Two months ago I got phone call from the organising committee of ECCI (www.eccixi.eu) expressing their disappointment that my Pinching the Ostrich call-for-workshop hadn’t survived the independent screening.
I said that should be a surprise at all since I didn’t submit one. I got a resounding “Yes you did!” right back. After a minute of “Are you sure?” and “But you did” etc etc the ECCI chairperson said she would get back to me in a few minutes.
Five minutes later she called me back, laughing and giggling. She had downloaded the original call-for-workshop and read it out loud:
Name: Pinching the Ostrich (so far so good)
Speakers’ Profile: Prof. R De Bruyn, co-founder of COCD (huh? How the heck…?)
Outline of the workshop: “Yadayadayada yadayadayada yadayadayada” (What?!)
But then everything became clear.
While building the ECCI event website, someone wanted to test the online call-for-workshop form and had submitted a fake submission with the name of my project, someone else’s profile and “yadayadayada” as the outline. I thought it was hilarious.
“But since I have you on the phone anyway” she said, “would you be interested in doing your Pinching the Ostrich workshop anyway?” A generous offer, to say the least, but also a rather difficult one since Pinching the Ostrich isn’t a workshop at all. It’s a personal experience.
“Nevertheless”, she insisted, “would you consider doing one anyway?” That right there, is an ostrich being pinched in the rear end. And so all I had to do was to get my head out of the sand and see the opportunity in front of me. So I said yes.
Two months later, yesterday, my 1st PtO workshop attempt was voted in the top 5 best of ECCI workshops.
I said it before, I’ll say it again. The most amazing things so far on this PtO journey have been exactly the ones I didn’t plan for. I didn’t plan a workshop, yet it ended up in the top 5. I didn’t plan on going, period, but I ended up having dinner with Dr. Edward de Bono, who was kind enough to give me a “connect to anyone” challenge for the upcoming year of Psychology. And what started all of this? Someone submitting: yadayadayada.
But as happy as I am with the highlights of last week, there’s something bothering me. The last week has been so busy with anything but my actual Pinhing the Ostrich experiences and experiments, I feel that I’m loosing touch with it as swiftly as an ostrich at full speed.
I didn’t get up earlier to work on stuff, I didn’t work out, I didn’t fiddle around with stuff, I haven’t studied anything and so on and so forth.
So as happy as I am with this week, I feel rather disturbed as well. How is it possible to loose touch with my own PtO flow so quickly? It would only seem to take a few days of a schedule without deliberate PtO elements in it, and it starts to fade into the old life of to-do lists and feeling…numbed, uninspired even. Is the entire thing really this fragile? Am I expecting to much? Is PtO really life changing? Or is it just garnish? Is it the trap of apparent success?
I don’t have an answer right now. It’s confusing. Which is probably a good thing. But I can’t see that right now. So I'm doing the only thing I know off that somehow made sense so far. I’ve set my alarm one hour earlier again and will go for a run. That usually does a trick of some sort.
Kinda confused,
Karl
Martine 31 October 2009
Karl,
transform yadayadayada into a tune, a
PtO and you will get on track soon enough!
Congratulations with 'Best of' !
You deserve it!
Dirk De Boe 31 October 2009
Hi Karl,
First of all congratulations with being in the top 5 list of the workshops. That was not an easy task, since there was quite some competition. Even I did not attend one of the two you gave, assuming to have seen the Ostrich before on TedX. Furthermore you achieved to have a lateral dinner with Edward & got a new challenge. Assume that you were inspired by the Keynote speakers as well. So not that bad. So my suggestion : enjoy a little & let your mind rest a bit. I think you already took a nice decision by having a run. Some fresh air & sweating will awake the Ostrich again.
Rgds, Dirk
Jet Sebus 1 November 2009
Hi, Karl,
I recognize your experience of 'losing touch with your PtO flow'. The same happened to me this very week at EACI and preparing to go there. Very good of you to discover this and to be aware of it.
Maybe it's time to look back on all the things that in the last months have happened to you; maybe you're now managing to find the flow more in doing things than in thinking about doing them. And maybe it's a good time to adjust -or even reinforce your PTO-routine? Isn't it perhaps a wake up call for you?
I need to do some serious thinking too; but I also discovered at EACI that I'm now doing so many more enjoyable things in my life than a year before - and that sure is a good thing, even if I get perhaps a bit too enthusiastic and don't take enough time for exercise and reflection. It's all part of the process! I am curious about your next steps - and also about mine...
Good luck!
ladynorth 1 November 2009
Progress is never a straight line, it always curves up and down, the trick is to make it curve back to you (lol) You haven't lost it, just misplaced it for a while and with the alarm set an hour earlier, you will catch up to the speeding ostrich.
BTW We have a new PTO - it's called 'walking 10K steps a day' and we are finding that unless we have a Reward at the end of it, it doesn't happen. In this case, Starbucks just happens to be at the end of that 10K walk..go figure.
Hooray our ostrich drinks coffee.
Waving to you from other side of the world
jw/dots
Esther 4 November 2009
When you inhale you are entering the future. When you exhale it is the past.
In between is the present.
It takes a lot of practice to be in the present.
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