This led to the study of Zen, Native Indian Medicine, Alchemy, Gnosticism and comparative religions and spirituality. And yet I had not done the work of going back into the particularities of those moments, of those stories so that I could actually change the past.

And, I think what I, what I keep thinking about with regard to curiosity, is, well, let me take that again. Former creative director for Willow Creek Community Church, Hogan is currently a full-time filmmaker. Director Blaine Hogan came to us at the beginning of his creative process with a wild idea to make a fun film about pickleball–a sport near and dear to us on the Voke team. He acted because it helped him cope with things but he could never get really close to people He had problems because you don't find out why in the book you're supposed as a point of the The pain is managed to suffer. As I inch toward launch day, I’ll be talking much more about the book, sharing excerpts, endorsements, giveaways, and the like.When The Picklr came to me with an interesting idea, I jumped at the chance to help make something fun, action-y, and absolutely epic. I was coming to the back of the cave and saying, there’s so much more shouting in the dark places, and the theaters and the, cinemas and the places where I was creating art. That that that, that, that boy was good, that he was curious, that he wanted to be taken delight in. We had a blast collaborating closely over the course of a few months to help storyboard, pre-viz, and ultimately bring all the pieces together in post for a wild ride of a pickleball match up. And if that can be some, well, probably not the totality, but if that can be the basis of how people read your confession, this will become a classic.

You’re the crazy, wild haired, professor that I meet in the kind of immediately following my inciting incident, that begins to, open up a world that I didn’t think was possible. Blaine Hogan’s memoir is an intense, stunningly honest, and profoundly hopeful promise that telling the truth can set the heart free. And then one day, one of the members of the tribe stands off and the, um, the shackles fall off, and they realize that they’re not chained after all, that they’re free to go at any time. This book will open your eyes, so that you can see the world, and your own story, through a lens of grace and compassion. And I remember even writing the book, asking some questions of you, like, Can you take me back to that story and, kind of exegeting it?

I’m so excited to finally be able to share the cover for my new book, Exit the Cave: Embracing a Life of Courage, Creativity, and Radical Imagination.

And I have to say, it’s a weird/amazing/unbelievable thing to live across the street from one of the largest film lots in the entire world. I largely avoid self-help books because not enough of the author's story is told for me to care, and to see through their story how I can adapt my own to make changes.And I’d always held that story, in sort of, the penultimate moment of this three act structure that I had created, Which was my dad was an alcoholic and an addict, and my mom, suffered from, debilitating, diabetes, and she had seizures, and my brother and I needed to care for her in different ways. I appreciate his honesty about his traumatic experiences, the ways that he acted out, and the many obstacles on the way to addiction recovery and trauma healing. No longer able to hide behind the veneer of success or find comfort in the shadows of addiction, Blaine was forced to look at the story his life was telling. To use our pain and our trek through it as fuel to create wonderful things is a great gift that we are beautifully reminded of in Exit the Cave. Gripping, inspiring, and well-written, Exit the Cave is surprisingly as much a ‘roadmap’ as a ‘memoir.