Game inventor finds happiness, success

Just do what makes your heart happy. That's the advice from all the health and happiness gurus.

So I decided to take a stab at it: Chuck the life of a corporate meeting monkey and forego my big fat paycheck to follow my bliss - inventing games and toys, writing books and creating art.

Bliss is not for the squeamish or faint of heart, you understand. Bliss isn't very lucrative at the get-go either. But my belief in luck favoring the persistent is now proving true.

For the last four years I've kept my nose to the grindstone while simultaneously unleashing my creative spirit. What's happened is . . . it healed me.

All the stress of company politics and petty workplace disasters immediately evaporated, and from the blue sky that finally shone through has come a downpour, a deluge, a veritable avalanche of creative output.

I've invented hundreds of games and toys, some of which will end up under Christmas trees around the country. I've written books, the seventh of which will be published in 2011.

Doing what makes your heart happy - even if you have to darn your socks and drive a jalopy - is worth it. It makes you wealthy, even though you're broke. It makes you measure success in new ways. Ways that matter. It makes you thankful for the people in your life who believe in you no matter what.

All of that, even in the worst economy, is an embarrassment of riches.

- Peggy Brown

Bay View