Huge snowflakes fall around me as I walk along the sidewalk. I pass a house, the lawn has tire tracks across it. Around the corner is a guy waiting at a bus stop, having a smoke. "These snowflakes are huge!" I exclaim, smiling to him.

"Tell me about it dude, it's not even that cold out." He smiled back.

I continue walking, looking up at the sky. The vast clouds above form a billowy, white canopy. Looking up at that, it's kind of like being under an ocean, and you're looking up at the surface of the water. The clouds drift and move along, and sometimes move like waves in the ocean, in slow motion. I think back to a memorable thing I read in a book.

"In life, people tend to wait for good things to come to them. And by waiting, they miss out. Usually what you wish for doesn't fall in your lap; it falls somewhere nearby, and you have to recognize it, stand up, and put the time and work it takes to get it. This isn't because the universe is cruel. It's because the universe is smart. It has its own cat-string theory and knows we don't appreciate things that fall into our laps."

-Neil Strauss

The realm of the true saint, the philosopher, the entrepreneur is rarely reached. And I'm making a startling discovery. The career I've been working towards is much more loose in it's definitions, guidelines and expectations. It is, actually...so broad and undefined that I don't even need a formal education to begin working in it. I'm so confused by this. Life was taught to me by an analogy, that there is a start and a finish. That it's linear, there's a stairway and you climb that single row of stairs one step at a time. That there is an end and it's my job to get to that end.

But it's not. It's a real world out there. What I need to do is network with people. Find out who needs the skills I already have, and who needs skill that I don't yet have, and get those skills. I need to maintain business relationships, and get people to know me, and build rapport with people I haven't talked with yet. It's not as simple as getting a piece of paper that says your qualified. It's taking the initiative to evaluate yourself, to find out what kind of services people need out there, to find those people and introduce yourself to them. The world is big, and huge and complex, and the methods you can take to achieve your goals are incredibly vast.

And so what method am I taking? The slow and steady approach. The one step at a time. For me, it's like I'm climbing the face of a cliff. Allowing my intellect to spring forth spontaneously in a tight spot, so that I can summon forth some ingenious way of passing this obstacle on the face of the cliff. And very often, I stop to rest. I secure myself just in case I fall. I've learned to secure myself the hard way. By falling flat on my face, over and over. And having to pick myself up and start from the bottom again. Such as going bankrupt.

In the past, I would be so reckless and cocky. I would look up at the top of the cliff, and say "I wanna be there!" And then I'd sprint up to the face of the cliff, leap high into the air and grab onto something, and start hauling ass up that cliff face. Recklessly, fearlessly. And then partway up I'd fall. Like an idiot, in shame. I've been broken and bruised. Bones shattered, my mind jarred, and rubbing the dust off my elbows.

Now I'm taking a different approach. I've returned to the same mountain that I attempted to climb when I was 17. This time, I started by standing back and surveying the face of the cliff. Planning a route up to the top. Looking at potential problems. Using the hindsight from previous falls and slip-ups to foresee hazards up the path. Then I gathered the resources to climb. Such as a pillow of savings. And now, here I am, with my harness and rope, securing myself to the face of this one. It's gonna be a long climb up, and it's not just one direct, clear-cut and simple route. So I'm gonna take my time, and utilize my innate skills and abilities to find my own path up this one. And when I get to the top, I'm gonna have a huge vantage point to view the landscape below.