this story starts with a Boy

A long, long time ago, there was a Boy. This was at an age when some boys still look like boys and some are starting to stretch into men; this particular Boy looked very boyish indeed because he was still small and blond while his best friend was 6’3″ by 7th grade and already having to shave. The Boy and I weren’t exactly friends, but we were in some of the same classes and I felt a bit of kinship because we had the same initials and were about the same size (that is, smaller than everyone else) which meant we were usually seated together in class, whether they went by size or by last name. His parents pulled him out of our school in 9th grade and sent him to Catholic school, and that was the last time I saw him.

I haven’t seen him since, but recently became reacquainted through the wonders of Facebook and mutual friends. The Boy is now a man with a wife and kids and life experiences of his own, and is working on something called Authentic Business. (The website is Authenticis, but it seems to be crashing the version of Internet Explorer on this computer.) He’s got it linked from his Facebook profile, and I was curious and asked about it. As I understand it, the idea is closely related to the idea of finding one’s Proper Job: finding the thing that is your real life goal and earning your living doing work that relates to it instead of spending most of your time doing stuff you don’t care about just because you have to. The guy who spearheads this, Neil Crofts, seems to be convinced that when you are “acting from an authentic place”, you are incapable of wanting to harm or belittle other people. I have severe doubts on that point, but I find the rest intriguing and asked the former Boy about it; we’ve been talking on and off since then.

He and Neil Crofts do an online radio show weekly, and he asked me if I’d be interested in calling in yesterday; they needed a willing victim to use as a live example of figuring out a life goal. Not being a particularly private person (hello, nine years of blogging!) I agreed – it sounded interesting.

So I called in yesterday. Crofts asked about what makes me angry, what I am passionate about, and what I am talented at. He put those together and told me I am very unusual in that I am what he calls an integrated thinker, meaning balanced between left and right brain, typically male and typically female traits. (I know you are all shocked at this. Unless you hang out with a lot of other engineer/poets.) He also said I like making connections, which is true (connecting both ideas and people, I’d say). His formulation of my life goal is that it is to use connections and integrated thinking to help people achieve authenticity.

I’d say the first half of that is right, but that the authenticity bit is from his life work, and because he sees authenticity (or the quest for it) in everything.

But then he went on to my Vision, which in his methodology is what you do about your life goal. (I’m not crazy about using “vision” for that and even less fond of his use of “mission” to mean “the resources you need to achieve your vision”. But as long as he’s defining his terms it’s OK – just runs the risk of confusing anyone who isn’t paying attention to the special meaning. For clarity if you’re going to make up meaning for words that is that far from their more usual meaning, I’d rather see you use words with less baggage. You could call them “action” and “resources”, which would be more accurate, or call them something more unique like Lucy and Ricky, so people don’t have expectations.) Anyway, his version of my vision is to write a book and use that to build a consulting career, which I think would be completley awesome. In fact it’s something that Ted and I have talked about.

I asked what he thought I should write a book about; he said “integrated thinking”, which is totally out because if I do it, it’s because it comes naturally and isn’t something I could teach. I’d be more likely to write one on processes and when you do or don’t need them. Still sounds pretty appealing, and I am impressed that he came up with this by asking questions, not on any prompting of mine.

Thinking about it further, and putting it in light of my angers and passions, I don’t want to make people more authentic. I just want to make them not be wrong, whether that’s on the Internets or off, factually or in thinking that some people matter more than other people or in having conflicting processes.

The former Boy checked in after the show; I guess he’d listened to it. Turns out that he wants to write a book too, on somewhat-related topics, so we’re going to Skype tonight, to talk about how we could help each other. I’m pretty excited; this could end up as anything from being a coauthor to having a writing support partner (which seems to be common for fiction writers, but I haven’t heard of it for nonfiction) to at worst a mutual cheering section.