That Ever-Present Tension

What if uncertainty and tension and confrontation were good things?  How might your life improve if you used them as tools?  If you stopped running away from them and recognized them as fantabulous forces for change? I was giving a creative writing lecture last month...

Make Your Bed

In 2014, Naval Admiral William H. McRaven gave the University of Texas Austin commencement address. It was a twenty-minute speech that outlined ten principles he’d learned during Naval SEAL training. These principles helped him overcome challenges, not only in his...

The Masses Are Not Your Audience

Walt and I were tooling around in New Hampshire this weekend when we came upon a group of millennials expounding upon this three-year-old Cadillac commercial. Basically, they were disgusted by the mindset, by the whole way of life it seemed to promote, and they...

One Brick At A Time

Writing a book involves the creation of one small chunk of material at a time, because to contemplate the project in its entirety is a set up for insanity and failure. Thus the elephant-eating metaphor I like to use—How do you eat an elephant? Yes, one bite at a time....