Clare Elsewhere

Some uncertain stairs We've all heard about the importance of failure. Heard that we must learn from our failures, heard that greatness comes from them. I even had an incredible professor who started off our lessons with "fail stories", helping us to celebrate failures, welcome them, and improve. But that's part of the problem- or at least for me, it has been. The implication that there's a need for improvement. Which is crazy, if you think of it- there's always room for improvement, we should always be striving for improvement. But when you fail, big, loud, and proud, it brings your vulnerability, your weakness, potentially your mistakes right out into the open, and welcomes criticism. And after growing up in a family where criticism comes even when it isn't welcome, I think I'd grown quite shy of that. I took a lot of safe paths, took a relatively safe school, major, career, and projects, areas where I was sure I was going to be challenged, y

of the essence money a flat circle free .... Time is... passing! It's something we spend so, so much time thinking about. What is the fastest way to get there? Will it be ready in time? Will we have to wait? Will we make the deadline? Whether it's planning our route home, thinking through our weekend, scheduling back to back to back to back meetings, or detailing out every moment of the next 365 days, we all function by measure of time, and we all fall victim to the constraints of it. More and more, we feel the pressures of efficiency, and the growing impatience with things that should take less time than they currently do. Long lines, traffic jams, waiting for coffee, or food delivery, or well, waiting at all seems to guarantee fits of madness.  Prime delivery is 2 days, 1 day, even offering 1-2 hours in some cities. Why? Because we've all decided that our time is too important. And it is. Time is really important. You cannot get any more- it is a finite res