Gloomy Monday - need for inspiration

It's a gloomy Monday here in West Yorkshire, after a weekend of moderately heavy snowfalls, and days getting shorter and shorter for another month yet. I feel a great need for inspiration and today just feel tired and uninspired.

I've been sitting at home all day, reading and doing chores related to a house purchase. We're buying a small house in the far north of New Zealand, as a rental investment. Buying a house at 12,000 miles distance is a real challenge. There are so many people to contact, forms to fill, reports to commission and progress to monitor. It is a major project to manage, and keeping hold of everything that needs to be done is not easy.

Out of the original plan, we began the research work, early probing, and made a decision to make an offer. Now we're co-ordinating the surveys, rental appraisals, sorting of financial and legal issues, while keeping an eye on the required timescale. Having done it once before, it should be familiar, but it's easy to forget the tendency to chaos and "one more thing"-itis. We'll get there eventually, and be very happy, though exhausted by it all.

Knowledge in icy times

Winter is setting in here in northern England, and I have been looking at solutions to the threats ice and snow bring to safe walking. There are numerous products that supposedly make shoes and boots safe by providing effective grip, but none seem to effective in all conditions. Some are good for snow but not ice; some are best only on 'black' ice. It's confusing, but in the end the only way I can decide what works is to try them and observe the results.

Similarly, the pursuit of knowledge in these icy times is fringed by many 'solutions', but few of them work effectively in all situations. Verna Allee called knowledge 'slippery', and so it is. If we want to share knowledge and work in collaboration with others, we have to talk with one another and find out 'what works' in particular situations. There are some good English metaphors I can think of: "Get your skates on" , "we're skating on thin ice", "beware of slips and falls", and "not a snowball's chance in hell". Those of us in the business of knowledge learn repeatedly how fallible we are, how tentative our real knowledge is. If we deny it, chances are we're wearing the clichéd 'rose-tinted spectacles'.

more sky talk...

After a brief period of sun, the sky is becoming smudged with cloud, the wind is stirring again, and soon it might rain once more. My world reduced to a partial window sill view.

West Yorkshire autumn day

Illness is forcing me to rest at home, and appreciate the world around me. Moat of this week has been characterised by rain and wind, but today, now, the sun is shining, reflecting off the brown leaved-beech hedge in our garden. Above some low lines of cloud, the sky is a fine blue. There is time enough to enjoy this West Yorkshire day while I regain better health.

Redundancy News ... seven months on

Just over seven months ago, I was made redundant, and the novelty of freelance work in hard times is pretty thin now. I've had scraps of work for short periods, but I've realised that I'd prefer to have a big idea, a big project or two that will engross me for the next five to six years.

So far, I haven't found the big idea, though I suspect it will be connected with writing, research and connecting people. I'm not well at the moment, so I haven't got the energy to push ahead with new things. As ever, will try to write more regularly :-)