Learning to Sprint

In January, it will be 12 years ago (in 2004) that I walked away from my Moscow Mutual cubicle and never looked back. Well, I’ve glanced over my shoulder periodically to take stock from where I’ve come from, and also to appreciate the occasionally bumpy terrain I’ve traversed to get to my current address in free agent nation.

Just the other day, someone I worked with at the aforementioned insurance giant emailed out of the blue. The exchange was an odd one, something akin to, “are you the Jim Baumer that used to work with me at Moscow Mutual? Seems like you are doing well. Kind of an odd question, I know.” Odd indeed. But yes, my former co-worker had tracked me down after 11 years.

My naiveté at the time knew no limits; it still amazes me. Long before I’d ever read a sentence of Seth Godin’s encouragement to ship, and poke boxes, I found some book by a guy named Bowerman, about making six figures as a freelancer. The story’s not a new one with me, but shucks—I practically starved that first year out of the gate. Better, my wife put up with my ignorance and lack of steady paychecks and supported me until I figured out that I’d better find something steadier and more secure.

Life on the cube farm.

I used to work in a place like this.

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Looking Back and Moving Ahead

All week, I’ve felt pressure from being behind the eight ball of work and deadlines. How was I going to juggle each of the balls I had in the air and not drop at least one of them?

Thursday happened to be my day for visiting two communities in rural Franklin County. They are where I’m engaged in a part-time grant project focused on Maine’s aging population.

Every other week, I leave my house just prior to 8:00 AM and usually don’t return until 6:30 or 7:00. I have two community teams I’m working with. I also end up logging more than 200 miles of windshield time.  I am enjoying getting back to grassroots organizing and connecting dots. Continue reading

Communication Breakdown

School boy from the 1970sI’m glad that I went to school when I did. My public school teachers may have been part of a nefarious plot to turn me into a minor cog in some impersonal corporate machine. Or they might have just been putting in their time until retirement, weathering each successive storm of boomer births. Something along the way foiled their intent, however. Continue reading

Free Agents, Roller Coasters, and Pushing Past Failure

Hop on the roller coaster--the ride is just fine!

Hop on the roller coaster–the ride is just fine!

There is a myth that successful people have some kind of special advantage. Perhaps they possess a special “success gene.” That last sentence might seem fatuous unless you regularly hear the litany of excuses that people make about why they regularly fail to deliver, or worse, say things like, “it’s easy for you.” So why do some people succeed, and some people, exceedingly? Continue reading

Taking that first step

A few weeks ago, I had an interesting discussion with a friend about dissonance. In the course of our conversation about boundaries and having the courage to say, “enough is enough,” the topic of dissonance came up and whether the presence of turbulence or dissonance in our lives was an indicator of something bigger and more important. Continue reading

Gary Golden-professional futurist

[This was a live-blog of Gary Golden’s keynote at PCNC 2012. I’ve gone back and edited it slightly, mainly for grammar and flow.–jpb]

Gary Golden is a futurist. Apparently traveling to the future is good, because he looks very young. Golden’s card does read “futurist.”

What does a “futurist” do? According to Golden, futurist thinking is grounded in sociology. This field grew out of a NASA program, which attempted to look forward and try to predict social change. This brand of thinking looks at how society adapts to change, and in part, how individuals address change. Golden mentions that a futurist tries to introduce some “structure” to change.

A futurist is interested in understanding how the world is changing and seeks to address these issues from the “outside/in.” According to Golden, often, institutions are trying to address change from inside/out, which doesn’t work and leads to problems. Perhaps this is why the last 20-30 years has been so bumpy in the U.S. (my own point of view). Continue reading