Welcome to the Age of Reinvention
We’ve been expecting you.
What I was writing for you this week can wait until next week.
Before the digital age when publishers could post a story and remove it or change it within minutes, there were printing presses. It took 8 hours, from start to finish to find the stories, sell the ads, write and edit the articles, put them in hot lead, construct all of the pages, start the presses, and then bundle the newspapers or magazines into trucks that delivered them to waiting subscribers and readers. That’s why “stop the presses” happened only with stories worth disrupting the whole enterprise.
Three things happened this week that make this a “stop the presses” moment and each one has a high impact on you. Because this all happened at the same time, you can unpack this in any order that makes you comfortable.
A New Age Defining All of Humanity and History Arrived
You may recall the Agriculture Age started about 12,000 years ago when humans stopped wandering and started to build permanent settlements, societies, and early states. The Industrial Age started in 1760 and lasted more than 200 years before the Information Age took shape in the 1970’s. That lasted 50 years which is one lifetime and many of those people are still alive.
Here we are in August 2024 and this week, Russell C. Smith, turns on the lights so we can recognize what just surrounded us and it’s called the Age of Reinvention. Some may say this sort of started last year but there are so many different names tossed around we can agree that maybe we’ve been experiencing the gestation and periodic kicks before the actual birth. Some call it The Digital Age, The Knowledge Age, The Experience Age, or the Machine Learning Age.
This is important enough for you to read the whole article by Smith, “Digital Fire: A Manifesto. Welcome to the Age of Reinvention, We’ve Been Expecting You.” Go further and get his book The New Now. His thinking is sharp, his writing is tight, and his observations and explanations make The New Now a field guide for whatever is happening now and around the next corner. There never was a New Normal. There is only the New Now.
I encourage you to digest the whole thing and come back here with your comments, notes, and better questions. For now, here’s a sample of my favorite paragraphs:
“When in the course of human events—a new planetary movement springs up and connects all societies—it becomes self-evident that the time has come to fully embrace reinvention for the purpose of survival. It’s time to engage in true passionate creativity, and all that follows from asking more of ourselves, our lives, our minds and hearts, our cultures, governments, organizations, and institutions—every single day.”
“The Age of Reinvention has arrived.”
“Wonderful, tragic, and cataclysmic events have unfolded in recent days, months, and years. Every person on Earth has been impacted. Societies, countries, and cultures have all begun spiraling in a new direction—a direction with no less an end result than altering the history of the human race.”
“Interconnected through technology, we’ve grown new minds and new spines, and we can no longer afford to live stagnant unsurprising lives.”
“The fuse is lit. Live, immediate transmissions from zones of pain, power, protest, and disaster have been broadcast and assimilated. Either by evolving into the New Now, or pushed by dire circumstances, more people on the planet know they want a fundamental shift to happen in their lives.”
“Reinvention asks everything of you, and it asks nothing of you. You can join the reinvention movement from anywhere on the globe. It’s up to each person to rethink thinking and renew their being.”
Writing Challenges and the Democratic National Convention
As if writing was not enough of a challenge, this newsletter demands something brilliant—not ordinary, and authentic to the experience of being an adult, professional, communicator, and gifted. Our community of high intelligence, high-standards, and exceptional-performance people is past the point of never turning back for anything boring, abusive, arrogant, presumptuous, and cold-hearted. They expect articles that are consistent, and frequent, and provide safe spaces for comments, notes, and questions for each other.
This has been a week of high energy, high creativity, and action—getting stuff done. A week of excellent, not-boring, meaningful speeches at the DNC further stirs the writer’s need to pay attention and connect with readers.
Every day I write a draft version on one topic. Whatever bubbles up from that pile of intentional and exciting possibilities of paragraphs and pictures, which touches on the news of the week and teases out a timeless, evergreen tone at the same time—that’s the one article that will get more work and published this week. Never are we short for great articles because there’s a bank of five inspired starts each week that join the other 300 in the First Drafts folder.
What makes it out of the drafts folder is this: What is current and timeless? What has meaning to the life of a professional? What speaks to the communicator who is forever working on skills of writing, listening, speaking, photography, and facilitating dialogues? What has a point that delights the neurodivergent brain which is always “on” to traits of excessively curious, sensitive, colorful, creative, complex, mysterious, and soulful desires for beauty, balance, harmony, precision, and awe?
Russell Smith’s article said everything I was writing about this week—and better. That was my “stop the press” and remake the latest edition moment.
What a Week and Who Saw It Coming?
Some people consider external forces when navigating life, such as luck, winning the lottery, other people’s decisions, cultural influences, and astrology.
Others, like me, believe in intrinsic factors such as critical thinking skills, resilience, intuition, creativity, gifts, and personality traits. These intrinsic factors are your power and authority and have been in you from your first breath until you die.
Some people have devoted their entire working life to forecasts and interpretations of planetary movements. So when I got an email earlier this year that “August Brings Mind-Blowing Changes” I couldn’t look the other way. I kept the message and stepped into August with curiosity and awareness dialed up to high alert and tingly senses.
Now that the week of the Democratic National Convention wrapped up with sincere, spot-on speeches by just about everyone who spoke to the crowd and millions watching on their digital devices, around the world, I looked for that message from the astrologer to see if it was aligned or what.
The message said, “I can’t tell you what will happen, but I can tell you there will be a really big event that occurs on or about August 19 that will change everything. That will be EVERYTHING. Everywhere. This will cause us to focus on the future, creating a brighter and more hopeful tomorrow. It may take a moment or two to catch our breath, but we will be okay. We are expecting the unexpected and we will deal with it. Spend August planning and finalizing the year’s objectives, and sorting out the challenges yet to come.”
On or about August 19” covers the days when Vice Presidential candidate and Governor Tim Walz spoke, when Presidential candidate and Vice President Kamala Harris spoke, and when Russell C. Smith published “Digital Fire: A Manifesto. Welcome to the Age of Reinvention, We’ve Been Expecting You.”
What a week! Is this a new level of mind-blowing change for you?
Through this newsletter, you will start to see yourself - and others around you - in a different light. It’s a blessing to have your eyes and heart on this newsletter and the community of Gifted Professionals and Communicators, exploring how we practice, relate, listen, and create. Every time a new person subscribes, I feel a nudge to keep writing; thank you. Each time you show up in the comments or respond with email, I learn about the conversations and desires important to you.
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