Scarcity, Hype and Self Pity – My Beechworth Story

I so was not going to post this, but blergh what the hey, in these days of extreme transparency why not let it all hang out a bit.

Writing a blog under your own name means that some of the real life stuff that happens will eventually, somehow, seep into the bits of information you really want to blog about. I learned from Caroline Middlebrook’s blog on the effect of being honest about real life events. Mind you what is happening in my life at the moment is nowhere near as traumatic as what was happening to Caroline, but still it is having an affect.

Cutting a long story short, the large multinational TLA IT company I work for has outsourced their entire network division to another large multinational IT TLA. This is proving to be a very difficult process and day 1 is May 1st. This means I am working my butt off (despite my regular tweets on twitter) and dealing with the angst of 70 people, most of whom are lost, disillusioned and pretty much at the end of their tether as the debacle transition drags on and on.

Now mix that with my desire to go to the Immediate Edge Beechworth conference which runs from the 26-28th of April. Right through the middle of me having to herd cats and hand out Kleenex. I knew this some months ago when the conference was first announced and I was cool with it. “it’s OK” I told myself ” There will be other conferences, probably not this year, but one day”.

It is NOT OK I want to be there *stamps foot*. I want to hang out with the smart people and learn all the stuff they know. I want to meet people I let influence me, in person, shake their hands and have a laugh. I want to learn the “secret sauce”. I sound like a 5 year old with all the “I want” statements, but I really DO want.

Stepping back from myself here, I know that I am being manipulated by stuff.

1. Scarcity – the thought of a one off or a special event will motivate people more than a season ticket. How many people buy a season ticket and only go once or twice. Gym memberships and membership sites of all kinds bank on the fact that only 20% or less of the population will be motivated enough to use their membership to its full potential.
2. Hype – the crowd that I hang out with and give permission to influence me are mostly going to Beechworth. They get excited…I get excited
3. Self Pity – I was watching Tony Robbins’ TED Talk (and I am no Tony Robbins Fan grrl) and one of his statements jumped out at me in relation to how i am feeling. While the circumstances conspired to stop me getting to Beechworth it was me who was not resourceful enough to make it happen. No point pitying myself, it is time to look at and learn from this experience.

So [goddam it, huge chunk of blog post disappears due to WP throwing toys out of the pram] from memory I said, I can recognise why I feel this way, and it is the sort of urgency and desire I want to engender in others when it comes to making them buy things. Also, if I really want something and feel it is worthwhile then I should be pushing harder to make it happen.

Apologies for the self-absorbed meanderings!

/end rant