“…begin­ning any­where.”

This is an unplanned series of essays. Inten­tional, and not unex­pected, but unplanned. That will turn out to be impor­tant in the end.

See, I need to talk about some­thing I’ve been work­ing on for a year. And twenty years.

On bet­ter days, I think of what’s com­ing as a kind of pro­duc­tive midlife cri­sis, chang­ing my life and work and “per­sonal sit­u­a­tion”, and head­ing off in a new direc­tion all altru­is­tic and community-​​minded and exploratory and adven­tur­ous. On bad days I worry that I’m try­ing to change the world. Again.

Chet Hen­drick­son and Ron Jef­fries taught me that recently, though they might tell a dif­fer­ent ver­sion: Nobody minds much if you want to make your own life richer, espe­cially if you do some­thing help­ful for oth­ers along the way. But if you set out to change the world, you’re bound to face opposition.

So let’s get this out of the way up front. This whole thing—this project, or new insti­tu­tion, or book, or approach, or com­mu­nity, or University-​​burning rev­o­lu­tion, or what­ever it even­tu­ally becomes? This is for me. I’m not set­ting out to fix any­thing in the world beyond my life, my family’s and friends’ well-​​being, my chance to spend time with peo­ple whose opin­ions I value, my abil­ity to do use­ful work with style and grace.

Some spillage may occur, though. Even the best of us make mis­takes that way.

In one way, this is all an answer to Katya Vladislavl­eva’s ques­tion, asked at an after-​​conference din­ner 362 days ago: What would the ideal work be like?

I’m not sure, but I think I can find out.

Intro­duc­tion: Ink to paper, and start scribbling

So we begin mea­sur­ing a “cir­cle”. A year, or twenty years, that’s a long time, and a lot has hap­pened. It’s a com­plex story, but as with all com­plex things I should try to make it sound sim­ple and obvi­ous. Auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal back­ground, in this case.

Every project is more fun with a good Founder’s Myth. And lots of jokes. Both strong argu­ments for autobiography.

Even with lim­ited insight into where we’re headed, I have a feel­ing that this par­tic­u­lar cir­cle will ram­ify and fold, and bend back on itself more than once, and that anas­to­mo­sis will kick in soon, and that it will even­tu­ally fill space entirely if I take the time. That’s not a fea­ture, and might be a bug.

But it will help explain me to myself. I can’t vouch for passers-​​by who might get caught up in the process. I will make one promise: it may not hurt much.

Here’s the goal: This is where I explain an insti­tu­tion called Coscience, and the Col­lab­o­ra­tion Stu­dio, and what I will be doing for the next seven years of my life.

I won’t explain it all right away—that will be in the cen­ter of the cir­cle some­where. But this week. Along with a Founder’s Myth, one likes to see a bit of rit­ual tim­ing. July 13 will be the one-​​year anniversary.

Last year, come Fri­day, a whole string of light bulbs went off for me. Lit up the whole men­tal scene, the last 20 years’ work in con­text. I looked out the air­plane win­dow at the peak of Mt. Rainier stand­ing above the impen­e­tra­ble clouds, grabbed at my brief­case to pull out any paper I could find, filled most a page with the phrase ANSWER FARM. I knew within a few min­utes what I wanted it to mean; now I’m going to make some of that happen.

Some spillage maybe… but I make it hap­pen for me. To learn, some­day, to work with grace and style.

For the next few days, I’ll draw out my uncir­cu­lar cir­cle. It will wig­gle quite a bit. But keep in mind that it’s a closed curve, nonethe­less. I think it wraps around some­thing interesting.

[cont’d here]