Look closer… is this a scrap of garbage or a profound revelation about process? Ironically, I found it while taking a shortcut. Words are alive, and I believe we owe them the dignity of an audience before they are ground down and pulled back into the belly of the Earth. Oh Xena Warrior Princess game manual technical writer, what wisdom doth ye have to bestow?

1) There is always a main menu to return to if you get stuck or need to modify your character

2) A training arena builds confidence and hones your skills so you don’t waste lives

Good solid stuff. Relatable and universally applicable. I treated school like a video game, quite literally (although I kept quiet about my lived analogy – didn’t need to compound my nerdism). There were points, bosses, team missions, levels, and scores. And let me just say, I beat the game. But real life out on the open battlefield doesn’t work that way. Tilting at the quintain and hacking away at the pell are a world away from boardroom showdowns, deadlines, and steeply budgeted grocery lists.

And so, here I am, squatting over a piece of trash in a Calgary back alley, desperate for some bit of magic to unlock the next level of “success.” Heck, I even took a picture. I ask you, can words ever show us the way? By the nature of our brains, words only tell us what we already know. It’s story that opens new worlds. For those of us born to write our own there are no easy answers. There is only faith, and the hard grit work of making our storied worlds real enough to draw those we love onto/into our map.

How to get started? As a wise writer once said, simply press on and select a “new game.” And trust your “default settings,” for they will always be “bold.”