Happy birthday, Clarity Economics!

The first anniversary of Clarity Economics and of my going freelance fell on 14 January 2008. Here is what I wrote a year ago as I faced in my small home-office…

It was an overcast, rainy January Tuesday but as I biked fast along the towpath of the Grand Union canal through east London I was determined to burn into my memory as much as I could. After almost a decade of riding to work, first in Canary Wharf, and later on the Isle of Dogs this was certain to be my last bike ride – at least at this time in the morning. I had to relish every moment of that journey.

After more than 15 years of working in offices across the country for other people I was about to establish my own identity. At the end of tomorrow I would check in my status as an employee at the front reception, walk through the automatic doors for the last time. I was hardly the first person to jack in a job, even a well-paid one, but for me a conservative-with-a-small-C person this was a major change in the life-plan, possibly even the DNA. I was pre-programmed by an upbringing in suburban south-east England to aspire to a job as the highest form of status. Self-employed people were builders and shopkeepers, enuf said.

So I looked around as I hurtled down the 20-odd miles between Gospel Oak and Isle of Dogs – two exotic and evocative place names that could only be found in London. Perhaps unsurprisingly I thought of what had gone. The derelict bridge over the canal in Hackney onto someone had risked their life to spray on the words “Free Reg Kray.” The words mysteriously disappeared after the gangster’s final lonely death in Broadmoor prison. The bridge itself has now gone to be replaced by a shiny new crossing.

Old warehouses that used to hold car boot sales have made way for blocks of flats, as have several of the waste grounds that backed onto the canal. A lock keeper’s house had been converted into a home with a giant rhomboid living room attached to the Victorian original. Once ignored as a messy route for freight between the Docks and the Midlands, the canal is now an asset for a estate agents, offering picturesque riverside views for new buyers. Everywhere change is evident yet at the some time some things are wholly unchanged from when I first started biking that route. A jerry-built slide at the back of an estate that allows kids to hurl themselves into the canal is still there in the face of health and safety capos. One of the lockgates has carried the graffito “Go Vegan” for as long as I can remember.

But if 10 years’ time what will the canalside look like? Where will I be in 2017? Three months ago when I handed in my notice it seemed much clearer. I was already pulling in some freelance work and would probably pull in more once I’d left. Of course I only stopped worrying about the financial aspect of the move in the last few days before I quit. Suddenly I was very aware of how supportive the office environmental could be – even one as dysfunctional as mine. My fellow workers on our six-person pod, the regular tea runs – “don’t forget I take skimmed milk” – at 4pm and the general office badinage would be hard to replace sitting in my spare room sitting alongside the drying clothes on the clothes horse.

But hanging over all of this was the whole idea of identity. My business cards said I was something important sounding for a well-known company. If I called people they were likely to respond positively to who said I was. Once I’d left would they still. How would I introduce myself? “Hello this is Phil Thornton, ex- of the …” “Hello, this is Phil Thornton. I used to be…” How long will it be before I say: “This is Phil Thornton of Clarity Economics…”? I guess that realising that you are what you do rather than what you are called is the great workplace revelation.