In this episode I discuss some of the ways you can start to live a creative life. There is a lot more to waves than you might believe.
When I was young, my father would take us on vacation for a month every year. When I was fifteen, we were in Durban, a port city on the East coast of South Africa. They were holding an international surfing contest. For a fifteen-year-old kid, this was heaven. Sun, sea, sand and a beach filled with attractive young women. This was the definition of paradise. Especially when you are young and good-looking. Of course, now I’m just good looking.
The competition came down to two surfers. The Australian, Shane Horan caught the first wave. It was a perfect run down the length of the beach. The Hawaiian, Dane Keoloa caught the next wave for the final run of the competition. It was another perfect run. Right at the end of his run, with the waves about three feet high, he did a perfect 360 on his board. The beach erupted with applause.
I don’t know much about surfing, except that it is fun to watch. I do know something about waves. From quite a young age I would paddle out passed the breakers and swim around for a while. When you are close to the beach, it is quite easy to dive over the waves. When they get a little bigger you have to know how to handle them. If a wave is cresting you have two options. You can try to chest up the wave if it is not too big, or you tunnel through the wave. If it isn’t cresting, you just rise up the swell and let the wave go.
Technology is much the same. It comes at you in waves. Just like a wave, you need to know how to handle it. Some innovations can pass under you without much harm. With some technology, you have to tackle it head on and dive through it. The greatest thrill of all is to paddle with the technological wave and body surf all the way to the beach. But if you don’t handle the wave correctly, it will smash you into the sand.
 I learnt this the hard way. I started in IT in the 1980’s and I became very successful. I was considered a technical expert in the computer language that I used, NATURAL, as well as ADABAS, an early database. Due to my expertise, I was able to apply to come over to the U.S. where I worked as a contractor. I earned a decent income right through the Year 2000. And then technology smashed me into the sand. The work dried up. People moved to personal computers and new languages. The old mainframe language died. Quickly.
 I was so busy earning an income that I had neglected to keep up with technology. No one wanted my skills. I took a certificate course at a local university, but, not having experience, no one cared. Technology not only smashed me into the sand, it also dragged me around and filled my lungs with water. I eventually learned some of the new languages, but I was never the expert that I used to be.
 I have always been innovative. Not Bill Gates or Steve Jobs innovative, but innovative nonetheless. In the early 1980’s, I developed an email system using a security system that I designed as a control hub for programs. The idea of email wasn’t new. DARPA, the group that developed the early Internet, developed email years before. Also, my program did not communicate between machines. But it did communicate between users of our systems.
 A few years later I developed an analytics system using a number of different technologies. The system allowed clients to access large amounts of data without the need for programmers. This saved the company a lot of money. I was never able to go beyond the idea and commercialize it.
 Today, I am sitting on what is potentially a billion dollar idea. It is quite possible that someone else has come up with the same idea and is busy developing it. It is also possible that it is not commercially viable. The chances are pretty good that my idea will never see the light of day. That is one of the central problems with innovation. We don’t follow the idea through to commercial success. Like waves, if you don’