Just reading "Murakami's" "What I talk about when I talk about running" and enjoying it immensely.
I try and mix up my reading with a bit of fiction, biography, educational, swapping alternatively to keep the interest levels up.
Every so often a book gets read at just the right time, I've just finished Wilfred Thesiger's "Marsh Arabs", which although interesting I was looking forward to moving on and it was no reflection of the book itself. I just wasn't what I was needing to read at the time.
"What I talk about when I talk about running" is timed to perfection. Over the last 8 months I've been workingto regain my fitness I had in my younger years and I have just reached a point when I am happy to call myself fit.
Murakami covers his path to writing, through jazz bars etc and then I finds the running he takes up helps him adapt to his new career choice. Falling almost in line with my recent career change and my progress back to fitness.
I've always been a big adovocate of fit body, fit mind and feel I am getting back to where I was a few years back, with a new lease of life in my career I felt invigorated and passionate about work again, something I've not felt for years. Now with my fitness returning I am actually starting to feel years come off my age.
But the real interest I find with Murakami's account of his life is the solitude he seeks when running and how this has helped him. This is something I seek in both my running, cycling and when out in mountains in general. It's a defrag of my mental hard drive, a resorting of unnecessary information and filing into the depths of my mind, whilst at the same time running over items of interest that I have active in my mind that might develop into projects for the future.
My hat off to you for your "as it is" account Haruki, perhaps if your passing the Peak District you can drop in for a run, but don't expect me to say much.
Tuesday 19 August 2008
Saturday 2 August 2008
So Where Are We . . . ?
Probably going to be another quick post again, life seems so unrelenting at the moment, I suspect it might stay like this until our kids reach the age of about 30 . . . Anyway its all good at the moment.
I'm in a new job, which is great, working for agency out of Manchester called Elevator Digital and loving it. A predominately .NET agency so a new technology for me, but I've worked with Microsoft for so many years its all seems like an old friend.
The works good and varied, with it being a relatively small agency I am getting busy with all sorts, which at the moment is the way I'd prefer it. Briefs, tenders, bit's of CSS, design, client liaison, you get the picture . . .
In the meantime I've been doing some interesting background reading about human networks, after reading this interesting article about the "Tipping Point" and super influencers or Uber-Influencers as I like to call them.
It infers that there are individuals who are so in-tune with their social group that others turn to them for ideas and acceptance of what's the next big thing, the idea being that marketeers can then harness their potential to unleash a new brand or idea/trend and it will be picked up virally by others.
The article itself introduces a sceptical take on this devised and researched by a guy called Duncan Watts, a mathematician who has spent sometime researching and trying to prove the tipping point argument right or wrong.
I've got to say I'm in agreement with Duncan's finding so far. I've ordered his 6 degree's book to read further on the matter.
Like Duncan I do agree that there can be uber-influencers that can have a substantial affect on how a concept or product is adopted, but that this is not the only factor.
Tipping point famously talks of the adoption of Hush Puppies by uber-influencers and then how they then went on to out sell many much more established brands by the fact they had been worn by a number of uber-influencers and so been deemed as "cool", but I wonder and Watt's findings support this, had the uber-influencers been wearing clogs would they have become quite so popular?
I don't disagree that the market/popular thought/paradigm can be influenced by certain individuals that might speak/wear/buy things and everyone else watches and follows, or at least a large number do. But its just not that simple, it has to be at the right time and the right product, it can't just be anything.
Anyway, perhaps Watts himself is becoming an influencer and he's just got me at the right time, either way I'll read what he has to say and perhaps come back here and share my findings.
Well, the suns shining again here so I am going to don my running shoes and go for a fell run with the dog . . . laters.
I'm in a new job, which is great, working for agency out of Manchester called Elevator Digital and loving it. A predominately .NET agency so a new technology for me, but I've worked with Microsoft for so many years its all seems like an old friend.
The works good and varied, with it being a relatively small agency I am getting busy with all sorts, which at the moment is the way I'd prefer it. Briefs, tenders, bit's of CSS, design, client liaison, you get the picture . . .
In the meantime I've been doing some interesting background reading about human networks, after reading this interesting article about the "Tipping Point" and super influencers or Uber-Influencers as I like to call them.
It infers that there are individuals who are so in-tune with their social group that others turn to them for ideas and acceptance of what's the next big thing, the idea being that marketeers can then harness their potential to unleash a new brand or idea/trend and it will be picked up virally by others.
The article itself introduces a sceptical take on this devised and researched by a guy called Duncan Watts, a mathematician who has spent sometime researching and trying to prove the tipping point argument right or wrong.
I've got to say I'm in agreement with Duncan's finding so far. I've ordered his 6 degree's book to read further on the matter.
Like Duncan I do agree that there can be uber-influencers that can have a substantial affect on how a concept or product is adopted, but that this is not the only factor.
Tipping point famously talks of the adoption of Hush Puppies by uber-influencers and then how they then went on to out sell many much more established brands by the fact they had been worn by a number of uber-influencers and so been deemed as "cool", but I wonder and Watt's findings support this, had the uber-influencers been wearing clogs would they have become quite so popular?
I don't disagree that the market/popular thought/paradigm can be influenced by certain individuals that might speak/wear/buy things and everyone else watches and follows, or at least a large number do. But its just not that simple, it has to be at the right time and the right product, it can't just be anything.
Anyway, perhaps Watts himself is becoming an influencer and he's just got me at the right time, either way I'll read what he has to say and perhaps come back here and share my findings.
Well, the suns shining again here so I am going to don my running shoes and go for a fell run with the dog . . . laters.
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