What is success?

Many of you know that I was laid off, and that event changed my life dramatically as I'm sure it has so many others.  Like my guest on Romancing the Pen, my layoff made me rethink the meaning of everything around me.  For a long time, I couldn't really understand why something like that had happened to me, or really what I was supposed to do with it.

I never really thought it could happen to me.  And my struggle to not allow myself fall into a hole of self-pity and resentment was just that...a struggle.

Join Ken and me this week on Romancing the Pen, and share with us your definition of success.

Who has not gone through a crisis? Who has not heard one door close just to see another open? What do we strive for and why? Why are some people driven to take care of the world and all its problems? What is success and what does it mean to be successful? What is it that we chase after, day after day, and inevitably judge the value of our lives against? Do the old answers of career and money really hold up? Those going through lay-offs, career changes, lifestyle adjustments such as having children, health crisis, or coming back from serving overseas and facing employment with handicaps (both emotionally or physically), and persons forced into early retirement will relate to this memoir.

Faced with unemployment, the impending death of one friend and self-destruction of another, Ken La Salle begins his search for the meaning of success. It’s a search that explores why we still crave success that in the face of inevitable death could be nothing more than Maya, the illusion of life referenced in eastern myth. Through research, analysis and epiphanies from some very unlikely sources, he helps us push through all of our preconceived notions to a concept so few really understand - so that we can reach for the rope, grab it, hold on tight, and pull ourselves up.

This is a book that will be shared, given, and pondered for lifetimes and beyond. Yes, it is all true. This is his story.