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Clifford Stoll could talk about the atmosphere of Jupiter. Or hunting KGB hackers. Or Klein bottles, computers in classrooms, the future. But he’s not going to. Which is fine, because it would be criminal to confine a man with interests as multifarious as Stoll’s to give a talk on any one topic. Instead, he simply captivates his audience with a wildly energetic sprinkling of anecdotes, observations, asides — and even a science experiment. After all, by his own definition, he’s a scientist: “Once I do something, I want to do something else.”

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I was mesmerized when I came across this talk. This is the way creators think.I am here, but then I am there. I pick something up along the way and  synthesize it with something new. Vacuum cleaning the universe along the way. Creators don’t get tired too easily. However we sleep well and  dream. Is it any different for an artist than it is for Clifford, the physicist? Aren’t we all searching for the truth? Aren’t artists endeavoring to bring something new into being? Is Stoll acting to show us how his mind works or is he just another Type A personality?

Please make you comments here. Participate. You will get more out of the experience. Step into your life as fully as Clifford Stoll. Live a life of  discovery, adventure, giving, sharing, creating.

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Gail Mooney and Tom Kelly document a group of students retracing the steps of the Freedom Riders of the early sixties. The students will never forget this event. After seeing this documentarty, neither will I.

Gail and Tom know that I am a long time fan. A trailer for Open Your Eyes. Gail ‘s nine month adventure with her daughter Erin may be seen Gail’s blog. . It is superb and proves that anything may be done when it comes from the heart.

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I have been following Lou Beach’s work since the 70s. He is a master illustrator. This book of marks his mastery of words. Each story is told in 420 characters or less and is every bit as vivid as his artwork. These are word pictures and I doubt that any two people would see the story the same way in their mind’s eye. Each story was posted as a status update on Facebook. Each entry is a short story in its own right.

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You may peek inside of this book on Amazon.com or read excerpts at 420characters.com While at the website you may listen to readings by Jeff Bridges, Ian McShane, and Dave Alvin.

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Amazon.com Review
Amazon Best Books of the Month, December 2011: Lou Beach takes the prize for best Facebook status update on nearly every page of 420 Characters. Most of us find it difficult to reduce the day’s events or our current emotional state to just 420 characters with spaces and punctuation, yet Beach manages to tell entire stories within these strict confines without losing anything you’d expect from a story with no character limit. These micro-stories range from funny to tragic to absurd, illustrated by Beach’s original artwork and collages. Taken separately, they’re the stories of dreams, both broken and realized; of relationships healthy and strange; of disillusionment and contentment. Taken together, they’re the story of life–or lives. Though there aren’t any overtly recurring characters, the stories still combine into a powerful cohesive whole that’s just as fun to read straight through as it is to read in chunks of 420 characters or less. –Malissa Kent

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This collection of beautifully printed work predates Photoshop and has a richness that will excite your eyes and your heart. Buy this book.

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Kickstarter, A Place where people support creators of all kinds of projects. Heartstormer Thomas Lee, photographer and Alan Kesselheim, essayist have until December 22nd to meet their goal of $3500. They have about a thousand dollars to go. Kickstarter is an all or nothing at all proposition. I invite you all to see this video and to contribute whatever you can to help bring this venture into being. Click below f to see the video then click the link below the frame for more information and to make your pledge at Kickstarter.

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Coke bottle bottom eyeglasses coupled with a gray whispy Fu Manchu beard accented Lester del Rey’s persona. He was wearing Crayola burnt sienna Haband ban- rolled polyester slacks and a lime–green permanent–press leisure suit jacket. Around his neck was a bolo tie which fastened with a fixture that lit up mysteriously like a window to the cosmos. This package suggested a contemporary version of Tolkien’s wizard Gandolf. When he spoke, he blustered.

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.Judy Lynn and Lester del Rey

Circa 1974

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Lester had been appointed fantasy editor of del Rey Books, a division of Ballantine Books which was a division of Random House, to complement his wife Judy Lynn Benjamin del Rey. Judy Lynn founded the del Rey imprint and was a highly respected science fiction editor turning obscure authors into giants in spite of the fact that she was a dwarf. It was she who had presented Lester with a box of freshly printed business cards which read, Lester del Rey, Expert. And he was. I was the new Art Director. It was the mid-seventies.

Lester intimidated guests regularly on one of the first all night radio talk shows hosted by Long John Nebel and his wife Candy Jones during the fifties. I would listen on my pocket sized red transistor radio with a tiny ear piece when I should have been doing my algebra homework. Lester was a science fiction writer for more years than I was alive. His first short story was published in Astounding Science Fiction in the mid-thirties. He was a frequent contributor during the Golden Age of Science Fiction. I remember seeing the credits scroll by on Captain Video, the first of televisions space odysseys about 1949. Lester del Rey was the science advisor.

A quarter century later, I stood before this great man in awe holding his business card and accepting an invitation to a meeting of the Trap Door Spider’s Society. Lester explained that the Spiders were a men’s eating. drinking and arguing club made up of thirteen old friends. A significant number, I thought. The Spiders were formed in response to one of his friends being henpecked. The men invented the club to get him out of the house once a month. Meetings were hosted in rotation. The host would select the restaurant, wine, and menu. He also had the privilege of inviting one or two guests whom he thought might be interesting to his colleagues. I was flattered and accepted.

During the next three weeks, while I waited for the event, Lester and Judy Lynn initiated me into a fantastic world of science fiction and fantasy — a world I abandoned when I was thirteen. Later we would collaborate on hundreds of science fiction paperback covers and the number one world’s best-selling calendar based upon the works of J.R. Tolkien and illustrated by Tim and Greg Hildebrandt.

My taxi pulled up in front of an unsuspecting Spanish restaurant on West Seventy-second Street. An seemingly obsequious uniformed doorman fawned over other guests while judging me for my long hair, beard, bandanna, black T-shirt , love beads, and safari jacket – the uniform of the art director. A more considerate Maitre D’ escorted me to a private dining room lit by a Marie Theresa chandelier. Waiters carried trays of hors d’oervres and drinks in Baccarat crystal.

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Copytight James Randi

The James Randi Foundation

www.randi.com

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Del Rey, still dressed in stretch knit, enthusiastically introduced me to the other spiders. “Ian Summers. Issac Asimov. Ian Summers. L. Sprague Ducamp. Ian Summers. Martin Gardner.” Ian Summers met eight other luminaries consisting of more writers, editors and the Director of the Hayden Planetarium. I took a drink. Lester introduced me to another guest. “Ian Summers. Jim Randi. The Amazing Randi.” I took another drink. I met Truman Capote the day before. I met Gore Vidal that very afternoon. But these men were heroes from my childhood. Terror welled while I wondered what Lester thought might be interesting about me to this august assembly of luminaries.

Upon conclusion of dessert the waiter gracefully removed the china, poured vintage port, and lit thirteen black candles now dancing in sterling silver candelabra. The formal proceedings commenced. Amazing and I were toasted. Then Issac Asimov explained it was a Spider’s tradition to interrogate their guests. The great man leaned across the table. Bushy mutton chops illuminated by candle light framed him in his own aura. I wanted to run. I tried to make myself small, a skill developed in junior high school.  Surely he would start with Jim Randi. Asimov boomed, “Ian Summers. Why do you exist?”

I took a gulp of sipping port. I was silent. I had not given the question a moments thought in my first thirty-five years. I filibustered for over thirty minutes fearing another question. I felt unworthy to be in the company of such great men. I remember thinking, “Oh my God. Issac Asimov knows my name.” I judged myself for not having the right answers — for not being good enough. I vaguely remember presenting my credentials, my accomplishments, my family and work histories. I worked hard to hold back tears.

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And then, Asimov said, “Thank you Ian. That is enough. Lester will you escort Mr. Summers to the door.”

I realized I had spent most of my life as a human doing; not a human being. I did not know the difference. I tried to do exactly what well-meaning caretakers expected. I guessed at what they wanted. I guessed at what normal was and rebelled against it. I became the son I thought my parents wanted. I failed at becoming the good husband without knowing what that meant. I achieved other people’s goals and consequently I was empty. I was fear based. I would do anything to be seen. I had no idea why I existed or who I was. I kept it all to myself.

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What’s Your Story?

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Many years ago, when the Earth was still young and we were crawling out of the primordial sludge, I was a high school art teacher. That was my first adult job. But that is another story. I had a student who always used the expression ‘What’s the story?’ as a kind of greeting. I thought he was interested in hearing my story, so I usually made some time to share stories that were sometimes real and sometimes fiction. ‘What’s the story?’ means ‘Wassup?’ in today’s vernacular.

I have written many articles about the value of storytelling in the creative process.

With the impending death of interruption advertising, consumers will be choosing when and how they receive information.Storytelling will help brands stand out and differentiate products and services to specific prospects. Agencies such as http://storyworldwide.com are hip to this and are helping their clients tell their brands’ stories.

Sometimes stories are found in our early childhood experiences. These stories often herald the person we have become. This story by the great writer Stephen King is such a story.

I invite all of my readers to contribute stories and.or photographs that represent how your earliest childhood experience may enhance an understanding of who you are and what makes you different. Your brand.

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How to Tell A Story

Mark Twain.

The humorous story is American, the comic story is English, the witty

story is French. The humorous story depends upon the manner of the

telling; the comic story and the witty story upon the matter… the humorous

story is strictly a work of art — high and delicate art — and only an artist can

tell it… the humorous story is told gravely; the teller does his best to conceal

the fact that he dimly suspects there is something funny about it.

Multimedia is Not a Panacea!

My concern is that so many still photographers believe they ‘should’ learn multimedia as a survival action rather than having heard the calling.

Vision is a calling. A calling is an inner urge or a strong impulse, a passion, some believe a calling may be divinely inspired. How will the world

be a different place as a result of your visit on the planet? What is your calling? What is it that you feel the urge and passion to bring into being no matter what?

Stalking in Camden ME

We might have been arrested for this, but it built character.

William Kentridge – Storyteller

Artist’s Statement and Autobiographical Animated Video

Idea Stimulator – How to Tell an Infinite Number of Stories

I invented a device that force fits story elements through juxtapositions that invite innovative storytelling. This tool is revealed in its entirety. Feel free to use it whenever you desire.
Graphic Novels:

The Power of Words and Pictures

Isness – The Making of a Photographic Novel

How Stavit Allweis used Kickstarter to fund her photographic novel

How Messing with Mr. In-Between Makes Gutter Talk More Interesting

How to structure a graphic novel

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I just received the following post from one of my favorite, passionate, compassionate, talented photojournalists, ZORIAH MILLER.. Imagine a play written about you and your work. Read this post then check out Zoriah’s  work. And if you are in London get yourself a ticket to this Ice & Fire production. But you better hurry, it closes on August 13th.

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On The Record – It’s Me But It’s Not?

Posted: 07 Aug 2011 01:50 AM PDT

If you happen to be in London this week I will be speaking with the highly accomplished journalist Nick Davies (famous for breaking the recent phone hacking scandal in the UK) on Monday night after the showing of On The Record.  It will be my first time to see actor Trevor White portray me on stage (so this could be a great chance to see what I look like when I am completely weirded out!) Ha!

Seriously though, the play has been getting amazing reviews and the subject matter is very interesting.  I will post some reviews and the press release below, for those of you that are interested.

The playwrights, Christine Bacon and Noah Birksted-Breen contacted me in early 2009 and told me about their interest in writing a play, based in part on my experiences in Iraq.  We spent hours on the phone in interviews for them to get the direct quotes from which the play is primarily based.  I never knew if anything would come of the project and was happy to find out that not only did they see it through but apparently they did an amazing job with the production.  I look forward to seeing it on Monday the 8th and if any of you are able to join, please stick around afterwards and say hello.

From the Producers:

Press:

The Times  ‘This play by Christine Bacon and Noah Birksted-Breen is a tribute to the courage, compassion and tenacity of those who unearth and report stories of real significance, often at great personal risk. Partly based on interviews with journalists, and partly dramatised, it makes gripping theatre, in a production by Michael Longhurst that is at once succinct, shocking and wryly funny … Throughout, the acting is riveting, unflashy and full of conviction, while the stories the play tells are truly humbling.’The American photo-journalist Zoriah Miller (Trevor White) maintains that in the United States censorship is rife, thanks to the power of the advertising dollar. “Nobody wants to sell a watch opposite a picture of someone dying,” he says. His images of the Iraq war are devastating; he captures them in the face of pressure from editors who want something lighter.Financial Times  ‘At a time when so much of the British press appears to have been involved in crimes and corruption rather than uncovering them, this is a sobering and heartening reminder of why journalism also matters in a positive way.

Evening Standard  ‘Impassioned … Director Michael Longhurst keeps up the tension throughout. A vital play for grubby times.’

The Sunday Times ‘As the phone-hacking scandal rumbles on, this reminder that journalism and integrity need not be  mutually exclusive is something of a pick-me-up … The production … compresses a lot into 90 minutes as it lays out why the practice of investigative journalism matters’

Guardian  ‘These people are fierce, proud and hearteningly optimistic.

Telegraph  ‘Was I impressed?…Yes”

The Public Review (4.5 Stars) : “The most impressive thing of all is how this play teeters along the line between candour and good taste, showing us horrifying video images to shake us out of our comfortable, democratic cocoon without needing to push so hard that it feels like shock tactics. I often had goosebumps, and at times a lump in my throat, but mostly I felt in awe, and with a desire to find out more”

Spectator ‘On the Record is ‘an excellent, timely and unsettling play … So many plays are just circus routines or museum pieces. This is a living, breathing piece of propaganda in the best sense. It jerks us from our complacency and argues, quietly but with overwhelming force, that liberal democracy is not inherent in any community’s gene code. It has to be replanted and refreshed by each new generation.’

Metro “Warm and Witty”

The Stage : “Human rights theatre company Ice and Fire’s well-timed celebration of investigative journalism is a refreshing contrast to the daily reports of indiscriminate phone hacking recently in the news.”

The British Theatre Guide: “The acting in On The Record is impeccable throughout. Each performer gives a small masterclass in acting …The script by Christine Bacon and Noah Birksted-Breen is well paced and informative”

The Public Review : “The most impressive thing of all is how this play teeters along the line between candour and good taste, showing us horrifying video images to shake us out of our comfortable, democratic cocoon without needing to push so hard that it feels like shock tactics. I often had goosebumps, and at times a lump in my throat, but mostly I felt in awe, and with a desire to find out more”

ReviewsGate: “Theatre at its best showing journalism at its best…Michael Longhurst’s direction is exemplary… leaving the floor to six fine actors who embody their characters’ different manners and inhabit their sense of purpose without any sense of forcing personality or pleading a case…Christine Bacon, Noah Birkstead-Breen and Ice and Fire theatre’s production ensure a gripping, revelatory event”
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It is Not About You

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On May 30th, 2011, NY Times columnist David Brooks wrote a piece that is completely contrary to everything I believe in and teach. Here are some highlights, I suggest that you read the column in its entirety and then read Anna Quindlin’s advice to graduates from 1999. Brooks delivers an Op Ed piece that supports problem solving at the expense of creativity, experimentation, learning, and passion. I believe that there are enough of us on the planet to allow many different points of view. However, to profess that following passion and seeking to do what you love is hogwash may be damaging to the souls of young people. It will discourage them from creating: causing what they love or what matters to come into being. This point of view not only discourages young people from becoming artists or entrepreneurs and defines doing what one loves as selfish.

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…Worst of all, they are sent off into this world with the whole baby-boomer theology ringing in their ears. If you sample some of the commencement addresses being broadcast on C-Span these days, you see that many graduates are told to: Follow your passion, chart your own course, march to the beat of your own drummer, follow your dreams and find yourself. This is the litany of expressive individualism, which is still the dominant note in American culture.

But, of course, this mantra misleads on nearly every front.

College grads are often sent out into the world amid rapturous talk of limitless possibilities. But this talk is of no help to the central business of adulthood, finding serious things to tie yourself down to. The successful young adult is beginning to make sacred commitments — to a spouse, a community and calling — yet mostly hears about freedom and autonomy.

Today’s graduates are also told to find their passion and then pursue their dreams. The implication is that they should find themselves first and then go off and live their quest. But, of course, very few people at age 22 or 24 can take an inward journey and come out having discovered a developed self.

Most successful young people don’t look inside and then plan a life. They look outside and find a problem, which summons their life. A relative suffers from Alzheimer’s and a young woman feels called to help cure that disease. A young man works under a miserable boss and must develop management skills so his department can function. Another young woman finds herself confronted by an opportunity she never thought of in a job category she never imagined. This wasn’t in her plans, but this is where she can make her contribution.

Most people don’t form a self and then lead a life. They are called by a problem, and the self is constructed gradually by their calling.

The graduates are also told to pursue happiness and joy. But, of course, when you read a biography of someone you admire, it’s rarely the things that made them happy that compel your admiration. It’s the things they did to court unhappiness — the things they did that were arduous and miserable, which sometimes cost them friends and aroused hatred. It’s excellence, not happiness, that we admire most.

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Anna Quindlan’s Commencement Address

Mount Holyoke College – 1999

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A look at all of you today and I cannot help but see myself twenty-five years ago, at my own Barnard commencement. I sometimes seem, in my mind, to have as much in common with that girl as I do with any stranger I might pass in the doorway of a Starbucks or in the aisle of an airplane. I cannot remember what she wore or how she felt that day. But I can tell you this about her without question: she was perfect.

Let me be very clear what I mean by that. I mean that I got up every day and tried to be perfect in every possible way. If there was a test to be had, I had studied for it; if there was a paper to be written, it was done. I smiled at everyone in the dorm hallways, because it was important to be friendly, and I made fun of them behind their backs because it was important to be witty. And I worked as a residence counselor and sat on housing council. If anyone had ever stopped and asked me why I did those things–well, I’m not sure what I would have said. But I can tell you, today, that I did them to be perfect, in every possible way…

Being perfect was hard work, and the hell of it was, the rules of it changed. So that while I arrived at college in 1970 with a trunk full of perfect pleated kilts and perfect monogrammed sweaters, by Christmas vacation I had another perfect uniform: overalls, turtlenecks, Doc Martens, and the perfect New York City Barnard College affect–part hyperintellectual, part ennui. This was very hard work indeed. I had read neither Sartre nor Sappho, and the closest I ever came to being bored and above it all was falling asleep. Finally, it was harder to become perfect because I realized, at Barnard, that I was not the smartest girl in the world. Eventually being perfect day after day, year after year, became like always carrying a backpack filled with bricks on my back. And oh, how I secretly longed to lay my burden down.

So what I want to say to you today is this: if this sounds, in any way, familiar to you, if you have been trying to be perfect in one way or another, too, then make today, when for a moment there are no more grades to be gotten, classmates to be met, terrain to be scouted, positioning to be arranged–make today the day to put down the backpack. Trying to be perfect may be sort of inevitable for people like us, who are smart and ambitious and interested in the world and in its good opinion. But at one level it’s too hard, and at another, it’s too cheap and easy. Because it really requires you mainly to read the zeitgeist of wherever and whenever you happen to be, and to assume the masks necessary to be the best of whatever the zeitgeist dictates or requires. Those requirements shapeshift, sure, but when you’re clever you can read them and do the imitation required.

But nothing important, or meaningful, or beautiful, or interesting, or great ever came out of imitations. The thing that is really hard, and really amazing, is giving up on being perfect and beginning the work of becoming yourself.

This is more difficult, because there is no zeitgeist to read, no template to follow, no mask to wear. Set aside what your friends expect, what your parents demand, what your acquaintances require. Set aside the messages this culture sends, through its advertising, its entertainment, its disdain and its disapproval, about how you should behave. Set aside the old traditional notion of female as nurturer and male as leader; set aside, too, the new traditional notions of female as superwoman and male as oppressor. Begin with that most terrifying of all things, a clean slate. Then look, every day, at the choices you are making, and when you ask yourself why you are making them, find this answer: for me, for me. Because they are who and what I am, and mean to be.

This is the hard work of your life in the world, to make it all up as you go along, to acknowledge the introvert, the clown, the artist, the reserved, the distraught, the goofball, the thinker. You will have to bend all your will not to march to the music that all of those great “theys” out there pipe on their flutes. They want you to go to professional school, to wear khakis, to pierce your navel, to bare your soul. These are the fashionable ways. The music is tinny, if you listen close enough. Look inside. That way lies dancing to the melodies spun out by your own heart. This is a symphony. All the rest are jingles.

This will always be your struggle whether you are twenty-one or fifty-one. I know this from experience. When I quit the New York Timesto be a full-time mother, the voices of the world said that I was nuts. When I quit it again to be a full-time novelist, they said I was nuts again. But I am not nuts. I am happy. I am successful on my own terms. Because if your success is not on your own terms, if it looks good to the world but does not feel good in your heart, it is not success at all. Remember the words of Lily Tomlin: If you win the rat race, you’re still a rat.

Look at your fingers. Hold them in front of your face. Each one is crowned by an abstract design that is completely different than those of anyone in this crowd, in this country, in this world. They are a metaphor for you. Each of you is as different as your fingerprints. Why in the world should you march to any lockstep?

The lockstep is easier, but here is why you cannot march to it. Because nothing great or even good ever came of it. When young writers write to me about following in the footsteps of those of us who string together nouns and verbs for a living, I tell them this: every story has already been told. Once you’ve read Anna Karenina, Bleak House, The Sound and the Fury, To Kill a Mockingbirdand A Wrinkle in Time,you understand that there is really no reason to ever write another novel. Except that each writer brings to the table, if she will let herself, something that no one else in the history of time has ever had. And that is herself, her own personality, her own voice. If she is doing Faulkner imitations, she can stay home. If she is giving readers what she thinks they want instead of what she is, she should stop typing.

But if her books reflect her character, who she really is, then she is giving them a new and wonderful gift. Giving it to herself, too. And that is true of music and art and teaching and medicine. Someone sent me a T-shirt not long ago that read “Well-Behaved Women Don’t Make History.” They don’t make good lawyers, either, or doctors or businesswomen. Imitations are redundant. Yourself is what is wanted.

You already know this. I just need to remind you. Think back. Think back to first or second grade, when you could still hear the sound of your own voice in your head, when you were too young, too unformed, too fantastic to understand that you were supposed to take on the protective coloration of the expectations of those around you. Think of what the writer Catherine Drinker Bowen once wrote, more than half a century ago: “Many a man who has known himself at ten forgets himself utterly between ten and thirty.” Many a woman, too.

You are not alone in this. We parents have forgotten our way sometimes, too. I say this as the deeply committed, often flawed mother of three. When you were first born, each of you, our great glory was in thinking you absolutely distinct from every baby who had ever been born before. You were a miracle of singularity, and we knew it in every fiber of our being.

But we are only human, and being a parent is a very difficult job, more difficult than any other, because it requires the shaping of other people, which is an act of extraordinary hubris. Over the years we learned to want for you things that you did not want for yourself. We learned to want the lead in the play, the acceptance to our own college, the straight and narrow path that often leads absolutely nowhere. Sometimes we wanted those things because we were convinced it would make life better, or at least easier for you. Sometimes we had a hard time distinguishing between where you ended and we began.

So that another reason that you must give up on being perfect and take hold of being yourself is because sometime, in the distant future, you may want to be parents, too. If you can bring to your children the self that you truly are, as opposed to some amalgam of manners and mannerisms, expectations and fears that you have acquired as a carapace along the way, you will give them, too, a great gift. You will teach them by example not to be terrorized by the narrow and parsimonious expectations of the world, a world that often likes to color within the lines when a spray of paint, a scrawl of crayon, is what is truly wanted.

Remember yourself, from the days when you were younger and rougher and wilder, more scrawl than straight line. Remember all of yourself, the flaws and faults as well as the many strengths. Carl Jung once said, “If people can be educated to see the lowly side of their own natures, it may be hoped that they will also learn to understand and to love their fellow men better. A little less hypocrisy and a little more tolerance toward oneself can only have good results in respect for our neighbors, for we are all too prone to transfer to our fellows the injustice and violence we inflict upon our own natures.”

Most commencement speeches suggest you take up something or other: the challenge of the future, a vision of the twenty-first century. Instead I’d like you to give up. Give up the backpack. Give up the nonsensical and punishing quest for perfection that dogs too many of us through too much of our lives. It is a quest that causes us to doubt and denigrate ourselves, our true selves, our quirks and foibles and great leaps into the unknown, and that is bad enough. 

But this is worse: that someday, sometime, you will be somewhere, maybe on a day like today–a berm overlooking a pond in Vermont, the lip of the Grand Canyon at sunset. Maybe something bad will have happened: you will have lost someone you loved, or failed at something you wanted to succeed at very much. 

And sitting there, you will fall into the center of yourself. You will look for that core to sustain you. If you have been perfect all your life, and have managed to meet all the expectations of your family, your friends, your community, your society, chances are excellent that there will be a black hole where your core ought to be.

Don’t take that chance. Begin to say no to the Greek chorus that thinks it knows the parameters of a happy life when all it knows is the homogenization of human experience. Listen to that small voice from inside you, that tells you to go another way. George Eliot wrote, “It is never too late to be what you might have been.” It is never too early, either. And it will make all the difference in the world. Take it from someone who has left the backpack full of bricks far behind. Every day feels light as a feather.

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