Chapter 1. Start Now

 

“If we do not change our direction, we are likely to end up where we are headed.”

 
 --CHINESE PROVERB

IMAGINE FOR A MOMENT that you’re just over 20 years old. You know exactly what you want to do with your life: you’ve found your passion. You’re proudly paying your own bills doing what you love. Life is good.

I first discovered my passion publishing a magazine in high school. At University of Waterloo, it was all-nighters at the student paper, neglecting my degree program in computer science. By the late 1980s, I had followed my muse to a tiny design studio above a pawnshop in old Ottawa South. Like so many other young people who realize that designing is who they are, I was jazzed with creating, exploring, and pushing the limits ...

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