The year 2011 has begun. A new year full of surprises. I wish you all a very happy 2011. To bring a little inspiration, here's a story I translated to English. The original is a story from a Dutch writer Toon Tellegen (from the book 'Misschien wisten zij alles'). I hope it gives you as much inspiration as it continuously gives me:

No day passed without the squirrel going out. In the morning he dropped himself down from the beech tree in the moss, or sometimes from the utter end of a branch on the back of a dragonfly in the pond, which flew him in silence to the side. He always took the first road that presented itself to him. But every-time he passed a sidetrack he took that road, and if he succeeded in forgetting his plans for that day he did.

He was on his way to the elephant, who was moving and needed some help, when he saw a winding dirt road. He took that road. There was a sign: ROAD TO THE EDGE. This is where I want to go! The squirrel thought. But to his sorrow there was a sidetrack he couldn't turn down, no matter how much he not wanted to.

DEADEND, the sign on the side said. With great reluctance the squirrel followed the road which quickly ended in thick and thorny bushes. The squirrel cut his skin and struggled through the bushes. Then he fell into a ditch and fell asleep under a blanket of old leaves.

By the time he woke up it was evening and time for him to go to sleep.

The next morning he found a road that took him to the beach without detours or sidetracks. There was a boat ready to sail. The squirrel boarded and sailed tot the horizon, and then on the horizon through curving seas, through gates in icebergs and over glass-smooth water surfaces to ever new horizons. Sometimes he sailed straight down the edges of giant whirlpools, sometimes he flew from top to top on the peaks of white waves.

The sun grew bigger and bigger, or maybe it didn't grow but came closer.

In the end a wave threw the squirrel on a coast where he experienced adventures, so much and so wonderful that he kept talking about them for weeks when he arrived home after a while. He kept talking until the ant and the hedgehog, two of his friends, grew tired of his stories. And they told him.

'And everywhere over there...' the squirrel still tried.

'Enough!' the ant cried.