of the things that came up (for me) during our conversation and also express how much it inspired my thinking. In an ideal world, the conversation would have happened in a NYC park, where I was supposed to be later this month, and instead we made do with the best virtual equivalent. Maybe this ‘lost podcast’ is a good metaphor for why some conversations have to happen in the here and now. Maybe there will be another version of the conversation we eventually record as a podcast. 

Creating measure for what matters

One of the things we talked about was finding new meanings for what matters when traditional metrics of career progress, financial or reputational reward, become less meaningful. In the context of reinventing yourself and your career path. We shared examples of manual jobs we had early on, and how there is no straight line, no template to predict the path from those origins via all the things that have been accomplished since, to where we are now. Each on our own journey to reinvent and I suppose reinvigorate our thinking at the intersection of technology and society.  I shared the example of beach/life balance (my measure for how often I can afford time off to go to the beach with the dogs), which I have come to use to check in with work/life balance and focusing on things outside of my computer screen. 

Holding your own space on the web

Kin is a prolific blogger, both on his own domains Kin Lane and the API Evangelist. As a writer and a storyteller he holds his own space on the web, and we reflected on how we would advise new or emerging bloggers. This was prompted by me being asked recently how and why I started to blog and how to get started now. I couldn’t really recall exactly how I got started initially, but it was during my time at art school, when I was experimenting with writing and sketching and sharing my work in any way I could. Given how much the web has evolved since then and what being present online necessarily brings with it, we came up with quite a few hesitations about starting now. From staying safe and dealing with inevitable unpleasantness to navigating the dynamics of social networks and the struggle to actually find someone to connect with. 

And yet, Kin mentioned how important it is to hold your own space on the web, to have your own domain and to use it to articulate, to have a voice. 

If you haven’t come across it, watch Kin and Jim Groom chat about Blogging over on Reclaim TV.  

It takes work. 

One of the things that really resonates with me is Kin’s commitment to doing the work. The work of reading and writing, to try and see the world from different angles, and to educate yourself about different points of view. It’s a human activity, a necessity (to my mind at least), that you can’t outsource. It takes time and effort and energy. It’s a lot of work. And only you can do it. 

I may have had a very different path, but that notion of doing the work, and seeing value in that, it means a lot to me, and it reflects how much I treasure being part of the world, and how much there is to enjoy in the everyday, in being a human being (with a dog;) . 

Thank you, Kin and Poppy.