I was 28 when I graduated from Berkeley. 30 when I left Wired (and San Francisco).

I bring that up because 10 years later (or 8 years later if you’re doing the math), I don’t feel particularly smarter than I was back then. I do feel more well-rounded. Which I guess is a way of saying that I know more about what I know. I’ve been able to see around the knowledge I have, understand it for what it is, and see where it’s not quite right.

I get, today, that most of what I’ve learn in a book needs to be honed and shaped by the life, bits and pieces rubbed off and re-shaped in ways that only experience can tell you. I’m smarter today, I think, because I’ve gone through that chiseling process. I’ve been around the world, had the chance to play with the knowledge and craft it.

Which doesn’t mean I’ve turned off the knowledge spout. I still try to learn every day. But I spend more time on the things I am learning, trying to figure out what I know I’ll take the time to shape.

This flashed through my mind on Friday as I spoke with an executive from Sprint and another member of their communication team about promotion.

I’d just finished my talk on Read/Write Stories and Participatory Culture. We were discussing how this might play out in a corporate setting. I showed them some examples of what I meant. And laid out, briefly, how and why they might approach these ideas.

We have a meeting lined up in a few weeks to discuss this more.

***

This is not particularly unique, this situation I described. You reach a certain age and, in your field, people want to know what you think. This happens to my friends on a regular basis. Far more than it happens with me.

When I was younger, I ascribed the phenomenon that I observed to some “network” or “club” that everyone – but me – seemed to be in. I was an outsider, observing.

As I’ve gotten older, I realize it’s something else entirely.

I spend most of my day working with and around people who don’t understand what I do. (I recognize, of course, the same is likely true of them. I am not them, though, so I have to speak just of me.) I have been, for some time, an outlier in my field. Podcasts in 2000. Blog-like entries at Wired (short, notebook items). Pictures and images with stories. Shooting video.

These were things I tinkered with a decade ago. And my bosses at Wired News, some of them, were reticent to let me do such things.

The point is that I’m used to feeling on the outside. (And having people who don’t understand the skill behind the emerging technology try to explain to me how these things work.) So when I find someone who speaks the same language as me – generally someone who has that same outliers experience – I gravitate to them. Immediately.

From the outside, I imagine there are those who want to be in this club. Who stand around, like I did, I want to be on the inside. Because they think there is an inside.

And don’t yet realize the inside is made up of people who are simply on the outside the rest of their lives.

***

I tell my dad regularly: I have to watch what I say now because 10 years ago, people would argue back. Now, people nod and start doing. I don’t always appreciate the weight of that.

This isn’t, as I’ve suggested, a function of being smarter today than I was 10 years ago. It’s a function of honing and shaping. Because I’ve had the chance to fiddle with this knowledge for a decade, examining it from many angles. It’s not an idea now. It’s a part of my DNA.

I don’t speak, publicly, about the things I don’t know because I’ve been on the receiving end of that conversation too many times in my life.

So we’ll meet to discuss some the ideas I’ve discussed in my talk. We’ll kick ideas around about how Sprint might approach participatory culture. How they might seek to change their image (at least in the technology world), an image that took a hit a few years back.

We’ll talk because we’re outliers.

It’s Sunday afternoon and I’m sipping cappuccino, sitting in my local Panera and trying to clear my head.

There is a calm-ness to this day that I recognize, even though my head is swirling with thoughts that turn my stomach. Mistakes and mis-steps I’ve made which, in the grand scheme of things, matter so very little I wonder why I care.

Of course, wondering about why I care doesn’t change the reality that I do.

The real source of angst, though, seems to be rooted in two very clear ideas: a proliferation of social software that has taken computing into a broader realm and my immersion in said technology development for the past two decades (12 as a professional).

It all feels very old to me now. I find myself arguing points with people who have just discovered these technologies – who are just interacting with these technologies – in the same way we argued these points more than a decade ago.

And I find no joy in the world of technology anymore. Not as I’ve known it.

I understand, for the first time, why people walk away from things.

***

In Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell writes that it takes roughly 10,000 hours of practice to become an expert at something.

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The southern part of the River has changed course many times over an area some 300 kilometers wide.

The key to these changes is the River’s natural tendency to follow the "path of least resistance," which is almost always the shortest route to the sea.

The Mississippi follows a single channel until gradually its channel fills with sediment. At that point, the River easily overtops its banks during periods of high discharge. When that happens, it is free to find a more direct route to the Gulf, until of course, the lengthy cycle begins again.

This cyclical shifting of the Mississippi has resulted in an ongoing battle to control the forces of nature.

– U.S. Department of the Interior: U.S. Geological Survey, Running Water II: Landscape Evolution

***

There are very few moments in life that will shake your existence to the core. We mostly try to avoid them. Feverishly. Fevorishly.

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