Are You Comfortably Numb?

My dog walking buddy down the road is a very wise woman. She was telling me that her daughter had just handed in her resignation at the women’s magazine where she’d been working at for the last seven years. ‘It was time to move on,’ she’d said. ‘Things had changed.’ Then wise-woman hit me with some sage advice, ‘Even our body changes every seven years.’

I went deep with that one. Seven years. It doesn’t sound that long, but if your body decides it’s time to change after seven years, then I’d better start listening up. Change sometimes makes an uncomfortable bedfellow. Mirrors can become damn right scary. And don’t get me started on the effects of gravity. But it is nature’s game, not ours, and we’d best learn to play nice.

Knowing when it’s time to move on keeps things flowing in the right direction. I realize I’ve been stuck for a while. After receiving rejection after rejection letter from numerous literary agents and a host of publishing companies (which, by the way look great pasted up on dart boards),  I had no idea where to go, or what to do with my books. My confidence was busted. I had done everything by the book to get a book published – it was as if I were swimming against the current. I felt like the salmon that didn’t make it to its breeding grounds. My body had been stuck too. Comfortably numb, I guess, afraid to leave the comfort zone – my prison of choice.

Then, I had a breakthrough. I thought maybe if I had a web presence, a literary agent would notice me. So I started looking into the possibility of blogging. I did market research, checked out blogs written by authors, scoured the websites, and realized the potential I had available to me by uploading my books to on-line bookstores like Amazon, Barnes and Noble and the like. Suddenly, the flood gates opened and I was swimming with the current again. In my mind’s eye I saw no rejection letters and no need to write another query ever. I was free to write the stories I wanted to write, and birth words that could make a difference to this world, or change a life.

And when I look back at that timeline, I was stunned. Egad – it had been seven years.