Success

is to be judged by what you had to give up in order to get it."

says my desk calendar.

Crime

My little crime over the last few years has been to ignore the power of music.

For example, I struggle to describe the effect of having the words "All I Want is Everything" pounded into my brains, even if only for a few minutes.

It does not matter that the song is largely irrelevant.

Emptiness

I have read somewhere, "The blank page: The most challenging environment there is."

How true... it is time to run riot.

Hard work

...is what will make the difference, it seems.

My harshest critic reminds me that I have been more than guilty from time to time, of ignoring the simple merits of the hard slog.

It is time to sign up to that ethic to make sure I do not disappoint myself, or us.

Struggle

This idea is only just germinating. It is so easy to discard. To disavow. And, to relapse. Into tedium.

Odd

I seem to spend the weekdays planning my weekends. Surely, something is odd about that.

Compass

I have an old envelope with all my undergraduate admissions essays. I found it and opened it today. I reread what a naive 17-year-old had written. Some of them made me wince. Yet, some of them made me proud. I had dared to dream. All I had going then was an inexplicable belief in my ability. Nothing else.

And, in some of them, I found very simple, straightforward answers to some of the questions that I ask myself today.

When in doubt, ask yourself - preferably, a version from a dozen years past.