Stacey Miller*, book publicist extraordinaire, believes in flexibility, responding to and anticipating trends. Yes, respect for tradition helps us avoid repeating mistakes, but it can also be stagnating. It prevents us from moving forward, from growing.

Flexibility, change, evolution—for many of us, certainly for me, these are unsettling words. It’s comforting to carry on business as usual, live our daily lives, do the same things over and over. Rely on experience, little guesswork, and no risk, involved. Change means opening yourself to possibility—including the possibility of failure.

For a fiction writer, change, flexibility, evolution ought to be easy. Every project is new, and publishing, as everyone knows, is in flux. Most of us write on speculation—unless you’re a bestselling mega-hit wonder, like Stephenie Meyer or Stephen King, you have no guarantees—the possibility of rejection high, that you’ll feel like a failure yet higher.

So why bother? Why take a chance?

Good question, one I ask myself all the time. The mantra writers usually cling to: I have to write. My life depends on it. Hyperbole aside, it’s a self-serving lie. If I so chose, like any writer, I could give up writing, well, maybe not writing, but fiction writing surely. Let’s face it: the world can afford to lose a few novelists, a few hundred, a few thousand, easily.

No, my life does not depend upon writing. But my psyche does. Funny thing is, the uncertainty drives me. Publishing my next novel, if I’m lucky, if I write a good enough book, will happen—or won’t. As long as the project lives, possibility abounds. I have hope.

The world changes, evolves, in a flash. It’s hard to keep track, hard to keep up. The strident march of technology often feels overwhelming. Of course people are scared.

And yet.

Sure, it’s harder now to succeed in old-fashioned ways, harder to publish a book, harder to sell anything. Yet, if we seize the moment, take a chance on a new venture, open our hearts and minds, stay flexible, allow ourselves to evolve, ignore the birdy in our head, telling us to give up, forget it, invest in something less risky, we can do almost anything. We can reach heights we only dreamed of before.

Today, the world is full of possibility. We have hope. We’re finally free.

What have you taken a chance on? What will you take a chance on tomorrow? Please leave a comment.

*Read about Stacey’s terrific new book, 101 Recipes for Microwave Mug Cakes—recently featured on the Rachel Ray Show.

Recently, I asked students in my Web communications class to post a blog in response to the articles  “The Selling of a President,” by Joe McGinniss, from Parade magazine, and “Coakley v Brown: The Social Media Divide May Decide Election,” from the Huffington Post–pieces dealing with social media and political discourse.

Based on their previous blog entries, I anticipated a lukewarm response. While their writing, throughout the semester, had been consistently thoughtful, I rarely saw any emotional investment. Now, to my surprise, they wrote passionately about their frustrations with politics, the ways social media had nudged and encouraged them to engage in the political world.

Many older folks believe young people to be indifferent to politics. Young adults had come out in droves in support of Barack Obama, a supposed anomaly their elders chalked up to youth, liberal naiveté, fan-like worship of a handsome, electrifying candidate. Surely, the stunning turnout had been induced by a Facebook-inspired mob mentality, a desire to conform or be cool, an inner drive swept into action by Obama’s tsunami-like Internet marketing campaign.

My students’ responses, though an admittedly small, anecdotal sampling, are telling. Turns out, while young people do, indeed, look to Facebook for current news and information, for the most part network affiliations, the urgings of friends, provide insufficient motivation for them to engage politically, never mind to get out and vote. Nor do young adults necessarily vote in self-interest. No, it’s about respect. A candidate who specifically addresses them, who listens—a candidate who takes them seriously—earns their devotion. By addressing young adults through a media they understood and claimed as their own, Barack Obama told young people you matter. I care.

Not so different, really, from the way the rest of us—parents, teachers, coaches, mentors—ought to think of them and behave.

For the last month, I’ve been trying—trying being the operative word—to quit eating chocolate. It’s actually sugar I’d like to eliminate, but the main culprit being chocolate—I can resist almost anything else—that’s where I’ve focused.

This should be easy. It’s not, after all, like kicking a coke habit. Besides, I’ve done it before. (Obviously, I fell off the wagon; but still.) This should be easy, but it’s not. Lately, to fool myself—foods gobbled in secret don’t count—I’ve resorted to sneaking. What’s so tough about this?

Why can’t I just quit?

Because it’s hard—damn hard—especially at Easter, bags of irresistible mini-eggs, like M&M Peanut candy on steroids, stashed in my office closet. All this surreptitious eating makes me think about people struggling with serious addictions, to alcohol or drugs, coke, heroin, Oxycontin, meth, also to food.

It’s easy, and tempting, to label addicts as “other,” people with moral failings, weak constitutions. Addicts, like the homeless, look different from us. Many of them wear their addiction, in their sunken cheeks or hefty thighs, their erratic behavior. We avert our eyes, pretend not to notice, but the judgment is clear. I’ve done it myself.

Blaming the addict assumes a distinction, an “us” and a “them,” allows me to claim—despite its hollow ring—moral superiority. The addict’s otherness reassures me, however tenuous the security. Inside my mental circle, I’m insulated from messy reality. I’m different from “those people.” They’re lazy, unreliable, selfish. Unlike them, I hold myself accountable; therefore, I’ll never be a drunk, a coke-head, a junkie.

Yet, here I am, enslaved by my chocolate jones. Of course, a chocolate addiction hardly correlates to an addiction to coke. Nevertheless, I can’t seem to kick the habit. Maybe I’m not so different, after all.

Maybe it’s time to grow some compassion, time to let the prejudice go.

I’m just saying.