Recently I shared my idea for this book with a published author and her comment with a somewhat negative tone was that it’s a ‘really tough market’. At first my inner critic agreed “You’re right, why even bother writing at all?” But then I thought, When did we become this nation of experts and oracles, foretelling the future with such confidence and impudence?
I seem to have had this little negative backseat driver inside my thoughts my entire life, governing me with comments like “You can’t do that” or “That won’t work”, this gadfly voice has kept me on the sidelines watching the parade of those following their dreams march on by.
Now I want to go back and shake my inner child and say “Wake up! This is your life, you only get one chance!” My wake up call came when my world fell apart. Granted, it wasn’t a great world, there were plenty of things I would have liked to change, plenty of dreams I would have liked to pursue, but it was my world and I felt confident in it’s stability. Too bad it was false. Still, I spent over 5 years trying to hold together my smashed illusion as if nothing had changed. But delusion and misery get tiresome and gradually I came to the realization that I was bored with it. O.K. life, so that’s how you want to play? Well maybe it’s time for me to get my game on, to create my world the way I want it to be, because now I happen to have opinions about that.
Who knows if I will ever accomplish my grand dreams, but then again who cares? What does that pesky voice in my head know about my destiny? What does that author know about my potential as a writer? What do we know about anyone else’s possibilities or capability, including our own? Maybe it’s time to just get on with the business of following our dreams, we’re not getting any younger, and what difference does it make if we try and fail, at least we will have tried. I always remember the quote – Most people tiptoe through life so they can arrive at death safely. So that voice in your head or your boss or spouse or local expert or whomever says your dream isn’t possible? What do they know?
