I sit on the couch with my daughter, teaching her to crack peanuts with her fingernails

her hair still wet from the dip in the pool on this 95-degree Sunday.

Joe Castiglione calls balls and strikes on the radio.

1-0 for the good guys.

My son and wife are in the kitchen, cooking cupcakes from a recipe in the back of a children’s book called

Cupcake.

Later, wife and I sit on the back porch while Clara draws chalk robots in the driveway.

Kathryn makes herself a salmon burger and me a salami sandwich because she knows how I feel about fish.

Salmon and salami look like the same word but couldn’t be more different.

A butterfly drops out of the sky from nowhere.

She rises then drops then rises then drops and makes me wonder if there is an intended flight pattern.

Because nothing is random.

I say it’s a Monarch. Kathryn disagrees and calls yellow swallow tail.

“Chutes and ladders dad?”

1-1. Tie game.

Sure, Clara.

The cupcakes are done baking.

We apply the homemade buttercream frosting, which Kathryn and Ben also whipped up together.

3-1, bad guys.

Ben tries to sneak a handful of sprinkles into his mouth.

I pretend not to see him.

Never mind that the Sox are on the radio because we can’t afford cable.

Never mind that we were in the backyard instead of on vacation.

Forget that the book was from the library because we aren’t buying books for a while.

And pay no attention to the patchwork inflatable pool that has seen better days thanks to our friend the raccoon.

None of that stuff seems important today.

Why does it ever? Why will it tomorrow?

Today, like every day, is a gift.

Today, unlike every day, I am accepting it.

Still 3-1.

I learned how to play Gin this weekend with my in-laws. I’m still in that beginner’s learning phase, where I have to think about every move. It takes me three times as long to lay down a card then the rest of the family. But they’re patient and understand that it’s going to take time for me to get in the rhythm of the game.

It reminds me a bit of when I was playing football in college. I had been an offensive tackle and defensive end all throughout Pop Warner and high school. But at 6’0, 220 lbs, I was too undersized to be a lineman for a Division 1AA school. So I made the switch to fullback, and looked like a complete jackass. You’d think I never played the game before. And in reality, I had never played the game before. Not the game of blocking on the run, catching short passes, or running (with the ball!) behind a surging offensive line. The playbook may as well have been in Arabic.

For one whole season, I tripped over my feet, fumbled the ball, missed assignments, and got barked at by the coach, who couldn’t have been less hopeful about my progress. But I kept at it. Kept studying the playbook. Kept enduring coach’s disgusted gestures. Then at the end of spring training, in the big Blue-Grey game where the offense plays the defense in an annual inter-squad scrimmage, it all came together. In about 10 plays, I caught two passes, ran the ball a couple of times for needed short yardage, and pancake blocked a few unsuspecting defensive backs who thought they would make quick work out of the hapless newbie.

I remember the running backs coach jumping up and down like a wild man from the sidelines. “There it is, Proulx! You got it man!” It felt good to finally experience flow. (Not that I had any idea what flow was at 19 years old.) The game was being played through me, and intuition took over.

Today, in 2010, I feel exactly the way I did in 1990 when I had no idea how to run a swing pattern. I am launching a business that inspires people to do what they are, but it’s not clicking yet. Nothing’s intuitive. Every day is another shoot-from-the-hip hot mess.

But if I keep plugging, keep studying, keep trying, flow will happen. It will.

Brancaccio (who you may recognize from the PBS series “Now”) visits Wall St., Vegas, and even The Mall of America to discover what people who have money choose to invest in or spend on. While looking for meaning in Manhattan’s financial district, he meets a Rev. Dan Matthews, who left him with this chestnut:

”When I have a vision for my life, money is then a tool to make the vision a reality. If I have no vision for my life, then money is in fact the only way I can gauge my worth.”

Coming from a guy who grew up on welfare in one of the poorest cities in the country, I’ve never known surplus. And I sometimes wonder if my relationship with money (or lack thereof) is the reason I have so little of it.

It’s as if I feel like there’s shame in wealth. Not for other people, mind you. Most of the people I respect a great deal are also doing very well financially. They work hard, give away big portions of their income to people less fortunate, and live morally enviable existences.

So what’s it all about? Am I subconsciously preventing myself from a surplus because I don’t want to feel guilty? Is my personal stress and debt and sacrifice some kind of self-fulfilling prophesy? And if so, how the hell do I reverse it? Because my conscious self very much wants to kick this subconscious saboteur in the nuts.

Maybe the first step is to “have a vision for my life.” If I am unwittingly denying myself a better financial existence because I associate money with vapid self worth, then what greater purpose can I use it for?

That is, when I get some of it.

For my single, unilateral-decision making friends, this post is not for you. You’re absolved from committing to another word.

Still unsure if you should read on? Take this simple quiz.

Can you:

a) go to Vegas with your buddies without some amount of quid pro quo?

b) drop a grand on a new Tag Heuer watch without consulting someone first?

c) play 36 holes of golf every weekend without pissing someone off?

If you answered yes to any of these questions, go to the next stop in your blog reader. Because this post is about how the decisions you make about your career affect the person you’ve chosen to spend your life with. And I’m not talking about Larry the Bowling Buddy.

When you’re in a committed relationship, “Is this the best decision for my career?” isn’t the only question you have to ask anymore. Decisions to become an entrepreneur or take a job come with a slew of collateral consideration.

For instance, if you’re considering launching a business, you have to ask:

1. Can the family absorb a short-term financial hit for the uncertain longer term benefit of entrepreneurism?
2. Can we afford health insurance?
3. Are we comfortable living off retirement savings?
4. Can our relationship survive the stress of not knowing where the next paycheck will come from?

And if you’re considering taking a new job:

1. Will we have to move? How are the schools in that area?
2. Are we moving away from family?
3. What are the hours like? Will I have to work nights and weekends?
4. Will a longer commute take time away from each other?

When you’re someone else’s better half, careers are just one piece of the bigger life puzzle. A very important piece, yes. But it’s not a decision to make alone.

Something to keep in mind when you’re weighing the importance of your next move.

Now that we’re adults, we ask, “What do you DO for work?”

What happened between the ages of 8 and 30 that we stopped wanting to “be” something and started “doing” work?

Be implies self. Be is who we are. Do is just a way to pass the time for money.

We would all be happier, healthier, and yes, more financially successful if we pursued what we wanted to be instead of just something to do.

Watch this astounding TED talk from Sir Ken Robinson about a revolution in learning. It has everything to do with staying true to what you wanted to be when you were a kid.

I want to do something meaningful like Clark Moss, who got axed from his job as an executive creative director and started his own social-responsibility business.

I want to be at peace like Jonathan Fields, who left his big time Wall St. lawyer gig, became a yogi, then became a small business consultant.

I want to create doodads of hope. Blogs and books and films and speaking engagements that tell stories of people who inspire me.

I want my success story to be about telling other people’s success stories.These people motivate the hell out of me, as they should you.

It’s not altruistic. I’d like to get paid for doing this. Something in the six figure range would be nice. Maybe seven some day.

Problem is, I want it now. Not tomorrow. Not next year. Now. And I get frustrated when the progress isn’t as instant as I hoped it would be.

But there’s a process for a reason. Back at the Creative Circus, I was hell-bent on graduating ahead of schedule. So I worked my ass off, skipped ahead a couple of quarters, and graduated in a year and a half instead of the requisite two.

Hindsight, though, tells me I could have used those couple of extra quarters to polish and reconcept and tighten and rewrite my book from merely above average to the top 1%. I would have strengthened my relationships, broadened my network, and gotten a better job upon graduation. (Although, I loved my first post-Circus agency. May have been the best advertising gig of my career.)

But I didn’t. My impatience got the better of me. I wanted what I wanted when I wanted it. There was no enjoying the journey. No accepting the lessons of the day.

But there is a lesson for me now. And that is, simply, to breathe. Accept this process. Embrace the mistakes. Know that I am on a path, and that what I think is my point B — the metamorphosis into a successful filmmaker/author/blogger/speaker — is really point Z.

As Johnny B. Truant says, “There’s always a lag between envisioning a goal and getting it.”

Watch this Honda Film about failure. It had a huge influence on “Lemonade,” both philosophically and filmically. And it continues to teach me appreciation for the hard-learned lessons along the way.

Sure, it’s easier at cocktail parties. “What do you do for a living?” needs some kind of reply. But once we define ourselves by our career titles, it places a whole set of generalizations on us. Most of them are half truths. And all of them are limiting. 

This was the presentation I gave at the PSFK Conference last month. I talk briefly about how I got into advertising and spent 15 years falsely defining myself as an adguy. Then I introduce a bunch of brave souls who looked inward to make a living being who they are.

Fascinate

Back in 1998, Sally Hogshead visited the Creative Circus to prepare a bunch of us advertising plebes for the harsh reality that awaited upon graduation. Part of her presentation was to go through the pages and pages and pages of headlines she wrote just to land on the precious few that would become her Pencil-winning BMW Motorcycles campaign. There had to be 500 headlines in that document — a lot of sweat and blood when you know you’ll be be sacrificing 495 of them at the alter of internal and client approvals.

(At the time of this writing, I thought I was exaggerating when I said 500. I was actually severely underestimating the number. Holy crap.)

As soon as I got back to my apartment, I sent Sally an email thanking her for the wake up call and how inspiring it all was. I told her that if I wanted to succeed, I’d have to do a whole lot more hard work and a whole lot less being full of myself.

A week later, I received a package in the mail. In it were photo copies of all those headlines she had written, attached to a simple note that said “When you love it, it’s not work.”

12 years ago, Sally Hogshead found a way to let me under the hood, earning a fan the only way a real fan can be earned: With generosity, attention, and direct communication.

As it turns out, she was activating a couple of fascination triggers she hadn’t even written about yet. Sally’s new book, Fascinate, makes the compelling argument that by consciously exploiting 7 “triggers,” we can be more effective marketers, communicators, even parents. On that day in 1998, clicking through those BMW headlines unwittingly activated the Mystique trigger in me. I believed that in that document contained the secret to becoming a famous copywriter just like her. If only I could study her thought process and read what wasn’t bought by the client, I could follow the same practice and write my own great lines one day.

Then when she sent me those very lines in the mail, Sally triggered Prestige. I was one of the very few people who had been allowed inside her brain. To my young and impressionable mind, I was part of an elite club. And from that day on I was exponentially more fascinated by the Sally Hogshead brand.

What’s so great about Fascinate is what’s so great about Sally Hogshead. This book isn’t just a compilation of scientific studies and historical anecdotes (though it is chock-full of those). It’s an extension of her long held and fervently practiced beliefs: Connect with people in a real, emotional, and personal way, and you will fascinate them.

If you are interested in affecting human behavior in any way, Fascinate is a must read. Buy it here.

My six year old has a real fear of failure. When Darth Vader takes away Anakin’s life force on his Leapster game, it’s as if Ben’s actual life force gets depleted with it. So rather than move on to intermediate or advanced levels, he just stopped trying.

To help him overcome this fear of failure, I told him he could no longer play with his Leapster unless he spent at least 5 minutes on level two. After that, he could move back to beginner. Just so long as he tried. And it worked, because now he starts at intermediate and feels confident to experiment with “expert” every so often. Just trying was all it took.

His fear of failing at the hard stuff is a little bit like I’ve been feeling lately. For instance, I want to create a version of “Lemonade” with extended interviews, but worrying about time time and money has prevented me from taking the first step. I want to start a “Lemonader” series that highlights some of the incredible stories I’ve come across in my travels. But my perception (excuse) that I don’t have the time has stopped me from doing even one.

Directing my six year old son is one thing. Living the example is another.

The Donovan Group was a little shop in Northboro, MA. They hired Jay Nelson from Hill Holliday to up the creative ante. He brought in some young ad schoolers and a couple of seasoned ACD types to make great work happen.

And it worked.

Naive and hungry and full of passion, we all thought we could do anything. Like, when BMW decided to bring the MINI to the US, we pulled a couple of all-nighters trying to get the pitch consultant to notice us. Even though we had no shot in hell, we were convinced we could win the account.

Maybe that speaks volumes to why DG isn’t around any more. Maybe that kind of unbridled passion should be left for portfolio students and wayward entrepreneurs.

All I know is, I have too much passion for passion. I’d rather be like insane high-wire artist Philippe Petit, who after trespassing to the top of one Twin Tower, looked at the other over 200 feet away and said, “It’s impossible, that’s sure. So let’s start working.”

For him, the downside of risk was death. But for you and me, the terrible unknown monster of taking a chance is . . . what? Seriously, what’s the worst that can happen when you swing the bat? You miss? Lose a job? Lose a home? So what. To me, the worst than can happen by playing it safe is much, much worse.

So go try something you think is impossible. You might prove yourself wrong.