Today is Pub Day for My New Book, FALLING UP: A Memoir of Second Chances

"Steve Jobs is dead," I said.

So begins my new book, Falling Up: A Memoir of Second Chances, which drops today from Homebound Publications as part of their Little Bound Book Essay Series.

When I spoke those words, I was speaking to an audience at the SXSW Eco festival on that fateful morning in October 2011. Jobs had just died and many in the crowd had not heard the news. He was fifty six. (Readers of this blog may recall I wrote about it here and here and here back in 2011.)

"Fifty-six," I write in the book. "As I stood on the stage that October morning in 2011, a couple of years shy of fifty myself, I couldn't help thinking--as perhaps many in the room were thinking, too, in the wake of the example of Jobs--what have I done with my life?"

(You can read more from the opening of the book here.)

Falling Up, my most personal book to date, tells the story of several "second chances" I've had in my life, starting with a fall at Letchworth Gorge as a teenager in upstate New York through my most recent change of life, leaving EY after my job was eliminated despite the successful launch of a global technology-as-a-service solution that I led.

Along the way, I explore my original second chance in the wake of that fall in the gorge, my pursuit of art and writing throughout my life, learning to experience nature through the eyes of my children, as well as the story of several entrepreneurial endeavors--successes and failures--and, finally, how I found real and lasting love late in life and learned to embrace it.

Falling Up is about the struggle to become authentic, vulnerable, purpose-driven man in the 21st century and, ultimately, about making one's dream a reality.

Mark Tercek, the former CEO of The Nature Conservancy--an organization for which I worked over fifteen years and that serves as part of the backdrop for several stories in the memoir--called the book, "An inspiring read for anyone seeking meaning in their work or in their life."

I hope my little book--only 84 pages and around 10,000 words--lives up to the promise of that advance support and that it helps readers find a way to "fall up" in their own lives.

You can order the book directly from my publisher, Homebound Publications, or through Amazon, and wherever books are sold.

And if you do, please let me know what you think of Falling Up and share your own story of your second chances.

Michele Beschen, Steve Jobs and The Creative Life

I was scanning channels last night when I happened upon one of those DIY shows where a woman demonstrated how to make handmade paper from shredded recycled paper and natural elements.

Craft shows are not usually the kind of thing that grabs my attention. But there I was, mesmerized by this woman's creative act and the fact that she was sharing it intentionally, re-purposing old things to make something new and beautiful.

Turns out the woman was Michele Beschen, the brainchild behind "b.organic," which bills itself as "an educational how-to television program that embraces all things creative while keeping a conscious mind," and founder of her own multimedia company, Simply Michele, Inc, with a "mission to empower people to explore, express and exchange fresh ideas through rousing content platforms built around originality and grassroots efforts."

Very cool.

I've been thinking a lot about creativity lately. Part of my talk at SXSW ECO was about how we need to reconnect with the creative parts of ourselves and get back to making things. Michele Beschen embodies that.

So did Steve Jobs. In his famous 2005 commencement speech, Jobs told the Stanford graduates that "much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on."

Jobs talked about connecting the dots. In his case, one dot was stumbling into a calligraphy class at Reed College after he dropped out that later resulted in his creating multiple fonts for the Mac. He never could have known the influence that class would have.

"If I had never dropped in on that single course in college," Jobs noted. "The Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts."

Jobs knew that "you can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something -- your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life."

Great work is about being creative, making things, and generating value.

"And the only way to do great work is to love what you do," Jobs told the Stanford grads. "If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle."

Jill Sylvia, Untitled (Month2), 2008

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Then I saw poet Christian Bok's tweet: "They cut apart ledger papers into artwork-(very envious of this level of intensity...)." He linked to artist Jill Sylvia's web site. She does indeed cut ledger papers into things of quiet beauty. People do amazing things when they let their creativity loose on the world.

In Hugh McLeod's book, Evil Plans: Having Fun on the Road to World Domination (which I reviewed here) he has a chapter titled,

"The 'Creative Life' Is No Longer One of Many Economic Options; It's Now the Only Option We've Got."

That's it. The whole chapter. There is nothing more to say.

What are you creating?