Walking Around

It's my last day here in my 6 month Scotland adventure. What have I learned?

Well, I have learned a shit-ton about Mary Queen of Scots. I learned she was kept in a tower for years and years, and they kept all the embroidery she sewed during this time. The Scottish really love her. She is such a popular figure, they did a Fringe show, "Mary, Queen of Rock" where she wields an axe (a guitar, not the literal thing.).

I could go on and on with facts, figures and stories about Scotland ... and put a couple of wee drams in me, and I will do just that.

But the most important thing I learned in Scotland? I learned how to just walk around.

No Goal

We are creatures shaped by millions of years of evolution. Humans like to weave it into a narrative ... like humans do with everything.

Like there has been this big struggle. Amoebae struggle to become fish. Fish struggle onto to land. Land animals struggle to become mammals. Mammals struggle to become conscious humans.

And here we are at the apex of evolution. Humans struggle for the latest iPhone.

Uh huh. My brain is like that. It is very goal-oriented. My life is a series of getting from point A to point B. I have to have a point B in mind. Every journey begins with a small step.

But now I have a sneaky feeling that it's just an illusion. What appears to be moving forward and progressing is just human beings walking around guessing what step will lead it to point B. Biologists say evolution is just DNA randomly mutating, and the best ideas carried on through new births. What looks like a goal-oriented long-lasting process is just plain ol' trial and error. It's no better than that little kid pounding a square peg into a round hole with a plastic hammer.

You take that next step. Maybe things will get better. Maybe it won't. The iPhone 16 sure seemed like a good idea at the time.

On our first day in Edinburgh (see Disorientation) Amy and I got hopelessly lost. And in the walking around in the rain, trying to find the Tesco grocery store, we instead discovered Saint Mary's, the Ginger Coo Cafe, the Hall of Records and Charlotte Square. We did pretty well for being hopelessly lost.

We started walking everywhere. I planned a million destinations. We need to go here, here, here and here.

Amy brought up a good point. "Does every walk need a destination?"

Management by Walking Around (MBWA)

Occasionally I read books on Management. For giggles. I have been a manager just once in my life, a stint that lasted 2 years, and I don't care for the practice of management.

I like the theory of management. I remember well the first management book I read: In Search of Excellence by Tom Peters. It had this revolutionary hypothesis: the best ideas in a company came from front-line workers interacting the most directly with customers. Pretty common-sensical. One thing I love about management books is they package some old idea as if they had discovered it. Like every single one of my blog entries.

Supposedly in the 1970's, Hewlett Packard came up another idea so-basic-it's-not-worth-repeating. They said managers should get out of their office and walk around just talking to everyone - their reports, certainly, but also customers and employees that interacted with their reports. It should not have a purpose. It should just be to gather random data. Maybe later you will start seeing patterns, or maybe there will be a perspective so unique that it needs no corroboration.

It's the opposite of a meeting. A meeting should have an agenda, and a hierarchy, and a method for shutting people up when they blab on and on. Here you just want just the blabbing. Unfiltered, uncensored.

In Search of Excellence called out this practice and named it Management by Walking Around. And some bozo, too lazy to say Management by Walking Around, abbreviated it MBWA.

My life needed some Management by Walking Around.

Random Stuff

Amy and I were wandering around Braid and Blackford Hill last week. On the edge of the park was a community garden. It was like no community garden we had ever seen.

It went on for what seemed like miles. The plots were quite neatly laid out, but they had very few fences between them. Many had plastic or wooden sheds where all the garden tools were kept. There was lots of bird netting. Being September, there was quite a bit of vegetable and fruit action.

It looked very landscaped, like it was the product of years and years of trial-and-error. It may have went back to World War 2 and its Victory Gardens ... or maybe even further. It was a part of the neighborhood. The plots looked like a feature you could sell with your house, though not attached. Maybe they are free-standing.

Is this huge community garden in a travel book, or a map? Oh no.

But these were the kind of things we found by walking around. How many of them were in my own neighborhood of Ithaca that I never noticed?

Return on Investment

The Scottish, and more generally Europeans, walk around.

Many of them have dogs, but many don't. They are all different ages and abilities. They are in pairs or alone. They are in sun dresses or track clothes. Some have headphones on.

They are all fit as a fiddle.

I walked an average of 18,000 steps a day here in Scotland. Sometimes these were meticulously planned and executed, like to the Waitrose for more porridge. Sometimes they were absolutely directionless. Sometimes they were hopelessly lost.

I feel pretty good. No, really good. I feel fit as a fiddle.

Now it is time to return home. Time for this slacker to get back to woik.

"Haste ye back," I have heard from more than one of our Scots acquaintances. You bet your ass I will.

But before that, I have some walking around to do.