deeper water

No, we're still paddling here at venividblogi. However it still feels good even if the muse doesn't strike with the swiss clockwork precision that it oughta.

So I'll link to this post and particularly the comments thread, which is a surprisingly good-natured exchange of views even if there is not a great deal of difference in those views. Comments threads so often degenerate into slanging matches and personal attacks, especially on political and economic blogs but it was in fact surprising to see all commenters abide by the instruction to keep it clean.

While I normally inhabit the wishy washy soft left corner of the 'sphere ('cos I get the Fear elsewhere), you often get visitors - usually the same ones - from the 'other' perspective (yes, there's more than two, but you know...) and it all gets pretty willing. I admire those visitors even if I don't know their motives: hope to convert; short of others things to do; "is this the right room for an argument"? If you've got the nerve (and the time) , try this and this.

So, on to being more pleasant, more self-evidently wishy washy. Did a trip out to a client today that was, as the current saying has it, all good. We're trying to help them, they're amenable to being helped by helping back in return, why isn't the rest of life like this? The interesting bit is that I went out with one of my team members whose interest in stuff - the human condition - matches mine and we converse on a mutually satisfying level (ie somewhere between bogan and academic!). I'd really like to point him to the blog as a basis for extending the conversation, but while any of the team could find out about v v b, I haven't shared it with 'em as I feel it poses too much of a risk in terms of maintaining the work relationships (supervisor/team members or boss/subordinate to put it bluntly). Perceptions, self-perceptions and the Fear. That would indeed be getting into deeper water. Given the number of blogs, this situation must arise reasonably frequently. Wonder what happens elsewhere?

Tomorrow will be good, it starts with coffee with my mentoree, a *classic Gen Y whose company I very much enjoy, as I've enjoyed the company of the various people I've mentored over the past few years.
* Yeah, not too keen on generalisations such as Gen X, Gen Y etc but having read a few articles on the defining characteristics of Gen Y recently I was quite taken aback when this person, on our first meeting, popped out with a few comments that fitted the template exactly. However, what I think is getting lost in the rampant characterisation is that we all go through learning processes as we start to grow up and the lessons being learnt by Gen Y (eg you can't have it all immediately) are no different to what most, if not all of us, learn when we first join the workforce. What might be different is that as they grew up, many of them did have it all immediately (courtesy of wishy-washy baby boomer parents and and lots of credit) and that today there is a lot more analysis of such trends by virtue of the proliferation of media such as the internets.

Discuss.