mediaville Montreal

A quick musing this morning, as I sit here at my desk and wonder how on earth I managed to miss ‘that’ email. It’s one I really should have read and actioned. Now I’m a little peeved at myself for not doing so.

Missing the email (which I discovered in my inbox a week too late) meant missing last week’s YES Conference. Which was, by all accounts, excellent, inspirational and very informative.

I find myself thinking about my time in Asia some years back, where I got about on a Minsk motorcycle. I loved that bike. I had a very close relationship with it. I needed it to get around, mostly in a forward direction.

For practical reasons I won’t go into, Minsk riders would generally strip the dash components completely off the bike. Odometer, speedometer, even the ignition key leaving their bikes permanently hot-wired…

This meant one of the things I had to remember to do was to take the cap off the gas tank once in a while and have a look in to gauge how much was there.

Manual process. No guesswork. Foolproof… until your attention gets captivated by the scenery/driving/strange beasties crossing the road, and you forget to check the tank.

Putt putt putt. You’re out of gas, stranded between towns, without the juice to plough on.

I’m thinking of events like the conference I missed as being a bit like those towns dotted along the working route. You can stop and fill up on fresh ideas and that way keep rolling forward, but only if you know when to do it.

Or else you just keep forging ahead.

Like the ‘foolproof’ gas tank method, to keep moving forward with your work, tank full of fresh ideas and inspiration, this works only if you remember you have to stop occasionally in order to keep going.

You have to check the details to work out when to do it. In my case that would have been by looking at my inbox, not focussing just on the ‘forging ahead at high speed right now’ messages, and actually planning for things further down the road.

I’m not saying this because I’ve run out of gas. I’m just a little pissed at myself for missing what was by all accounts a great conference. I’ll get over it.

Besides, this stretch of road is well populated, and there’s another chance to fill up right around the corner:

At the Mediaville Mixer tomorrow night!