Ten years ago this would not have been possible. Ten years ago the world was a different place. Ten years ago you could not fly directly from Shanghai to Taiwan. In fact, you could not fly anywhere from mainland China directly to Taiwan. Ten years ago you needed to track through Hong Kong if your final destination was the international airport in Taoyuan that sits about an hour outside of Taipei. Ten years ago it was impossible to do what I am doing today.
But, then ten years ago it was also not possible for me to read Chinese, or negotiate an overcharge at a restaurant, or figure out how to slide through a traffic intersection of apparent chaos. Ten years ago Americans did not walk barefoot through airport scanners, or bank from a cell phone.
Rarely do most of us see the changes coming that in retrospect were obvious choices, or make complete sense from the perspective of today. It’s not to say that planning and thoughtful consideration are not of value, but that perhaps at times the habit of the moment prevents us from seeing that new possibilities are unfolding right in front of us.
What about you? What do you do now that was unthinkable ten years ago? What previously curious changes make complete sense from the perspective of today?
Leave a comment and share something of the mystery that unexpected transformation has brought to your life.
The unthinkable: the collapse of twenty years of writing for publishers, writing book proposals, working with an agent, and hoping that this time around I would win the book lottery. Now it’s going online with e-books and I am pioneering in a new world that holds both power and peril. Ten years from now I suspect I will smile at the small beginnings in my first e-book royalty of $34.53 in July of 2010. Now royalties are ten fold that original amount. Who knows how it will grow from here?