Tomorrow I turn 27. By 27, a lot of folks have life more or less figured: who they are, what they want to be, what life’s for, and what they’ll make of it. Married, career, kids in the waiting. Me? I haven’t the foggiest. I’m still searching–may always be a searcher.

Some quick thoughts about my plans for life at 27:

• No marriage.
• No kids. Maybe I’ll get a dog some day, if I decide to settle down.
• No settling down. Life’s too damn short to settle. There’s too much to see. I’ll spend a lifetime searching and exploring, and never but scratch the surface.
• No career. I don’t need to or mean to get rich, but life’s too short to spend it working–especially too short to spend it working to make someone else rich. Money’s funny–it’s no meritocracy, that’s for damn sure. You might work hard your entire life, and never make more than $50k in a year (see: an appalling number of America’s educators). Or, you can lazily take a few risks, get lucky, and mint piles of cash. If there’s a path to riches, it’s risk taking, opportunism, connections, and luck. (I’m not much for making connections, so I must compensate elsewhere.)  I work exceedingly hard when I’m working, and will take all the risks I’m able. Goal: to make good money or go bankrupt by 32.
• More declamations, pronouncements. More provocation. I’m tired of being so banal, so bland, so goddamned polite. It’s time to make a point of offending a few more folks. Life’s too short to be so church-mouse-fucking-polite.
• More interesting conversations. I may never figure life out, but I’d at least like to be able to credit myself with trying.

I’m 27. I’m still finding new things I enjoy–but also still yet to find something I truly love. There’s plenty I’m passionate about–too much at times. It’s high time to embrace the fact that I don’t have a calling in life–unless that calling is to learn, explore, discover. There’s nothing wrong with being good at a lot of things.

27 is going to be a year of working really, really hard. There will be adventures, sure–couldn’t, wouldn’t live without. But the focus of the next year is to make the business successful. That’s it. To work my ass off.  If I do, and I succeed, I make the world my oyster. I prove to myself that capable of hard work, of accomplishing something. That I can give something the best I’ve got, consistently, for a long time.

Oh. And, let’s make 27 the year I become a photographer.

Benediction. Today I’m young. Tomorrow I’m not–least not by most standards. I’m old enough to know better–but intend on remaining too damn young to care.

I hold no truck with stylists. That is, of the authors I admire, few are likely to be accused of being masters of their craft. I admire John Steinbeck–who in the introduction to one of his own books admits that he writes poorly. Ray Bradbury is hardly a master of style–though I find his works readable, relatable, and occasionally revealing. I hesitate to admit that I admire Ayn Rand–mostly on account of her Glenn Beck endorsement and Tea Party associations, but also on account of her terrible prose and one-dimensional characters. Ed Abbey is also not much of a writer (his fiction, in particular, downright awful), and yet I love him dearly, and esteem him as one of my favorite authors.

A long-time friend and I disagree, when it comes to books. He admires the stylists, the great linguists, those who win Nobel prizes, and craft their books in a way designed to tantalize literary theorists and flaunt their own staggering intellects. Nabokov, for example. In my view, there’s nothing of value whatsoever to be drawn from Nabokov’s overly wordy, pretentious prose–but Sagar finds him to be the absolute epitome of authors.

I prize books for their ability to transport me away from the humdrum and familiar, for their ability to challenge my way of thinking, to somehow open up my world a little wider. Authors who are imperfect, but passionate–who write for some purpose other than the sake of writing–for an audience not who will appreciate the book for its aesthetic merits, but who will be changed (at least in some small way) by having done so.

Which isn’t to say that I don’t admire, appreciate, and enjoy a book that’s well crafted. I often do–I suspect I’d enjoy Steinbeck twice as much if he was also a masterful writer, in addition to writing passionately.

Of course, this also likely reflects my aspirations. I have no aspirations to write anything which is appreciated for its composition, for its structure, metaphor, or analogy. I aspire only to be simple, salt of the earth, passionate–and perhaps to write something whose words have greater impact than a canvas in a fine arts museum.

In reality, my writing will likely assist no one other than myself. But, I’ve heard it enough times to believe it to be true, I find writing to be an improving exercise, that I learn through writing, that I define my lens on the world and understanding of it by writing about it.

So, sure, I write badly. Fine. Perhaps, if I keep at it, I’ll write less badly. And then, perhaps, someday, I’ll have something to write about (other than revenue cycles and healthcare costs)–and I’ll be in a better place to do so for having had some practice prior to.

You can’t call yourself an entrepreneur–someone else has to call you one. You’re only an entrepreneur if you create something new and bring it to market. If you own your own business, you’re a business owner. If you open a new convenience store or Papa Johns franchise, you’re a business owner, but certainly not an entrepreneur.

Atlas was founded with very modest ambitions–to create an exceptionally good product, and deliver that product to a handful of people, and in the process generate a few hundred thousand a year in profit–enough to support the other outside ambitions and interests of its founders (traveling, climbing, etc.). It’s not a John F. Kennedy go-to-the-moon-in-ten-years goal, but more of a get-a-good-job goal: a goal but not a dream, an ambition but not a lofty ambition,  an aspiration but certainly no moonshot.

But along the way I’ve been inadvertently exposed  to the idea of entrepreneurship–to the world of people who dream of changing the world by bringing new products and services to market, of having an impact, of creating something greater than themselves. I feel drawn to this world. I’d like to be an entrepreneur. You can’t, of course, choose to be an entrepreneur any more than you can simply choose to call yourself a doctor or a lawyer. First you have to work a lot. Then you have to succeed in an measurable fashion. Then, you’re still not a doctor or lawyer or entrepreneur until someone else calls you one.

A small epiphany from the exceptionally mundane.

When washing dishes my feet are idle but my mind is wandering. This morning I wandered into thoughts of sponge production costs and change management.

I’ve been buying a certain national brand of sponge for years now (I cook a lot–therefore I wash a lot of dishes). But there’s something different about the last batch of sponges I bought. This difference I noticed immediately on my first use of the new sponge some days ago. As my fingers assimilated the new texture, I felt small flutterings of disappointment, fear, panic. Something has changed! The sponge is different!

Which leads me to a certain realization:

Familiarity is comforting. Monotony may be dull, numbing, but also comforting. Settle into a comfortable routine. Pull on a familiar pair of jeans. Etc.

So, unexpectedly change something on someone, and you’re ripping away their security blanket–suddenly and frighteningly your victim cold, exposed, surprised. You’re going to get a negative reaction. 100% of the time.

And yet, when properly managed, change can create just the opposite sensations: a positive anxiety born of anticipation, eagerness.

Imagine how my own reaction to the mundane matter at hand had only the sponge’s cellophane packaging announced a “new and improved texture! Now softer and more supple for better bubbles and cleaner dishes!” I might instead have found pleasure, delight in the new sponge, noticed its softer, more supple texture, rather than its less substantial feel in the hand.

The life lesson from a sponge? Never let change you’re creating catch someone unawares. A surprise change invokes fight or flight. An anticipated change creates earnest expectation.