At sushi happy hour on Tuesday my friend Andrew Horn asked us, “What are you not doing now that you wish you were?” (he is really into the importance of asking good questions). I said that I wanted to be working on a book and that I have long been meaning to create a Facebook group for all the students who have been to my Launching Your Career in Space workshops. Our dinner mate said he wanted to be working on a new model for sustainability in economics. Andrew leaned forward and said, “What can you do to shift those things from something you are going to work on to something you are working on right now?”

I realized that even if you are taking the smallest next action on something, it goes from being a someday, maybe in-the-future project, to something you have started! As the famous saying goes, “Whatever you can do, or dream you can do, begin it. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it!” (I remember reading that on the wall in my mom’s office at the St. Rose rectory in high school).

I went home and the next morning, I got on Facebook and took the 20 minutes to make the group, I even opened and read through the outline for my book that I hadn’t looked at in over a year. Not only was I relieved to be doing things I had meant to for over a year, but I was also very excited, for what was possible, what I was capable of, who I am. It super-charged my day. We got all our Yuri’s Night LED bouncy balls, LED lapel pins and 10th annual stickers ordered, set up an e-introduction to a space workforce guru I have been wanted to meet for years, and starting talking about some exciting collaborations for promoting science with kids nationwide.

The next day I flew to Miami for annual flight attendant refresher training for Zero Gravity Corp. I was working in my hotel room, planning to go to bed early when I found out that another friend Brad Cheetham was going to be on SpaceVidCast at 10:00 pm to be interviewed about http://www.WeWantOurFuture.org. Watching it I got really inspired and energized about the cool things that my friends are up to. Too excited to go to bed I went down to the lobby to meet up with Tim Bailey and Stevie Steiner.

Stevie was regaling us with the latest stories of his company (that he does on the side of his PhD) buyaerogels.com. I was inspired by his passion and energy but most of all by the potential of game changing material science (and Yuri’s Night logo aerogels!!). The potential future there extends beyond where my imagination can see and I am excited to get to be around that and possibly even contribute to making it happen!

I finally went to bed at 2 a.m. reflecting on a thought I have been having a lot this week– that over the last 20 years I have carefully, concertedly built a world around me filled with amazing, uplifting, supportive people and that, that has made all the difference.