Just home on a Friday night thinking

Hey.

I'm home now, on my own. Eating a piece of dryish Manchego. A glass of wine
I always want to write when I've been out on my own. I've just seen Julie Delpy's Two Days in New York. I tried to get tickets at Sundance in London but it was sold out. It was good. It was very French. Speeded up direction, spoken narrative. Kind of annoying and kind of fun. Her own dad was her dad in the film.
Going out on my own always makes me want to write. You take in more. You watch other people. You don't have to worry about what someone else is thinking. You don't waste any thoughts...you have to carry them around with you.
I'm thinking, Gabrielle, that this is what they meant at the ashram. I haven't wasted my thoughts because I haven't spoken to anyone. They're just melting around.

I read something this week that's been on my mind, and it came up in the film. I often read the FT's management section online. I love Lucy Kellaway. If you work in an office, and you don't know her, you should read her. I wrote to her once with a link to this blog (my piece on sexism in the city) but she didn't write back. There's a professor at (hang on, I've got to shut the window, it's cold now) there's a professor at Harvard Business School called Clayton Christensen, who has just published a book called How will you measure your life. I read that in the FT this week and there was a link to the original Harvard Business Review article/speech that led to the book's publication. Professor Christensen was asked to make the speech by his students. Every year, in one of the final sessions of his course, he talks to his students about the theory of how their lives will turn out, based on the decisions they make through their lives, and through their careers.

He was prompted to think about management theory in relation to personal lives when he started to look at where his own contemporaries were ending up - in their lives and in their careers. A couple went to jail (one was at Enron) and many were divorced, or had become alcoholics, and suffered depressions. HIs point was well, that might be par for the course of any group of people in America, but I think he wanted to look at how you could almost predict how people's lives would turn out based on their management style, and personal culture, as you might be able to analyse the success of one company and the likely failure of another based on management theory. (Right this minute my right hand is very cold and my left hand is very warm. I know that means the opposite side of my brain to the warm hand is working but I'm not sure what side that relates to?) Anyway, the central question that he asks in the book, and in his class at Harvard, is 'How will you measure your life'. Because you can make all the money in the world, and rise to be the CEO of General Motors, but that outward business achievement could be dwarfed by failtures elsewhere, or may even be likely to create failures elsewhere depending on your management technique. And/or have you succeeded in the real spaces of your life, or any one dimension?

I have wondered this before in a roundabout way. How will I look back on my life. But I don't think I've ever blatantly posed the question how will I measure it? If someone asked me to account for my life - not God at St Peter's gates, but more like my line manager, Tony - then what would I say? I don't know! I guess I'd say 'I was a good-ish person. I never killed anyone (I think about it a lot though, really). I worked hard. I donated money to charity quite a lot, I wasn't any trouble, I don't cost the Government anything really, except my use of UK roads, and very occassional use of the public health care system (I estimate about 10% of my British medical contact has been NHS). But I don't think I've got much else to say. If it was about 'what have you done' I'd say 'well, I've lived in another country, I've done triathlons, I've walked probably thousands of miles, I've had two careers so far, and in one of them I've placed the UK's (world's?) first (only?) convertible, zero-dividend preference share, and I know I'll have another career after this (though probably not as a writer). It's not a great list though. I'm not JK Rowling, or Debbie Summer.

And so I wonder, what is there for the rest of us who probably won't/not really driven for having kids/family, and who aren't really going to establish a religious order or move to Kinshsha to set up an aids clinic. I don't know. I'm really interested. Is this the question we need to ask in order to really do something?

At the moment, my answer to 'how will you measure your life' is probably something along the lines of 'a measure of comfort.' I had a measure of comfort. I lived here, then I lived there. I found someone to love, if love actually exists really (I'm never sure really, I always think it might be like a sci-fi thing like the matrix where we're all just plugged into a stimulator thing that feels like this or that or love or guilt or tiredness but actually we're nothing, but I'm not sure and maybe it's all the same - reality and unreality). But I don't think 'a measure of comfort' is a great answer. I know I don't need to measure my life but I can see the merits in the question. Because otherwise...well...see, I don't really think we're here for a reason at all anyway. So I get very confused about all of this.

In the film the story ends with the common thought that you need to have love (whatever that is) and the love of many people in order that you have 'back up' if someone dies. But what about it you're not great at doing 'people'? I think about death and old age a lot. I always have, even when I was really young. The other night, when Simon was away, I gave his eulogy in my mind at his funeral service. I've given this speech many times since I've known him (is it a charm to protect against the real thing?) and it's always very good, and very sad, and it always makes me cry. But that helps make me sleep, so it's good too. In the morning the eulogy always seems way too melodramatic (in this particular speech, for example, I threatened to hunt his ex-wife down (and kill her? I couldn't decide even then if that was too strong for the occassion) to the very darkest cave if she ever complained after his death that he hadn't given her enough money...as she spends a lot of time complaining currently. As I say, it was probably an inappropriate speech for the funeral but in my mind she had insisted on coming and sitting in the front row. I still don't know in reality whether she would want to come to his funeral or not - or what I would think about that. It's on my list of things to know how to handle though, because I like to be prepared. Maybe I'll measure my life by how prepared I am?).

(I'm back, I had to get some more cheese, my right hand is still icy).

Anyway, but the trouble is, I don't really like people much so I don't cultivate a large and broad circle of friends. I can't be bothered. I know that will be my loss so it does worry me, but at the moment, I can afford to be lazy about it. So, how will I measure my life if I don't really care about anything? Is this why people have kids? I don't think so. I don't think people think about it that much.

In his book the professor gives a personal example of how he has shaped his life deliberately. He has a strong (Mormon) faith and made a promise to God when he was a teenager that he would never play basketball on Sunday. He went to Oxford in England (as a Rhodes Scholar) and his basketball team made the national finals. But it was to be played on a Sunday. He didn't play. To the amazement of his teammates and coach, who all said 'but, it's just one Sunday!' He felt then, and now, that it was very important to stick to his principles, and that it's easier to be principled 100% of the time, than 98% of the time. And he feels now that had he made the allowance 'just once' the long time impact would have been exponentially higher than the apparent short term 'price' of stepping over the line 'just that one time'. I do like that story because I think he's right. And I respect very principled people, and I think it's right that it's easier to be 100% on something, not 98% on something.

Anyway.

That's where I'm at. I can't be bothered writing this so it makes sense. I think you know what I mean. There's lots of sirens going on. It's a bit chilly.

I've got a creative workshop tomorrow at the School of Life. I started to write to you about the event they held this Monday night. It was 6 sessions on big themes like 'how to find fulfilling work' and 'how to think more about sex with Alain de Botton' No, really, it was 'How to think more about sex, with Alain de Botton (you need the comma, you see, it's a joke), and 'how to change the world'. The best think I got from the (super short) sessions was why don't you think of your career as being really broad...think about success as bredth, not verticality (I've made that word up). I like that, because I'm moderately good at lots of things. I don't care enough about any one think I've done so far for a living to be the CEO or super senior. It was a good piece of advice.

Anyway. Now I'm going to read Gabsy's latest blog. I can never read someone else's work when I'm about to write because it might already say what I want to say.

See you later. I wonder if anyone will read this, and no, this is just the way I think all the time.

xx KB