There are a few sayings I find interesting. One such term is “having agency”.
We’ll start with a definition:
The sense of agency (SA), or sense of control, is the subjective awareness of initiating, executing, and controlling one’s own volitional actions in the world. It is the pre-reflective awareness or implicit sense that it is I who is executing bodily movement(s) or thinking thoughts.
In social science, agency is the capacity of individuals to act independently and to make their own free choices. By contrast, structure is those factors of influence (such as social class, religion, gender, ethnicity, ability, customs, etc.) that determine or limit an agent and his or her decisions.
A sense of control. Isn’t that what we all want in life, even the most meek and humble person. The capacity to make your own choices, actively making your own decisions that determine your own future.
Of late, I have had little agency. In my full-time job, decisions are made for me by people who feel perfectly at ease filling up my time. Needless to say, life has not be fulfilling in recent times.
I am tired of it.
Back on September 26, 2016 I started this site as a way for me to share things I find and think about. If you read through these pages, you’ll find I think about a variety of different things.
But I also started this site very much with the intention of morphing it into a business. My business. My agency. I ran a small one-man freelance business for about a year and half starting at the end of 2008 when I lost my job. It was hard having my own business and I worked incredibly long hours, but I loved it.
My business was called it Ratcliff Creative because I did not want to get pigeon-holed with the word “Design”. There’s nothing I relish more than being a Designer and practicing Design, but sometimes there is a stigma attached to being a designer. I chose to avoid any form of negativity.
I do not want to relaunch Ratcliff Creative, even I though I still own the name, the domain and have a bank account for it. Rather, I find the “Creative” part of it now limiting. Creativity is a tool. A verb, not a noun. With that in mind, I wanted to come up with a name that had no boundaries. Thus was born rat etc. A business, a blog, or both?
Will rat etc become a business? Maybe. Is it top of mind for me? Absolutely.