The problem with competition is that it takes away the requirement to set your own path, to invent your own method, to find a new way.

The reason you might choose to embrace the artist within you now is that this is the path to (cue the ironic music) security.

Mediocre is merely a failed attempt to be really good.

Everything gets easier when you walk away from the hubris of everyone. Your work is not for everyone. It's only for those who signed up for the journey.

On top of this, if you do great work you gain the reward of knowing you're doing great work. Your day snaps into alignment with your dreams, and you no longer have to pretend you're mediocre. You're free to contribute.

Once you've engaged with an organization or a relationship or a community, you owe it to your team to start. To initiate. To be the one who makes something happen. To do less is to steal from them. If you hide your spark, bury your ideas, keep your questions and notions from the team, you have hurt them as badly as if you had stolen a laptop and fenced it on eBay.

Shipping, because it doesn't count if you don't share it. Creative, because you're not a cog in the system. You're a creator, a problem solver, a generous leader who is making things better by producing a new way forward. Work, because it's not a hobby. You might not get paid for it, not today, but you approach it as a professional. The muse is not the point, excuses are avoided, and the work is why you are here.

This is not a book for the wild-haired crazies your company keeps in a corner. It is a book for you, your boss, and your employees, because the best future available to us is a future where you contriubute your true self and your best work. Are you up for that?

Sooner or later, each of us becomes (for a while) the kind of person who believes in the reptile people that control the earth. We're seeking our own little pocket of uniqueness.

Make things better. It's entirely possible that the thing you are marketing satisfies no real demand.

This is what tension feels like. The tension of being left behind.

It's great at this stage in my life to still be in the running, that people appreciate you.