(From the blog “Floating on Water“)

Last weekend, I took an amazing letterpress workshop at Sesame Letterpress with Breck and Matt, and I designed and printed the muchas gracias cards in pink using their letterpress! The circumstances in my life that particular weekend were a bit funky. I was very worried because I was waiting for some test results from the doctor - I went to Mexico on the Labor Day weekend and thought I had caught a bad parasite while eating tacos. So I had the perfect setting to cancel my life, not go to the workshop and pout and whine all Saturday. But thanks to Transformation and what I have experienced with my friends from that community, I got myself to DUMBO (down under the Manhattan bridge overpass, a very cool neighborhood in Brooklyn) where Breck and Matt’s lovely studio is, and started working with what was in front of me… I had a blast!

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(From the blog “Halcyon Life“)

Tonight, a few of us had drinks at a midtown spot, Pera. Very nice locale, good wine list, great company. What made this particular happy hour so extraordinary was a simple question posed by my awesome friend, Eric. We had been listening to our friend, Emmanuelle, tell us about her amazing honeymoon with her honey, Luis, in Tanzania. She stayed in romantic camps and saw luscious scenery and took a safari scattered with exotic animals. Listening to her I was thinking, “Ooooh, I would love to go to Africa. Africa’s far. Africa is wild. I wonder how many vaccinations I would need to go to Africa. Oooh, but I really would like to go. But Africa must be really expensive. And I don’t speak the various languages. Gee, it’s too bad I can’t go to Africa…” At that moment, Eric asked a simple, but brilliant question. He turned to the rest of us and said, are you ready for this? “Hey, why don’t we go to Africa?”

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(From the blog “Bright-Eyed Life“)

At this past week’s Monday Night Alive, a successful young actor in the group began to speak about how when he gets a new acting job, he “puts his foot on the brake” in order to balance his life out. And if I remember correctly, sort of as a reward to relax for having gotten a solid job. Ariel & Shya told him how that’s the point in time when he should be putting his “foot on the gas” and not on the brake. He should line-up a new job for after his run of shows. The Kanes then asked “how good are you willing to let it get?” Meaning how successful will you allow yourself to be, without dimming yourself down to fit in with others? To allow yourself to shine brightly, regardless of those who might try to bring you down, because they are jealous, competing, or afraid that you will leave them behind. This is why a support system of those who can be honest with you about how you are being, and are there to really support you when others might aid you in diminishing in your greatness, though they don’t do it intentionally. I love the phrase “you can’t do it alone.” Boy, how I do wish I that I could do it all on my own. I naturally want to be independent and do it all by myself. Thing is that is a lonely way to live I’m finding. It’s easier and more fulfilling to allow myself to be supported, and to support others. It makes things feel effortless.

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(From the blog “Taking Care of Business”)

I wrote this letter about transformation and how it’s changed my life to a columnist in the NY Times a few months ago. I wanted to reprint an excerpt here.

I wanted to share with you my own story of how I transitioned from working at home to enjoying work in the corporate world. I was in consulting work briefly so I spent a lot of time working from home and, at first, I found it liberating, but then later I found that I missed the camaraderie and sense of community in the workplace. After only 11 months at this job, I applied for a desk job and entered the daily commuting fray once again. I immediately hated it! I hated the cubicle environment for the first few months, often contemplating leaving and asking for my old job again. But with patience and advice to wait it out from good friends, I resigned myself to my job and decided to see where it would all lead. My whole first year in my job, I resented being a “cog in the corporate wheel”, as you phrased in your column. I had always reveled in being the start-up guy (having worked at a number of start-ups), working in a rapidly-changing environment, and getting things done.

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