Sitting on the 24th floor, laptop in the position its name suggests – and pulling together the diverse experiences of the last week. I just gave my talk in the last session on the last day of the conference; ‘Embracing the Revolution in Radio Testing’. I have spoken in front of many groups over many years – I am in my element. Not much rehearsal needed. The slides were simple and I knew what I wanted to say and said it with power. The talk flowed easily into a room of – remarkably – about 35 people who had remained until the last session of the conference rather than drifting off into the wilds of Vegas for an additional 90 minutes. I was impressed with their commitment. I questioned mine.

Whilst I was speaking I suddenly became aware of watching myself. Here I am – talking at the top of my technical game to a roomful of people that I can get a laugh out of, whose energy and engagement I can read and play with. Talking about the philosophy underlying the new company my business partner are building.

So I can leave this part of me behind.

Yesterday I hit a wall. After going through the motions of being at a tradeshow; the intellect and ‘plan’ and ‘opportunity’. A migraine hit. I added coffee, sugar and painkillers and pulled tired legs and even more tired brain into another after another conversation – generating interest and excitement for the novelty that we bring. Opportunity we can create.

I hit the edge of meaningfulness – what this was all for – and absent finding a clear answer got into a full ‘fuck off!’ reaction to the environment I was in. It was short-lived; I could remain outside of it and not drag myself down with this shipwreck thinking. However I tasted the ‘bleakness’. The decor in this hotel definitely did not help (the wallpaper makes me think I am inside ‘the cat-in-the-hat comes back’ – a wonderful book, but not to sleep in…)

All this whilst present to an impact I am bringing. In an industry that has become a home – of sorts – over the last 8 years of my professional life. The conference and tradeshow itself evidence to how much money there is in radio and wireless. My and your smartphones, our feeds into facebook and text and calls. The infrastructure underlying the communicated meaning of so many of our lives. Which makes actual physical touch and contact optional; substituting digital for visceral presence.

Ironically the cell-phone reception across Vegas was truly awful.

My challenge is to have all of what I am doing here mean something – mean enough to keep me moving. Up and out. Why? Because that is the route I have chosen. To use this opportunity to clear the past and create a legacy; get my sons through university, college, whatever they want and create the space for me to play. I have a bigger game to be in. It may work.

In a conference that is 95%+ male, in an industry that is 95%+ male. Linear. Dry. Predictable. So being who I am, I have chosen to create a niche where I disrupt it – and at least play at the vanguard of a revolution in how things are done. Bringing my wild creative side as a tornado into the old. However I am changing the game – the landscape remains unchanged. It is effort that seems to miss changing the game that matters.

Me.

When I started playing in this world I had a life outside where I added meaning. I could be good at this and provide for my family, kid myself that I was working through everything that was not as I wanted it to be in my life to create a through-and-through beautiful life. Outwardly successful and inwardly I was fighting for breath – fighting for the deep soul in that life and finding it elusive. Wanting, demanding an experience where I could breathe meaning and depth into each moment – catch the leaves in the basement of my heart and swirl them exhultantly to the sky in a wild dance. Again and again. That was the plan.

And then that all blew up. Finally the breakdown came; the downpour, thunder and lighting after a build-up of tension that almost lasted too long. I woke up to pain, longing, heartache, a deep well behind my eyes that washed my vision clear. I woke up to an experience of Love that has broken me open further than I could imagine and keeps doing it. To connection and conversation where my being too intense is not even possible. Starting in 2013 I created a new career where I get rewarded for, paid for being intense – and have found those with which my intensity sparks their fires and theirs mine. Where Love is not measured in ease and soft comfort, but is marked by an edge so sharp I keep looking further into its keenness – and thrive on it.

On this edge I get to be messy, broken, cracked – desolated. I get to experience joy so deep it runs through me in a torrent. I get to ‘make a fool of myself’, discard the masks and reveal all that I am. I let go of the plan. No more putting life in a box into which it refuses to go. I get to live a life – because I say so – where Love gets to break me open even further. Where I get to be all that within me, and resonate with that outside of me in wider and closer circles.

In the face of this commitment – this journey – keeping my sights set on the meaning that Love effortlessly creates for me, it is a challenge to find meaning in what shows up as mundane and pays most of the bills right now. How can I express my heart through lines of code? however brilliantly crafted they may be? (I am damn good at it). I can love my craft and create things of beauty that maybe I and a few others can appreciate. Hidden within patterns of charge on the face of a piece of silicon buried deep within a laptop, behind another graphical user interface.

It is like I am forever painting masterpieces that will be appreciated and then locked away in the darkness – almost forever. The more perfect they are, the less chance anyone will open them again to appreciate their beauty. However – just like the artisans who carved perfect mice in the high shadows of stone pillars in ancient cathedrals – I can find something meaningful there to do. Make meaning through the small unsung masterpieces of that only I know.

The only courage here is that to keep playing the game, keep choosing it even though it is something I will soon leave behind. Keep choosing it SO that I can fully leave it behind.

Last weekend I was in San Jose in a community of 500 other Coaches, healers, therapists, authors there to get clear on their unique contributions and gifts. Using the opportunity to learn how to communicate and package their arts to reach the audience whose lives will be forever changed by their actions.

Not systems. Not ‘increased throughput’. Not ‘improved services’. LIVES! Living, breathing spirit unleashed from the circularities of limited thinking, old trapped emotion and the playing out and solving of small games.

The workshop was nearly 80% women – by way of total contrast to where I have just been. The creative wholesome deep energy there called me forward to be all that I am; not just a man amongst men – to bring the essence of empowered and empowering masculine forward. In a society where the toxic force of the shadow masculine has wrought and continues to do so much damage; in the face of which the full creative healing feminine shuts down in protection. I got to experience again the beauty of the dance of the feminine and masculine, fully expressed and entwining to create magic and miracles. Birthing inexhaustible Love into the world.

How can I even compare playing in these two places? Engineering and Coaching?

I coach people into the lives that they were born to live – into satisfaction, depth and soul that they had given up on – into being everything they are here to be. Scared, excited, challenged – in the incredible adventure of every conversation. Daring them to stare life in the face – and shout/scream ‘I LOVE YOU!’ so that everyone can hear. And me too -especially to you whose soul I sense resonates, terrifyingly and precipitously, with mine.

My endgame in engineering – to create something beautiful and then walk away from it. The perfect mouse in the Cathedral. To have an impact. To create the money that buys the house and has me forever out of the crater the end of my last marriage left behind. To have it all be truly complete.

Meanwhile creating the space through which I get to plunge into the bigger change I am here to be through my Coaching, my writing. Last weekend in San Jose the writing began from a place where I realized more clearly than ever what I am here to do, the impact I am here to and can choose to have. I know it will change and grow over time however there is no reason to not begin fully. Now. The seed is beyond promise and into germination. I know it is and will change everything. Starting with me. Again.

Vive la Revolucion…