We’ve spent the first week together now, and by this point you’ve probably realised that someone keeps quietly appearing in the background of every story.
The Monsters have been making themselves known. The Inbox Monster has been chasing unfinished emails, the Time Monster has been bending the clock, the Transitions Monster has been making every change of gear feel harder than it ought to, the Side Quest Monster has been tempting me down fascinating rabbit holes, and the Overwhelm Monster has been waiting patiently for them all to arrive at once.
And then there’s Barry. He never seems particularly surprised by any of it. I suppose I should explain why.
People often ask where Barry came from. The honest answer is that I don’t really know. He just… appeared one day. Not in the literal sense, I should reassure you. I haven’t actually got a pet spider living in the office, despite what some of the Crew might tell you. Barry arrived as I was trying to find a way of explaining how my brain works without reducing ADHD to a list of symptoms.
The more I thought about it, the more I realised that my brain has never looked like a filing cabinet. It’s always looked like a web.
Most people see a spider’s web as something messy. They notice the strands crossing over one another and assume it’s random. Barry sees something completely different. He sees structure. Every strand has a purpose. Every connection matters. If one thread moves, something somewhere else moves too. Nothing exists in isolation.
The first time I really stopped to think about that, it felt strangely familiar. That’s exactly how ideas seem to work in my head.
I rarely think about one thing on its own. Every conversation reminds me of another conversation. One idea sparks three more. A piece of legislation makes me think about a family I worked with years ago, which reminds me of a research paper, which somehow ends up connecting to a training exercise I haven’t even designed yet. To somebody watching from the outside, it can look as though I’ve wandered miles away from the original subject. From where I’m standing, though, I’ve simply followed the threads.
For years I thought everybody else’s brain worked like that too. I genuinely believed everyone could see the same connections I could. It took me a long time to realise that while everybody makes connections, not everybody experiences them with quite the same intensity or speed. That’s one of the reasons I so often started conversations in the middle. By the time I’d spoken, I’d already travelled halfway across the web without noticing that nobody else had come with me.
Barry never struggles with that. He can see the whole web at once. That’s why he never gets cross with the Monsters.
In fact, I don’t think Barry dislikes any of them. He understands that every Monster is trying to help in its own rather enthusiastic way. The Inbox Monster wants me to stay connected. The Time Monster wants me to keep moving. The Side Quest Monster wants me to stay curious. Even the Overwhelm Monster is really trying to make sure I don’t forget anything important. They all start with good intentions. They simply forget that too much of a good thing is still too much.
Barry’s role is different. He doesn’t fight the Monsters because they’re part of the landscape. Instead, he quietly reminds me which thread I was following before everything became tangled. Whenever my head starts to feel impossibly busy, I imagine Barry sitting in the middle of the web, completely unflustered. He never tells me to ‘be more organised’ or ‘just focus’. He simply points to one strand and says, ‘Start there.’
I’ve discovered that’s surprisingly good advice. You don’t have to untangle the whole web. You just have to know which thread you’re standing on.
There is one more thing you should know about Barry. He has a rather magnificent purple mohawk.
He insists it helps with aerodynamics. I’m fairly sure spiders don’t need aerodynamics, but I’ve never had the heart to tell him. Personally, I think it just suits him. It’s difficult to feel intimidated by a spider with a fabulous purple mohawk, and perhaps that’s the point. Barry was never meant to frighten anyone. He’s here to remind us that things which look complicated from a distance often become much easier to understand once you know how they’re connected.
So, now you’ve met Barry properly. Over the next few weeks, he’ll keep popping up with the occasional observation, a little gentle wisdom and the odd reminder that there’s usually another way through the web.
If, by the end of October, you find yourself pausing in the middle of a busy day and wondering what Barry might say, then I’d like to think you’ve understood him perfectly. And if you catch yourself admiring his purple mohawk… well, don’t say I didn’t warn you.