Anne Truitt Zelenka

For me, 2007 was an experience in living at the border. I tried out industry analysthood web-style with RedMonk (thanks James, Steve, and Cote’). I worked as the editor of Web Worker Daily soon after it launched. I wrote a book about how the web changes work even as I experienced that radical change in work. I reached out of my hermit-like personality to promote the book and the website (a project that’s only just begun). I immersed myself in press releases for GigaOM. All these things were undiscovered country for me.

I always want to be on the border. When I get comfortable, I get bored. And then I start looking for new borders to explore. I know it’s a hassle for those around me. But I hope it’s also a benefit for them sometimes too, because I’m out there with my machete, hacking down the foliage that stands between us and the unknown.

Here’s a bit from Timothy Butler’s Getting Unstuck:

What would it be like to live at the border? What would it be like to be open fully to the energies and possibilities that are emerging, regardless of their threat to habit, comfort, and stereotyped expectations? The lives of artists give us a glimpse of the answer to this question. In one sense, their very work is to make their experience at impasse visible, or audible, to others. Their lives often become metaphors for what experience at the edge of impasse would be like.

That is what I want: “to be open fully to the energies and possibilities that are emerging, regardless of their threat to habit, comfort, and stereotyped expectations.” To experience “the edge of impasse.” To make my life metaphorically meaningful.