Last week, I had the best ending possible to this phase of my life with Canon. I was able to give a presentation, "16 random things learned in 16 years at Canon" to a group of 150 colleagues and friends.As I stood in front of the audience, it was quite overwhelming to see so many people, all of whom I had been in some kind of contact with over the years in Canon. It gave me a chance to share my experiences in the company and give thanks one last time to my colleagues, especially to Morten.
And I made a conscious decision to share my dream of writing a book with everybody. That was partly to put some positive pressure on myself and partly to make clear that I am not leaving. I am simply moving on to a new purpose.
Choosing to fulfil the Dream of writing the book was a very carefully made decision, and it serves many purposes.
The book is a tool to give me a chance to refresh my mind and get it moving creatively again, which I felt stopped in Canon at least 18 months ago. And I chose to write about Amsterdam in the 60's and 70's because I love living here and I will need to do a lot of research on a period I know little about. Amsterdam is my chosen city for the future - what better way to learn as much as possible about the culture of the real Amsterdam than by researching the book?
That research has started by getting a lot of DVD's from the library, which cover the politics and history of Amsterdam in the period I am looking at. The first views make clear that my Dutch is just about enough to get something out of the news clips and TV stories on the DVD's, but not enough to get every nuance. So a daily task will be to study Dutch language. In my daily life while working for Canon, I heard Dutch spoken maybe 5% of the day. Now I will be exposed to the language much more - reading and hearing - so it is a great opportunity to improve.
It is also chosen as a test. I have never written a book and have no idea if I can. But I know it's something I am very interested in, and believe I have at least some of the capabilities now. It is a choice to push myself further and learn how to do something I can't do now.
Most of all, it gives me a major purpose, just after my major purpose for the last 16 years finishes. Canon was such a dominating thing in my life, and now I am lucky to be able to spend time focusing on a completely different task.
I get to live my dream, and with this purpose in mind, I start the plans and action today.
