March 3, 2008, Monday morning, 9:00 a.m. I eagerly sit at my new desk in the law library of the Appellate Division, Second Judicial Department, in Brooklyn, New York – often recognized as the busiest appellate court in the nation [1]. For over two years, I worked at the Appellate Division as a Court Attorney, serving the Justices of the Court and supporting them in reaching fair and just decisions. My name was on numerous memoranda of law and confidential reports submitted to the Court. However, until about two months ago, I doubt if any of the 22 Justices would even recognize my face.

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Two nights ago, at Monday Night Alive, I shared a story about my health, and how through Instantaneous Transformation I discovered that worrying about it was a choice, not a requirement.

I’ve had a few bouts of sinusitis since last October, so when it came back last month, I had some blood-work done to try to figure out why these infections kept coming back. When I called my doctor’s office to get the test results, they would not give them to me over the phone, and insisted that I had to come in to meet with the doctor. My initial reaction was “Oh no, what could be so serious that they won’t tell me except in person?”

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I was recently walking around the theater where I am currently working, which is also a theater where I had worked many years ago. As I entered different rooms, offices and hallways, I kept coming across my drawings and photos framed on the walls from the different shows I had done. I had to laugh at myself, because with each drawing came a flood of both memory and astonishment.

First of all, I was astonished to see that these were the drawings which MY MIND had stressed over – and how they were ‘not good enough’. Yet here they were framed, years later. My drawings are the very first thing you see as you enter the managing director’s office and the artistic director’s office. As I looked up and saw them – and BEFORE I even realized they were mine – I thought “Wow, what a beautiful set of drawings”. Blew that whole story of ‘not good enough’ out of the water instantaneously!

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After a breathtaking – or should I say breathgiving – long weekend with two magical and touching workshops in Hamburg, Germany, I’m back home in St. Gallen, Switzerland. I feel relaxed, open, available and – no matter how much work or how demanding a job or task – able to appreciate the people around me in their natural greatness and many abilities. In writing this, I just realize that actually includes me… and am smiling…

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The other day I went to a printer shop on the west side of Manhattan to do a press check for the magazine that I produce and design quarterly, as part of my job as a senior designer for a financial firm. This means that I check that the main color matches the previous issue, that there is no text missing, that the portraits of the managing directors look crisp, and that the typography is legible, among other things before they go ahead and print the full run of 25,000 copies. I was sitting in a comfortable room with a computer where I could surf the web whilst waiting for the press sheets to come out, so I could approve the colors and get back to my office when done.

At some point, I heard a bunch of young people coming into the room. Usually it is very quiet with only a few press-men and sales representatives walking by. Normally, I would have just continued checking e-mails and minding “my own business” or being shy. But something quite unusual happened, I got curious and I found myself asking someone who seemed to be the teacher leading this group of young students if it was a design class and from which school. He explained they were students from Pratt Institute and he had brought them to learn about the printing process. “What a coincidence” I thought, “I also went to Pratt”… And without much thought I told him that I had graduated from the Communications Design Masters program in 1998 and that now I worked for a financial firm designing their publications… He asked me if I could talk to his students about my professional experience.

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