Bill Burnett

Life is a series of incremental prototypes.

You find your way by living into your life.

You build your way forward, we keep saying.

There is no knowing.

There is only doing, learning, and growing.

Clowning.

Clowning is actually a thing.

And is it the Shriners?

There's some outfit where they train the members and they do clowning in hospitals to visit kids.

Oh, so you can probably call the local hospitals and does anybody do clowning with the children?

Oh, great.

Do they have a training for that?

So you could go, trust me, there's somebody who will train you to be a clown.

Maybe a little bit of clowning that you could go into the children's ward and try cheering somebody.

Maybe just ride along with them.

Watch them, you know.

I mean, there are ways to get at the thing that you think you're thinking about.

So I'm sitting with the 57-year-old suddenly empty-nested mom who left a couple of things behind, doesn't know what to do.

Great.

So let's quickly come up with your list of things that might be at all interesting.