Saturday, December 01, 2007

The curse of the dark side - what now?

Anyone who has seen me do my thing will know that I am extremely passionate about the subjects I enagage with. e.g. metaverses. This passion and deep obsessionaly behaviour (but intelligent thought out obsession) is certainly an extreme. This runs very deep with me. If I like something and can see the potential I will commit alot of time, effort and emotional energy to it.
It is this extra ramp up that seems to work when I tell people about things. It is the reason that so many of us have continued along the metaverse path. It does however take it out of you at some point.
Turning up the wick to enthuse, persuade and evangelize is a skill. Its one I am still learning. After a set of sessions being sparky and enthusiastic with people there is a definite adrenalin crash. It is then you have to watch for the dark side.
Major highs also bring major lows.
I find that just as I can engage deeply with something positive I suffer from being able to have the same obsession for things that are not right, inequities, lack of recognition etc. It is very hard to not apply the same degree of passion to things that I regard as not going the right way.
Big highs and big lows tend to not aggregate out to a happy middle ground, they fall below that middle ground. The potential draw of the negative fight, the dark side is sometimes quite frightening.
This of course sounds like the ramblings of a madman, but I am trying to figure out how I have ended up feeling so damn annoyed. Clearly my deep anger and annoyance is purely internal, but external forces have an effect.
In some respects I have spent a while ( a long while) being angry and patient, hoping that doing lots of postive things, being sparky, doing what I do in life would bring some sort of balance.
Whats this all about, well I cant say. If I do say it becomes another reason for things that need to be done to not get done.
So right now I seem to be back in a very stressed and depressed place, and change seems to be the only option as waiting and sometimes fighting does not seem to be working fast enough.
Or maybe I should just change what I do, not enthuse, not be passionate. Just live a more normal small highs and lows existence?
It led to my favourite twitter "wondering is there is an online equivalent of a "for sale" sign as part of career managment?" which of course does not mean anything as it can be taken as either looking for people or being for sale ;-)

1 comment:

Ferdy said...

I’m sorry to hear you are annoyed Ian. We've never meet in RL, but I always have seen you as a transformational leader, and that is a hard work. You must deal with "normal" organizational conflicts, and that causes you some big highs and big lows, something that is normal if you're also a passionate. You will have good and bad moments, but, IMHO, you always should be as passionate as before.

Anyway, if you feel that it's a moment for a change, go on! You know that you will have our full support. But please, don't the lose your passion.