Painting by Belynda Wilson Thomas
Life isn’t about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself. George Bernard Shaw
Last night I went to a book launch at a local independent bookstore, The Book Wardrobe in Streetsville and I couldn’t get in. Three people ahead of me were turned away and four more were behind me. How wonderful that Chantel Guertin and her new book, “Two for the Road,” would get this kind of support.
My plan was to buy her book and see if she would come out and speak to the book club. We’ve had one author come out to the book club and speak about her book and it was wonderful. The book store I learned last night has a book club and the authors come out and speak to the members.
I have the name of the owner of the bookstore and her email address. I will contact her to see if her bookstore will carry my books. Today I have a zoom call with a local organization to see if they will host an event at their organization. The event is “Storytime,” two or three children’s authors and I will read our stories to a group of children with a question and answer period after. We haven’t been able to get into the local libraries yet, but hopefully, that might happen.
Networking and publicity are a big part of being a writer unless we are so big we have a publicist doing it for us. If we are doing something we need to let people know we’ve done it, so they can beat a path to our door to buy our product or service.
If we don’t find a way to let people know we have a book or the next wonderful product they need, how will they ever find out it is the book or product they’ve been looking for? Promoting our products is often where we fall down, although a product or book could be found on Amazon if we don’t know what we are looking for it will be a lot harder to find.
How do we balance humility and self-promotion? Women it seems are notoriously bad at advocating for themselves. We don’t ask for the raise and so we don’t get it. I was out for tea with someone whose daughter was sick of being passed over for the promotions she deserved. She got a job at a new company as their vice president and the old company has given her a contract to help them while they find a replacement which they are finding difficult. They thought she wouldn’t leave, and when she did they were left in a predicament. Another daughter has started a YouTube channel KitanQ Motivation. Her motto is “Believe we can and we are halfway there.”
It always seems impossible until it’s done. Nelson Mandela
We can’t threaten to leave if we aren’t promoted unless we are willing to leave, because then the company will know they’ve got us where they want us. Empty threats don’t get us anywhere because if we are bluffing and our bluff is called we are powerless. If we give an ultimatum we must be willing to follow through on it.
Sometimes life circumstances are such that we aren’t willing to make a change because the weight of the change is too much to deal with, we may need to bide our time until circumstances are better to go after what we want. This is okay; we need to have balance in our lives. We prioritize our priorities, and maybe we can’t have everything all at once, the heavy lifting of raising children may mean we can’t take on the heavy lifting of career building. We may have opportunities that we couldn’t take advantage of earlier, but the time may come when it is our time to take advantage of them.
We might have a hard time convincing others we can do it, sometimes we have a hard time convincing ourselves we can do it. Opportunities are everywhere if we have enough bandwidth in our life to take them on. We might need more education, skills, confidence, perseverance, or dogged determination to make a change we want to make, but if we can dream it often we can achieve it.
Life isn’t over because we’ve hit a milestone in our life, one chapter finishes and a new one begins, one day there will be no new chapters but until then we can make the best of what we have, and we might surprise ourselves and others with what we can accomplish. If we knew we couldn’t fail what dream would we pursue?
Start by doing what’s necessary, then do what’s possible; and suddenly you are doing the impossible. Saint Francis of Assisi
Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go. T.S. Eliot
Those who dare to fail miserably can achieve greatly. John F. Kennedy
Thank you for reading this post. Please come back and read some more and have a blessed day filled, with gratitude, joy, and love.
