Bonnie Hawthorne is the most successful failure you’ve ever met. Always a traveler on the road not taken, she ignored conventional wisdom every step of the way: skipped prom and high school graduation, dropped out of college despite a fancy scholarship, never married, never had kids, always freelanced, and blew her IRA on adventure. Still ignoring the standard timeline, she’s ramping up while others her age are slowing down. A fortune-teller in New Orleans once told her, “You are gonna be such a neat old bag.” That is her current goal.