It's not exactly true that you are either passing or being passed. Or either running away or running toward. Sometimes you’re just running.
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We cannot always envision the final outcomes of any given project, even if we might be able to project the most likely outcomes. Outcomes are funny like that: they don't always cooperate with “likelihoods”. Welcome to Austin, and have a great SXSW!
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I’m not going to lie to you.
It’s been a long, wild year. Macro, micro, and everything in between. During the sailing ship times, sailors would resort to tying themselves to the mast in heavy weather to avoid being washed overboard. Yet another example of the utility of "strings", at least in theory. My own "strings" with which I tied myself to the mast in 2024 were sixteen essays posted on the blog.
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Reflecting back on the essays posted this year, I can’t help but notice that each piece plays its own unique note, yet contributes to a harmonious whole—a collective symphony of insights that transcends the sum of its parts.
Dive back in or catch up on what you’ve missed, and see if any of these strike a chord…
Here are three archetypes I think of to represent the various pathways you can take. Depending on the situation, you can decide which creative role works best in your process of bringing your idea into reality.
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My story is not that special, really. In fact, its core is the most typical of all immigrant tales: bloodlines fractured and families displaced—voluntarily or involuntarily. Inherited stories forgotten along the way, replaced by mystery, fabrication, indifference, or even shame. What is special is that the frayed string of my family history happens to lead to this place and time—now.
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There were days when we knew our limits were governed only by the length of the string that bound our creation to our own hand. But there were other days when the puff of glory was soon followed by silent stillness, and then by a sickening limpness which could only be addressed by a rapid reeling in of the kite before it crashed back to earth.
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They are a collection of “strings.” However, I did not choose, or perhaps I did not know what type of string they might be, or what the connection to anything else was. Only now am I looking back to discern this. For instance, from this last year’s collection, here are a few observations on why I might have chosen each topic:
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A lot has been written about the virtues and independence associated with being a small business owner. However, comparatively little attention is paid to the instinct of “going with the flow.” After all, entrepreneurs are usually Type A control freaks. However, being on and part of the water in a small boat will eventually inform you that you are not the thing, but rather just part of the process, and your job is often just to keep everything afloat and moving forward in the right direction.
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“Global trade skills deficit”, reads the headline!
What a disconnect between reality and the sordid political discussions on the subject of world trade. Global trade seems to be the “bad guy” these days, even though it has brought tremendous prosperity to way more Americans than those who have unfortunately had their jobs shipped to China (and for sure, that has happened too).
Here is the fact, and the deal. If you are a student and want an interesting and well paying job, think about studying international trade.
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Everyone can use a little ZEN in their life, right?
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Create something from nothing. Turn what was once just a glimmer in your eye into something of this world and for this world. All things of man that exist in the "real" world, all THINGS that ever were and ever will be, were first conceived in the mind of someone and somehow they "became."
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Wait! What just happened? Did he really throw me in the deep end? Doesn't Dad know I cannot swim? Let's be reasonable.
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I had the occasion to overhear both of these stories in a “ Forest Gumpian” fashion as I just happened to be around the tellers. The first is from Forest Gump himself, Tom Hanks, who spoke recently at the Texas Book Festival.
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It’s a paradigm: "One size fits all". At once it’s a moniker of industrial age mass production marketed as flexibility, and also a harkening back to a past age when everything had one design and it was your job to fit it, rather than it fit you.
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Globalization has brought us closer together, but to many, there’s the feeling that we are on top of one another, furiously competing in a zero-sum game with jobs exported, terrorism and drugs imported, and everyone’s traditional values being trampled. In this dystopian view, the smiling faces of Disney’s vision of the world’s children have been replaced by snarling zombies eyeing their next meal.
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