“The House of Inspiration” is what I call it. It sits on a hilltop just outside and overlooking my tiny village. It is real, and it screams success from every angle. It belongs to a man whose story makes me smile, that same man who was once a blue-collar mechanic at the now-closed local pasta factory, who stayed true to pursuing his dream and sold his invention…for $130 million.

I look up to that symbolic house of inspiration every afternoon on my way to work and think about how innovation is born from every experience that identifies a problem (in my "neighbor’s case, a clogging industrial glue gun nozzle), and the solution can be born to ANYONE with the tenacity to see an idea through.

Thursday afternoon during my drive to work, a fog set in and limited visibility to halfway up the south mountain, putting the house out of view. I knew the house was still there…that I’d see it again tomorrow, and the experience struck me as an analogy for what sometimes happens to our dreams. I laughed out loud at the fog (or maybe it was the life I gave it) for what little strength it had to keep me from seeing my dream.

I share this with hope that none of us ever loses sight of a dream, and that we always reduce a “no” to…I need to understand why, and maybe go back to the drawing table.