I can’t tell you how exhilarating the experience of writing Is This All There Is? Living a Life Beyond Obligation was for me…the manifestation of a dream come true, a dream I didn’t even know I had in me until two years ago. I asked myself how a passing thought ended up becoming a 312 page book!
I was thinking about this question upon waking this morning, luxuriating in my bed, book in hand (someone else’s) disregarding the late hour of 9:30 a.m. No need to hurry given there was really no place for me to go or people to see–outside of the walk around the lake that hubby and I are trying to schedule in daily, weather permitting.
While lying there and pondering why writing a book was such a big deal for me, it dawned on me that my love of books has been a lifelong love affair. Thinking back to my early years in elementary school, one of my fondest memories was going to the library on Saturday morning and taking out six to eight books, usually mystery stories in the Nancy Drew series or stories about red-headed heroines like Pippi Longstocking whose fictional lives were nothing like my own. I would devour those books over the week in between school and homework and end up reading most of them by the following Saturday.
If you asked me what the best part of elementary school was, I would be able to tell you that firstly it was the day the class received the Scholastic book order form, and then secondly the day the teacher announced that the book orders had come in. I waited expectantly until my name was called out and joyously held the new, crisp books between my hands, eagerly counting down the minutes until I could spring on the couch at home and lose myself completely in the book’s narrative.
While other neighbourhood kids pretended to be doctors and nurses, my childhood friend and I played librarian. Later on in life, as a new parent, the library became the primary source of free entertainment for both me and my kids given that I avoided the mall at all costs.
As an adult, I loved (and still do) bookstores and would circulate around the shelves reading covers and scouting books that I might eventually wish to read. I don’t think I have EVER left a bookstore without buying some kind of book, often something inspirational in nature. It’s no wonder that I ended up writing a personal growth book!