Today marks two anniversaries in my professional life; the 9th of me writing my first Weeknote, and the 6th of launching the Stamp thing onto the world.
I’m quite amazed that I’ve been able to keep up the weeknoting habit. Started after a reading an article in Wired, and thinking it seemed like a good idea to publicly diary bits and bobs of my working life, it’s become a regular part of my working week. The structure has changed a bit over time, but every Friday (or technical Friday on occasions) I’ll spend a few minutes popping a few thoughts of my meanderings that week onto the ether(net).
I guess it provides me with a brief moment of closure at the end of each seven-day period, particularly important when one works alone and without the regular cycles of the corporate machine. It also gives folk a chance to keep an eye on what I’m up to – even if sometimes the thoughts are really quite cryptic in nature to protect the innocent.
As for Stamp – well the soft launch in May 2013 came at the point at which I knew that my exit from Microsoft was inevitable. Stamp still isn’t an actual company (I’ve resolved to maintain sole trader status up until such a point as that I employ someone else), and the official launch in July 2013 coincided with the 100th anniversary of my paternal grandfather’s birth, the person whose story inspired the name.
Six years down the line and I’m still making it up as I go along. There are times when I’ve have done some of my most rewarding work in my career, there have been times when I’ve doubted myself absolutely and been convinced that I’ll never get any work again. This “bipolar” state is apparently quite common; it’s exhausting, if I’m honest, but then no more so that the compliance to rules that I have struggled to maintain in the biggest of the organisations that I have worked for.
Six years on and Stamp as a career goal still maintains itself – I do want to do work with people, communication and technology that is significant and benefits people. And there’s many things that I’m doing where that is true. Whether Stamp as a business continues in the current form or not I’m currently assessing. The pipeline of work is a bit variable, and I wonder if it is time to take all that I have learned since I left Imagination back in 2011, shortly after the weeknoting began, and apply it to one organisation for a more extended period of time? Time will tell.
mmitII 