August fourth marked the third year anniversary of my original cardinal speech. I wrote it for one of the assignments in Toastmasters International’s Storytelling Advanced Manual. For this toastmaster assignment, I was to come up with a story with a moral. I wrote my speech in the living room of our house, my husband’s and mine. I sat on our couch. The coffee table acted as my desk. I recall, I just kept thinking about the cardinal that kept attacking my husband’s red Explorer truck on a camping trip we had recently taken. If my husband had not moved his truck, the cardinal would have hurt itself. Thinking of that incident evolved into my idea that one could keep trying something to a fault. With pen and notepaper, I crafted the story. The moral with which I came up was “It’s O.K. to quit on the road to happiness.” I gave my debut “performance” of my speech in the evening of that same day at an ACE Toastmasters meeting in Cincinnati, Ohio. I used note cards during my speech. The speech was well received. I knew in my mind I wanted to get it published someday. The book launch of my story, Flip Flap Try, was July seventh of this year. I started working on this blog while on a plane trip. My advice to you: sing (even a plane has humming sounds in flight), play (look out the window, enjoy life’s experiences) and be happy (if something is not working, give yourself permission to try something new). And by all means, celebrate your successes! Yeah! I did it!