I’ve recently come across this beautiful quote by Ralph Waldo Emerson (from his 1841 Over-soul essay):

We live in succession, in division, in parts, in particles. Meantime within man is the soul of the whole; the wise silence; the universal beauty, to which every part and particle is equally related, the eternal ONE. And this deep power in which we exist and whose beatitude is all accessible to us, is not only self-sufficing and perfect in every hour, but the act of seeing and the thing seen, the seer and the spectacle, the subject and the object, are one. We see the world piece by piece, as the sun, the moon, the animal, the tree; but the whole, of which these are shining parts, is the soul.

It perfectly describes my personal philosophy and theology, and not only, because it also highlights the whole reason for my current and past jobs within the Linked Data / Semantic Web sphere, and points towards my continued interest to a particular project of mine.

Well, its rather wet and windy here in England & Wales at the moment, but hopefully it’ll clear up in time for our trip to Greenbelt Festival 2012 in August.

That aside, I’ve got my home-office back up and running with my desktop PC. It has a bit of trouble now and then (with some long beeps when first starting it up in the morning, which seems to be resolved with switching the machine off at the back and then ensuring everything inside is pushed in correctly and then starting it up again). Hopefully it’ll resolve itself properly in due time. I’ve been using my laptop more often over the past half-a-year, but its nice to be back on the bigger computer. I should also get myself a proper office desk chair.

No doubt you’ll probably hear more about why my home-office is back up and running in due course, but for now I’ll leave you with a bit of news…

I have a technical article being published later this month (July 2012) in a printed magazine. This will be the first article I have written which has been published in printed media for the general public (my first printed article being for a Student-targeted magazine called Crossroads back in the mid 2000s). I’ll release more information once the article is in shops, but it is rather exciting.

Progressing a career is entirely dependent on:

• what you know,
• who you know,
• and how you utilise (in an ethical way!) , your knowledge/skill and your network/circles - this involves multi-directional communications, friendliness within community, truth/honesty and charity/relief

This week I will be exploring my business options and enhancing my skills in several technical and professional aspects, in order to help my fellow human and in order to continue to perfect myself.

As some of you may know, I have been looking for new career opportunities (for the past few weeks now), and not much has appeared yet, I have had some interest but nothing concrete so far. This is quite unfortunate really, my knowledge and my skill are ready and waiting to be snapped up by whoever wants to utilise them. So what is going wrong, perhaps it is the unfortunate state of the current economic playing field, perhaps I’m doing something wrong in my search for my next career steps, perhaps I’m not ethically utilising my knowledge/kill and my network/circles in the correct manner, perhaps I need to broaden my search space.

Please do send me a email, just to reaffirm our connection, and maybe we can explore potential avenues, or maybe we can just have a short conversation. My LinkedIn Profile has lots of detail about my skills, knowledge and experience, so please do have a look.

• My email address is: danieljohnlewis [at] gmail [dot] com
• My LinkedIn account is at: https://www.linkedin.com/in/danieljohnlewis (please do feel free to request a connection)
• My skype is: daniel.lewis

So since December 2011 I’ve been working as a Developer (PHP+MySQL+XHTML+jQuery + a whole load of other stuff!) for a Bristol-based company called Helastel. It has been my full-time employment since, and I’m finding it quite challenging but quite rewarding.

In the background I’ve kept my self-employment going - I’ve been writing some articles for a bit of pocket money, and have also been volunteering my services as a web developer/master to a certain political party, and some other groups.

But my personal and career development has far from reached its summit, there is still a long way to go, in fact, it is definitely a life-long journey. There is so much I want to learn, so much I want to experience, so much more skill to attain and wisdom to seek.

“Know Thyself” is a teaching which I try to get to understand. I want to know myself, I struggle with it at times. The question I ask myself is not “why am I here and what is my purpose?”, but “what are my strengths and how can it change other peoples lives?”

“Onward, Christian Pilgrims” is a different song, but quite similar to “Onward, Christian Soldiers” which I believe is called St Gertrude. The term “Pilgrim” speaks to me a lot louder and clearer than the word “Soldier”, and in general I prefer the “Onward, Christian Pilgrims” hymn. I am a “seeker” - I seek the wisdom that can be found in humanity and in nature, I believe that it can guide us in life. This seeking is a pilgrimage.

On a pilgrimage we take a good direction and sometimes take a wrong direction, it all depends on our orientation skills at the time. I’ve made some good career and life decisions, but I’ve also made some bad ones. We learn from the bad ones in order to not make them again, and we rejoice in the good decisions. The road is tough, and long - but the goal drives us, and we can rejoice in that goal.

These aren’t things which are Christian specific - in fact, these are things which are applicable to everyone - including atheists, agnostics and people of all faiths and cultures. Life is interconnected and intermingled - careers/business, education, lifestyle choices, lifestyle non-choices, cultures, government, religion/spirituality/belief/disbelief. Everything influences our decisions.

Some interesting thoughts for a Wednesday morning. I would be interested to see any comments people may have on this subject.

Daniel