What I've Learned

2004

Ten years ago we moved into the home where we live now, and our yard was a bare patch of dirt. Dirt, not soil. You know ... that hard, encrusted brown stuff left behind after new construction, a substance that supports only bindweed and a straggly dandalion or two. My husband and I worked hard on our yard the first couple of years, adding compost and mulch into the dirt, doing our best to turn it into soil that would support a garden. We added a sunroom onto the back of our house, built a patio, created flower beds, dug a pond for a water garden. And the hard work paid off. Our garden grew. And grew. And grew.

I can now see the flowering crab tree from the second story window of my office, and grapevines and mint regularly encroach into my neighbor's yard (thank you, Mary, for telling me that you don't mind either one). The long and the short of it is that it's time to thin out those overgrown plants, replace sun-loving plants with shade-tolerant varieties now that the trees are really trees rather than thin saplings, and make way for the next cycle of growth. In short, it's time to remodel my garden, and just when I was growing comfortable with the way things were.

If you've spotted a garden-to-life analogy on its way, you're as perceptive as my friends who have grown to expect one.

Nine years ago, I sold my first book, and because that was successful, I continued writing in a similar vein for my publisher. Over time, that environment has changed, and my books struggled to find as many new readers as was expected. As many writers have done before me, I'm now reinventing, rediscovering, remodeling ... replanting my garden. I'm in the midst of a process I'm calling the "Grand Experiment."

It's unlikely I'll have any additional books published by Intimate Moments in the foreseeable future, a change that is both sad and liberating. Sad because I've loved writing those books and being an author among so many wonderful authors whose work I admire. Liberating because I'm now in the middle of writing new things, which is exciting and filled with so much growth. The process is a bit like discovering a new wonderful plant that grows and thrives ... like the primroses that are finally thriving in my garden. I've tried growing them before, and they never survived. But for some reason, the environment is just right for them now, and as soon as the snow melted, they started blooming. Awesome. Just as my "Grand Experiment" is.

It's also blooming and taking my publishing career in new directions. The new additions to my "publishing" garden are healthy, new seedlings that aren't quite ready to be shown off to the world yet ... but they will be soon.

What I've learned is ... change is inevitable. Embrace it or have it roll over you. As creatures of habit, we often resist the new good coming into our life until we're thrown out of our comfortable space. That seems to be the way with growth. Yeah, I've been told ... No pain, no gain.

I like the following quote from Norman Vincent Peale better: "Change your thoughts, and you change your world."

Sharon

What I've Learned... Archive

Spring 2006
Spring 2004
Spring 2003
Spring 2002
Spring 2001