Wednesday, July 30, 2014

Books Are Falling Off The Shelves

It is time to stop playing Candy Crush and get a book (or three) written.

It's time. I need to do it now or it may never happen. I am a month shy of my 45th birthday, and it is affecting me worse than my 40th did, because I have been beating myself up about where I have landed at this point in my life, and how this was not where I wanted to be. Not everything sucks--great husband, great dog, I am healthy, I have a job I am finally happy with--but in just about every other aspect, I have hit rock bottom. There is nowhere to go but up.

The problem is, I am not going up unless I get up off my butt and do what I was put here to do.

I have used every excuse not to write: I don't have a computer; I have a computer but it is inconvenient and uncomfortable; I work 60 hours per week and can't justify going in the other room to write when I could be spending time with my husband; I have a laptop but also have a lap dog, who will win the spot on my lap every time; I have to put so much energy into my paying job that I have nothing left at the end of the day to do anything creative. The list went on and on. I was waiting for ideal conditions to work on my writing, but that day is never going to come.

At least now I am in a job that I love and I only work 40 hours per week, so there is more left over for my passion. I am also not looking at getting published as a way to be rescued from a job I hate. A) That is not even a possibility anymore since publishing has changed so much in the past ten years that a first time writer is not getting that huge book deal that will allow the quitting of the day job, and B) I don't hate my day job, so I can happily continue working while getting my writing career off the ground.

There is a book that I am feeling compelled to write, and I am now writing with a purpose to get my story out there. I believe that it is my contrbution to the spiritual awakening that is happening in the world. It truly feels like it is my purpose, and it is very topical. If I procrastinate much more, I will miss the boat. Every which way I turn, there is something nudging me to just write it!

This past Sunday was the first in a while where I was home to watch Super Soul Sunday on OWN. I always record it, but then it could take weeks to actually find time to watch. Today when I saw that Gabrielle Bernstein (@GabbyBernstein,author of Spirit Junkie and May Cause Miracles) was going to be on, I was psyched because I love her! She was on with two other spiritual teachers for a new generation, whom I hadn't yet heard of, Marie Forleo (@marieforleo,founder of MarieTV), and Mastin Kipp (@TheDailyLove, founder of TheDailyLove.com). I have often remarked that I procrastinated finishing my book because I was not only afraid of failure, but afraid of success. At one pont, Mastin quoted Joseph Campbell, "The cave you fear to enter holds the treasure that you seek". I remember thinking, "Oh, that's who Joseph Campbell is?" I had heard his name before, but knew nothing else about him.

Gabrielle said that when she went to the bookstore to buy A Course In Miracles, the text on which her teachings are based, she literally felt the energy of the book pulling her to the cash register. One thing that she said really stuck with me: "Once we become willing to know more, books fall off the shelf*...don't act like nothing happened when the book falls off the shelf." In other words, when the student is ready, the teacher appears. Often times for us seekers, those teachers come in the form of books. Evidently, books can also fall off the shelf electronically.

I was updating my blog, and added some of my favorite authors' blogs to my blogroll. One of these authors was Claire Cook (@ClaireCookWrite). I briefly met Claire years ago when she spoke at a writer's workshop in Hartford, CT. She was at a fabulous point in her writing career--the point where she was saying to every person she came across, "Guess what? My book is being made into a movie with Diane Lane and John Cusack!" I will never forget her talking about that, because she was so elated and I wanted that to be me someday.

I admit that I have been lazy about reading even my favorite blogs lately--a lapse I plan to rectify--so it had been a while since I had checked out her blog. She has just released a book about not giving up on your dreams, called Never Too Late, and if you signed up for her newsletter, you could download the workbook for free. So I did. And that's when I saw this:

"Follow your bliss and doors will open where there were no doors before." ~ Joseph Campbell

This quote had a page all its own in the "Never Too Late Workbook". This quote by JOSEPH CAMPBELL.

It took about 30 seconds for me to download the book.

(Well, to be fair, a sample of the book because I don't have 4.99 to spend on it until Friday, but I am chomping at the bit to read the rest.)

There is no way for me to paraphrase what she wrote on page 14 and still convey how much this was the same thing I was going through, so I quote:

"...right at that moment it hit me with the force of a poolside tidal wave that I was the one who needed to get a life. A new one, the one I'd meant to have all along. I was not getting any younger, and I was in serious danger of living out my days without ever once going for it. Without even trying to achieve my life-long dream of writing a novel. Suddenly, not writing a book became more painful than pushing past all that fear and procastination and actually writing it."
Then at the end of that chapter:

"Not many days go by that I don't take a deep breath and remind myself that this is the career I almost didn't have."

I don't want this to be the career I didn't have because I have been waiting for my books to get magically written, or because I gave up on the dream altogether. These options aren't acceptable to me at this time in my life.

A few years ago, we were watching The Today Show and Jillian Michaels was on promoting her book. A bit later in the show, Ice-T was on promoting his book. My husband said, "Geez, who doesn't have a book out? Oh yeah...you." That opened my eyes. Halfway. I still felt like I had time left to accomplish my dream so I still lacked the necessary urgency. Both of my eyes are wide open now. No more excuses. I don't want to die before I even try.

Claire's story about almost missing out on the life she was meant to have was just the push I needed. I have said before that I was ready to take my writing seriously, but even though I wanted to, it never happened. This is different, a switch got flipped in my brain. I mean it this time. I am putting the effort in, I am doing this.





* Since I work at Barnes & Noble, not every book that literally falls off the shelf is a message for me, but some of them are. More often I help the right books fall into people's hands. For example, twice in the last two months a customer approached me asking for books by Abraham Hicks. With the exception of one other bookseller, anyone else would have searched for books by Abraham Hicks and concluded that we do not carry any books by him, leaving the customer book-less. What both customers were looking for were books on the law of attraction and the teachings of Abraham, by Esther and Jerry Hicks.


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