If the Greek tragedies and hero journey tales endure, it is because the hopes, flaws, triumphs, struggles and failures they catalogue are not Greek, but human. The battles they describe, and the casualties of love and war they bring so vividly and painfully to life, are both universal and eternal.

Anyone who doubts this point should see a segment that ran this week on The News Hour with Jim Lehrer on PBS. A segment that ran on February 3rd told of a theater project called “Theater of War,” currently touring Marine and other military bases around the country. Four actors read aloud from Sophecles’ tragedy Ajax, in which a soldier comes loose of his hinges after serving with Achilles and the Greek Army, and ends up killing animals, thinking they’re the enemy, finally committing suicide in his agony of what we would now call post-traumatic stress syndrome. His wife describes him before the suicide as having that “thousand yard stare”—a characteristic well known to any spouse trying to cope with a partner recently returned from, or traumatized by, war.

Theater of War takes that play, and other Greek masterpieces of war and humanity, and has actors perform the lines in a dramatic reading for veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan combat theatres. Discussion follows. At one reading, veterans lined up with comments and questions for over three hours, each one quoting a line, or lines, from the plays they had heard.

Despite the fact that the tales were written in the 5th century B.C., the Greek plays still bring soldiers to tears, because they speak so powerfully to the universal journey of a combat soldier. The challenges, the strength, the cost, the pain … it’s all been felt and wrestled with before. And somehow, that realization is able to bring comfort to the soldiers of today. [click to continue…]

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I spoke at a session of the Women In Periodical Publishing annual meeting on Friday, in San Francisco, and one of the women in the session (on surviving as a “solopreneur,” which I guess is the current euphemism for a self-employed entrepreneur who has, ummm …  no employees) asked how to deal with the loneliness of working and writing alone.

Without question, it’s harder to be creative in a vacuum. And that goes for solving the problems of a start-up, as well as writing the Great American Novel. That’s why few start-ups are solo ventures, even though partnerships that don’t work out are one of the leading causes of start-up failures—a Catch-22 that’s worth discussion, but I’ll get into that another time.

But what do you do to stave off the loneliness, if you are, indeed, working alone? In my own case, I’ve put a lot more effort into creating an active social life outside of my home and office walls. And sometimes, it really has been effort. I also have a network of “thinking buddies” that spans the continent, whom I call when I get stuck on a problem. [click to continue…]

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Job Interview FAIL

by Emily Branham

In the spirit of being proactive and not waiting for the big bag of money to fall in my lap, I am once again seeking freelance work around town. I am looking primarily for jobs in commercial production and post-production, since that’s where I’ve built up my contacts in the past 8 years. Even if [...]

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Living With Uncertainty

by Lane Wallace

Uncertainty comes in many flavors. There’s the kind of uncertainty we choose, when we start a new business, relocate, decide to climb a mountain, or take on any other voluntary adventure. Then there’s the kind of uncertainty that comes with events that are involuntary, but not life-threatening: losing a job, getting divorced, or having your [...]

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A Big Bag of Money

by Emily Branham

Ah, the new year.  I realize we’re almost fully a month into it, but I try to make that attitude of renewal and optimism, introspection and reflection, dreaming and reality-checking, etc., last for as long as possible. I find it so inspiring and invigorating to check in and try to optimize for the future. What [...]

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Making Lemonade

by Lane Wallace

Sometimes, change is something we bring upon ourselves voluntarily. We make a leap from the old path to the new (see my last post for more on this). But sometimes, change happens to us, against our will. The good news in those circumstances is, we don’t have to agonize over whether to change or not. [...]

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Leaping into the New Year

by Lane Wallace

A recent New York Times article told the stories of four people who were starting the new year with big-leap changes in their lives. One was a woman whose leg had been mangled in a car accident two years ago. After two years bedridden and 16 unsuccessful surgeries, she finally decided in December to have [...]

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Our First Anniversary

by Lane Wallace

Ah, how fast time flies when you’re busy. Or on deadline. But hard as it is for me to believe, today marks the first day of the second year of the No Map. No Guide. No Limits. web site. It’s a journey and a work in progress, like any other adventure, and I hope the [...]

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On Happiness, Light, and the Eyes of a Child

by Lane Wallace

In the last couple of posts, we’ve shared a variety of thoughts and research results on what makes a human being happy. And still, we’ve only scratched the surface of the subject. But if so many people have written books and articles and conducted research on the subject, it’s probably because “happiness” is something we [...]

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What Makes Us Happy? (continued)

by Lane Wallace

In the “Question of the Day” posted a few days ago, I left out one of the best sources I have come across on the subject. Ironic, because it ran in The Atlantic, where I contribute a twice-weekly online column. It’s also embarrassing, because I read the article this past summer with rapt attention. Not [...]

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