I never really thought of myself as a person who resisted the way of things.
Do you know what I mean?
Remember this prayer? "Lord grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference."
When Kevin mentioned that prayer the other day, it was like somebody reached over and thumped me on the forehead.
No shit.
Duh.
For years now, I’ve been resisting a lot of things in my life because I narrowed my vision on a different life, instead of accepting the life I have and being content with it.
I told myself I didn’t belong here, living in a farming community of 1,800 people in rural North Dakota, using the following reasons:
1.) They think Arizona is a wonderful place and don’t understand why I moved from Arizona to North Dakota.
2.) People here don’t understand me, and during the six years Kevin and I have been here, there has been nobody we’ve connected with. We have no peeps.
3.) Some of the people here are prejudice. I’m not, and feel more alienated from them because of it.
There are a few more reasons, but the above three are the ones I’ve been battling with for a long time now, which has caused me to resist the life I have right now instead of trusting in the universe that I’m where I’m at for a reason.
Whatever that reason is, I don’t know, but it’s time for me stop resisting it, and to keep in mind if in the future I’m meant to be somewhere else, a way will present itself, right?
The same goes for my dream of becoming a novelist, and making enough money from it so I can stay home and not have to work for somebody else.
I recently learned I can’t put all my happy eggs in one basket, if you know what I mean. I can’t base all my happiness on my books.
It’s not healthy.
I have to stop looking through the telescope at the life I want, and find the joy in the life I have now.
I have to trust in it.
That doesn’t mean for me to give up on my writing dream and what I want out of this life. But what it does mean is, I need to relax and stop resisting where I’m at right now.
And to be honest, despite everything else, this is a wonderful town I live in. I don’t have to lock my doors, there’s only one stop light, most people are nice, five-year-olds can ride their bike to the store to get a pop without us worrying about them.
So yeah, I think the advantages and disadvantages level out, it’s just a matter of which one I’m willing to focus on the most. And trust me, focusing all my energy on the disadvantages is not the way to go.
Anyway, I wrote this post and put it out there for you to read because I thought maybe somebody who is reading this might be going through a similar ordeal. Also, it’s part of the self-publishing journey I’m on, and I want to share every piece of that journey with you, which includes doing battle with the conflicts within myself.
I have another battle I’ve been struggling with for weeks–the blurb.
Once I conquer that, I’ll write a post about it and share with you how I did it.
Trust me, those of you who are planning on self-publishing will want to read it because writing a blurb is harder than writing a query.
Seriously.
Now I want to leave you with a quote by Prentice Ritter, played by Robert Duvall in the television western Broken Trail:
"We’re all travelers in this world. From the sweet grass to the packing house. Birth ‘til death. We travel between eternities."
Take care you guys. I’ll be back on Friday. :)
When I was a child, I loved books, and fortunately my parents did too. I remember asking my sister to read to me (she’s four years older than I), but she was too busy at the time. So I went up to our room and sat on my bottom bunk bed with the book Hansel and Gretel in my lap, wishing I could read. I knew some words (hey, I was four), but not enough to read the whole book.
First grade was really when I’d learned how to read, and I was in the top of my reading class. But then I fell from a building, split my cranium straight down the middle, and was in a coma for three days. It was a miracle I’d survived, wasn’t paralyzed, a vegetable, or brain damaged, although, sometimes I wonder about the brain damaged part :). But during that time was when my class was learning how to read, and I was determined not to miss out. I had double vision for a while, but that didn’t stop me. I wanted the ability to read damn it, so I basically taught myself. My teacher was so impressed, that she gave me a T-shirt that said: "I’m a perfect reader."
This is a picture of my family, six years before my parents divorced. I’m the one sitting on my mom’s lap, and of course that’s my sister next to our dad. Dig the side burns Dad. Oh, and Dad, what's with the outfit? What were you thinking? Okay. Yeah, I know. It was the 70s. That’s okay, when I was in grade school, I had parachute pants, which I loved, and would still wear if they came back out again. But I didn’t wear the MC Hammer pants, so I did have some restraint. :)
The little girl on my mom’s lap didn’t think about the future, all she cared about was being loved, listening to stories, watching Wonder Women, playing with her Honey Bunch dolls, riding her big wheel (I LOVED my big wheel. I miss my big wheel), hanging out with her daddy, playing outside with her sissy and friends. Oh, and of course, sweets.
As she grew, she had many dreams, and although her life dramatically changed, she held onto those dreams. She wanted to be truly loved and to write books for a living. She started writing when she was seven, a poem about birds. As she got older, she had notebooks full of her thoughts, poems, and stories. In school, she loved to get up in front of the class and read her stories. One memorable time was in seventh grade, when she read a horror story she wrote about a monster living in the sewer (I wish I still had that story). Her story had captivated the class so much so that they all did a collective gasp during the scary scenes. After that, she was hooked on writing stories. She started writing a novel at fourteen. When she was sixteen, she graduated high school early, and started writing another novel about a haunted house. But then she ended up on her own, and had to make a living, so her writing dream withered away.
Years later, one of her dreams comes true–she finds true love. Or did it find her? What came first, the chicken or the egg? I guess we’ll never know, huh? But that doesn’t matter because YAY she now has true love with the most wonderful person in the world who loves her for her. They get married, and her writing dream begins to burn bright inside her again. She takes a writing course, but then once again, life happens. Tragedy strikes not once, not twice, but three times, and her dream is shoved aside.
Years go by, and finally one day it hits her. She rushes to grab a pen and notebook and a story evolves as she feverishly writes the words down that races through her mind. Almost two years later, she completes a novel, and her dream is reborn.
That novel now sits on my shelf, out of sight, but certainly not out of mind. One day I’ll rewrite it, but right now I’m focused on my Beyond the Eyes series.
So that dream of becoming a published author and making a living off of her books, continues on for the little girl sitting on her mommy’s lap–the little girl who lives inside me. The book (s) has been written and more will follow. That’s half the battle, a battle a lot of people never win, even though their intentions are good. And each day that I write, I become better, and my armor gets stronger. Now I’m up against another battle, and I wonder, how long will it take to fight this next one?
The little girl inside me squirms and sometimes reminds me of the hand I’ve been dealt with when I’d first opened my eyes into this world, and how beaten down I was. Those dreams don’t happen to people like you. There’s no luck for you. Remember what Dostoevsky had said: "The ruts had been laid out long before you were born. I then have the sudden urge to crawl in a dark hole and disappear. But then my stubbornness emerges, and I say to that little girl, "No. Screw that! We're not victims, and our dreams can come true. Luck isn’t reserved for certain people. We create our own path. And," I point out to myself, "you never thought you’d be truly loved, and look. LOOK! You have it, and it’s more than what you had ever imagined. So don’t give up. Don’t. Give. Up."
And so the little girl quiets down, and I go back to building my armor and learning tactics to use for the second half of the battle.
.png)
