WHEN I WAS YOUNGER, oh -- say 18 or so years ago, I took great care of my thoughts. I journal-ed like a fiend. I wrote everything down. At one point I had at least 4 separate journals; one for self-improvement, one for self-expression, one for artistic expression, one for university class. But as I got older, I stopped caring so dearly about every individual thought, and started to kinda...just go with the flow.

One thing I've noticed about my new 'tactic' is that life goes by much more quickly. Years, even decades just seem to zoom by. Another thing I've noticed is that I've more easily lost track of exactly what it is that I was aiming for... It's very easy to work, but a bit more difficult to define what it is that I'm working for.

I opened one of those old journals at least a year ago and was a bit surprised to find that the life that I'm living now, was one that I had envisioned with some great deal of precision nearly 15 years ago. Very literally, my current life was cooked up as a very deliberate future reality to my younger self, perhaps proof that ideas become reality?

Our great ideas often find diversions. In my case it was all sorts of sideline adventures, madness and mayhem that took its own sweet time to resolve. The business of being me -- if I could be compared to a business, wouldn't and couldn't be considered a very efficient business, though I could also argue the benefits of taking the scenic road, though I am rarely one for argument, unless it involves font choices, web layouts, or technical mumbo jumbo that I don't have time to comprehend.

From my privileged CEO's chair, I have witness many companies battle with growth, and grand ideas that haven't yet had their day in the sun, and I have noticed that some of the best ideas, are ones that pop out the runt of the litter -- ready to be discarded -- labeled foolish, lame, or unrealistic.

Ideas need support, just like individuals need support. 'NEW' doesn't intrinsically mean an idea, product or service that hasn't been thought of before, but rather that hasn't been fully realized in that particular way before...or in our modern, creative 'marketing' spin that we easily place on everything...'NEW' can pretty much mean whatever you want it to mean, which is one of the few comforts of growing old.