creating is disturbing

When I worked in startups before the spin down we had these entities that were going to disrupt. I worked then at a Linux startup. We were called that. Our company provided support and then services for Linux. There was not another like it. I guess we were first. I remember going to trade shows then and being called the new way forward or a new approach to Linux services. We worked with Dell a lot. I would move to managing the relationship with Dell and we closed on major deals with support and certification of whole lines of their workstations and laptops. Yeah. Laptops. Way back then.

It seems on reflection over morning coffee that while we created magnificent new things we also disturbed existing things. We created custom Linux distributions for different hardware. This disturbed some status quo. We also did the big innovation thing. With a big player named IBM. Thus making new creations which further disturbed how traditional services were done. I remember being in Austin Texas and finalizing a major service deal with them. I came back to work and had managed to close a deal company management thought would go away. So let’s disrupt and disturb.

now writing

From all that to now. To sitting in a coffee shop on a Friday and seeing the tenuous lines still there. Perhaps people I once worked with are waypoints along the line. Maybe I created and did my part disturbing.

I’m convinced writing is that too. Whether we write journals or pieces destined to be on blogs. Stories or thoughts. Or ideas. We create the memory as it is now. Our best impressions of how it was then. Was it? Would another person remember it the same?

When I took over working with Dell another person had to go. He had become an issue. A disturbance rather than a creator. To him though I had stolen his fire. His creation juices. Over beers much later he would still blame me taking away his big thing. Company management told me he had to go. He was hurting the relationship. So out with that and in with this.

Just this aside shows how variable a person’s memories of an event can be. We just build into them new little parables and memories. Adorned with these they become new creations. I don’t believe any of it is truly how a thing happened. It’s just how we create it now.

I think I write to find this place where two poles meet in life. Where I find moments of wonderful and sublime creation and then temper them with some destruction and disturbance. Inject a new direction. Remember a new thing. It becomes the thing. It gets tempered with the steel of certainty. But I realize writing this how fallible it is. We only have tatters. Writing lets me sew them and see them. But how I join them and what they look like is not likely real.

trouble at home

Somehow all this translates to issues at home. I see things a certain way. She another. There is no common ground. So lately we argue and bicker. It’s not good.

So I leave. Find coffee. Sit alone. Opine my things. How I see them. How she does. Compared to how they are. Neither of us can see the reality.

Writing it out I see the mistakes and how I create a view. A vision. It’s mine. She sees things differently. That’s hers. So from startup to life now there is this constant turmoil of creativity and doing. Disturbance and defeat.

What can be done? Why nothing. Socrates said to “know thyself”. We find all the folds and shadows when we go there. We create. We destroy. Along the way we disturb.

But now?

I’ll just drink coffee. Solitude works.