My goal in writing this book is not so much to offer up a “career drunkalogue” (LOL), as it is to encourage others to follow my lead by getting clear on what it is that they want out of life—whether you start in your twenties, your thirties, your forties, your fifties, or even your sixties! It is to encourage all job seekers and freelancers to take risks on themselves. It is also to de-mystify the hiring process by offering practical strategies to help manage career moves with confidence—at the right times, and for the right reasons. My aim is to empower talent to make stronger, more targeted decisions about their career moves, and encourage them to take the necessary steps toward voicing and realizing their goals.

A stone in my boot is the metaphor for my life. How does it feel to walk with a stone in your boot? Slowly. Awkwardly. Painfully. Putting one foot in front of the other. Searching for that spot where you can take your boot off, shake out the stone, put the boot back on, and keep walking. However, there’s another stone in your boot before you know it. And you can do nothing about those stones except learn how to live with them—without anger. Those stones remind you that you’re alive and experiencing a human existence. It’s over when you can no longer feel the stones in your boots.

Canada’s disability support system operates like a light switch: you’re either “on” and fully disabled or “off” and completely on your own. There’s no middle ground for the millions of Canadians with episodic, partial, or fluctuating conditions. If you can’t work full-time in a traditional 9-to-5 setting, the system doesn’t see you. It treats disability like a binary yes-or-no instead of a spectrum of capacity, contribution, and need.

Have you ever experienced a moment in your life when you became detached? You felt empty, hollow, or completely numb to everyday living—like a part of your life lost its meaning? And you asked yourself the question, Why Am I Here? 

It’s a question I began to ask myself on Christmas Day of 2002, when my first life began to unravel. I felt empty inside, like a tree that had been uprooted—just a hollow shell of my former self.