Inspiration

What do you do and where do you go for inspiration for your small business or project?

For each of us, the answers to these questions are bound to be different. Some people might smoke a cigarette or something more illicit. Others may go surfing on a cyber wave or off the Malibu coast for that matter. Still others may sit and journal quietly till they hit upon that "thing" by free associating. I like to walk myself. Tonight, I walked all the way to Times Square from Downtown Brooklyn, from the court-house at 360 Adams Street, across the Brooklyn Bridge to City Hall, through Chinatown and Soho, past Union Square and Grand Central, to Times Square. It is not a long walk as far as long walks go, but it is enough of a walk that I can do a lot of thinking about what I was doing and what I wanted to do, and to find inspiration in all the things that abound around me. I took in the sounds of the traffic, the honking taxi cabs, and the incessant chatter of New York folks going about their Friday night. I took in the heady combination of smells of roasting nuts, street-side hot dogs with relish (and that red meat on the stick), smoke, and perfume. And I relished the sights of the city, from the skyline ahead--Metlife, the Chrysler Builging, to the bright neon jumbotrons in Times Square (from Nasdaq, The Lion King and Toshiba.) And of course, there were all the people, so thickly packed on the city streets, I could barely get by on my way to my inspiration. Where was I going? I was not sure. I had not mapped a destination. I had not set my GPS. I was just walking, just searching for that natural high note that always comes to me in the form of an idea, thought or observation when I take long walks in NYC. By the time, I head back South, to Brooklyn (by subway), I was so incredibly refreshed and full of new ideas and motivations. I was newly and freshly inspired.

How do you find inspiration?