Search for the mechanical embodiment of your creative dream

Old habits may die hard, but old careers don’t have to.

Just because we’re advancing in years doesn’t mean we can’t adapt to the times. And just because our business has been doing things certain way for so long, doesn’t mean we can’t overcome our stubbornness and to learn how to do things more effectively.

There’s life in that old dog yet. Sometimes it just takes a push from an outside source to get it barking again.

There was recent article from a cycling magazine about an eighty year old paperboy who postponed his retirement after acquiring an electric bike. George said his sweet new ride, which offers an assisted energy output of over two hundred per cent of his pedal power, could potentially keep him working until he’s ninety.

As the country’s oldest paperboy, this man has been delivering the news for fifty years. He’s been pedaling through everything from bad weather to global war to the coronavirus pandemic. Everyone in the community knows, loves and greets him daily.

And now, thanks to a little help from modern tech, now he can continue doing what he loves.

Maybe you really can teach an old dog new tricks.

Where does your business need to evolve? How interested are you the next technological advancement to express your creative vision?

Resistance is futile. It’s adapt or die. Darwin’s maxim on evolution taught us about this very principle, saying how evolution doesn’t favor the strong, only the most adaptable to change.

At a certain point, you have to look at current and emerging technologies and think about how you can you use them to give yourself greater leverage. There must be some kind of machine out there that would help you increase speed, lower costs and boost sustainability.

When digital books hit the mainstream in the early two thousands, nobody thought they would overtake hardcover by overall publication figures. Including myself. Within a decade, the publishing business changed forever.

Paper was out and pixels were in. And as an author who loves the smell and feel and tactile value of physical books, it was a painful grieving process. Part of me always wanted to be publishing books you could hold in your hand.

That is, until I ran the numbers and saw that digital publishing would come at a fraction of the cost, give me instant worldwide distribution, and the time and labor intensity of production by a factor of ten.

This old dog learned new tricks very quickly, and today my output is more prolific and sustainable than ever. The days of schlepping forty pound cases of paperback books through airports at midnight only to sell seven copies at my events are long gone. Thank god.

Now the focus can stay where it belongs, which is on the words inside the books, not on all the logistical nightmares around them.

It makes my life lighter. I no longer have to pedal an exhausting fixed gear bike uphill, since the electric motor does all the heavy lifting for me.

Now I can actually enjoy the ride for once.

If you’re feeling the evolutionary pull, search for the mechanical embodiment of your creative dream, and put it to work for you.

Jump into whatever new technology will help you circulate your views and extend your sentiments.

Focus on playing with it, not perfecting it, and you’ll be able to keep your paper route well into your nineties.

You old dog, you. Woof woof.

What machine will help you achieve your artist ends?