I find myself thinking often about the curious phenomenon of career change, this peculiar modern anxiety that seems to grip us when we consider abandoning one path for another. It strikes me as odd that we should feel such guilt about shifting our professional direction, as if our younger selves had signed some unbreakable contract with our future selves, binding us forever to decisions made with incomplete knowledge and untested assumptions about who we might become.

I find myself this morning with a book in my hands, as I have found myself countless mornings before, and I wonder at this curious habit that has possessed me since childhood. What is it that draws us to these arrangements of ink upon paper, these silent conversations with minds we shall never meet? I confess that I do not always know why I read, only that I must, as surely as I must breathe or eat or sleep.