Dan, Thanks for your comment and for stepping into the conversation. I usually don't end up sharing my own stories, so this gives me a chance to do that while deepening and clarifying. First, let me say that I did NOT get the job at USC. Mostly because they are on a hiring freeze til May 2009, if not later. Still might be working with them on something else, but like most other things in my life, my contributions will be a gift to them. Next, I have to confess that I don't have any answers and can only share my own experiences for what that's worth. I hope that you'll challenge that experience with your own experiment and let me know how it goes :-) Ideas and their possibilities are energizing for me. There's a kind of rush that comes from having a new idea, to the point where I would say that this is an addictive pattern that I've observed in myself. As much as I might pretend that I'm about answering and solving important questions, the truth is that I'm more like junkie who gets high on dreaming up something and tossing in my two cents. I chase those ideas down a good bit, but the truth is that the fun is already over and the pursuit is more about maintaining the personal illusion that I'm more than the junkie. That might be a noble way to 'shoot up', but like any addiction, it self-escalates and is disastrous on a personal level. Attention is much more like a ripe plum than an apple: when you divide it, you're left with a wet mess that you can't put back together again. So what's my answer? Follow one idea in many ways. There's a big difference between doing ten things and doing one thing in ten ways. The former is the cut ripe plum whose juices might feed lots of little 'ants' and 'bacteria' but the latter is more than a cut apple. There's a sort of constructive self-interference that amplifies and multiplies the apple so that its either a bigger apple, or that there are more apples. In fact, both choices have their own multiplication but in radically different directions. Tuesday night while I was editing one of many overdue videos, a friend called in the midst of a personal crisis and was sobbing on the phone. I dropped everything, went over with a four course meal, and spent the next 3 hours sharing what physical and experiential food I could to restore balance. On the drive back, I was reflecting on how it was pretty incredible to have been called: everything I said deepened something for myself and gave me a new perspective on an unrelated issues in my own life. Truth is that I helped myself much more than her (despite long email the next day professing otherwise), but I had to fully accept and own that act without thinking that it was taking me away from what "I'm about". It was just another manifestation of the same thing I try to do with my videos. Wednesday I was invited to speak to a group of kids in an afterschool program. It would be easy to brush that off as not worth my time, and not even relevant to what I try to do with it, but I trusted that the invitation could not have happened without a reason. What was supposed to be 15 minutes of talk and 15 minutes of videos turned into 3 hours (and it was a 30 minute drive both ways to get there!). On the drive back, I realized that I had not eaten a meal all day, and it was 6pm. When I thought about where all my time went, all I could think of was the 7-year-old girl who raised her hand and said, "I want to make world peace," and then the huge smile on her face when I told her that she could, and it started with being peaceful herself. As I expanded on that thought, her smile got bigger and the rest of the kids around the room were nodding their heads. The program coordinator called her regional supervisor during my time with the kids, and the supervisor turned up to listen. By the time I checked email later that night, there was a note in my inbox from the coordinator talking about how she have never seen their kids so attentive and engaged, nor had the supervisor across all of their programs and several years of experience. They apparently come from 'troubled houses' but all I saw were little angels. They're now working on a peace mural that will apparently end up in Egypt! And it goes on and on... Everyday is like this. I just need to work on having the eyes to see the truth. And that involves getting myself-- my habits, addictions, patterns, and many-hued-glasses out of the way. None of these things 'pay the bills'. Then again, I have so few bills. I sleep on the living room floor of a relatives house. Until a few weeks ago, my daily wardrobe had 5 t-shirts in it, and 4 of them were identical t-shirts that I won from a contest in 2007! The biggest recurring expense is gasoline, so I ride my bike anywhere that is 10 miles or less away. There are some hardships that come with living this way, but the burdens of my previous monied life felt heavier. Everyone has to find their own equilibrium point. But more importantly, what do you think would have happened if the friend who I visited Tuesday night knew that I didn't have a bite to eat for most of Wednesday? I'd be willing to bet that the parents of any of those kids Wednesday night might also be willing to take me out to dinner after seeing their so-called 'troubled children', even though the children were teaching me that 'man does not live by bread alone'. I bought the wedding ring I'll give my soon-to-be wife last Saturday, wondering how I would cover that when the diamond itself was listed at $2000 (even though I would have gotten her the $10K diamond in another lifetime), but on Monday I found out that I'll be getting $2460 for something I did months ago and never saw a cent from. I had no idea that money would come from there, but I suspected it would come from somewhere. Can I go on like this indefinitely? I don't know. Will things change after I'm married? Probably. No, definitely. Do I always get what I want? No, but there was a long period in my life where I got exactly what I wanted almost all the time, and while that's fun for a little while, its kind of boring and empty after that. What I know for certain though, is that my attitude and my deepest intention count the most in whatever I do. If I don't serve from a space of gratefulness, the service doesn't turn out to help me or anyone else. And I can't give other people something I don't have myself. So if the core of what I'm trying to do is to spread inspiration, peace, and happiness, I have to commit to finding and deepening those things in myself first. I'm the only project I'm working on, under the guise of a kaleidoscope of external activity.