I’m writing this on a Friday night for publishing on Monday for no other reason than I don’t know when I will have the time to write it otherwise. Time, the most finite resource in the world. You can’t see it, but you can feel it. You can watch it drift away, carried off in waves of work, and waste, and rest, and a million other things calling for your attention in any given day.
I never realized how valuable time was until I was in my thirties. I can’t pinpoint the exact moment where I felt this epiphany, but it probably had to do with celebrating a milestone with one of my kids, or noticing that I had lost a step in one way or another. I reached my forties, turned around, and saw that the road behind me and before me were equidistant, and I had no idea how I’d gotten that far without doing anything.
So I started writing. I had this dumb idea for a book, that I turned into a podcast, that then went back to being a book, because why should I just let 50,000 words written in a loose narrative form just sit on my hard drive? I have lots of other dumb ideas…a few lines scribbled in a notebook, or typed into multiple untitled documents in my Google Drive.
But this was the first story that I actually finished. From beginning to end. I had to do something with it. So I rewrote it, cleaned it up. This past week, I printed it out, all 172 pages of it, so I could proofread it. And not only do I have to proofread it, I had to design the cover, set up the pre-order, and author page, and then edit the corrections courtesy of proofreading.
I didn’t have to do any of this. I chose to do all of this. But why?
Because it needs to be done. Because if I don’t do it, it won’t happen. Because this is the closest I’ve ever been to the finish line on anything like this. And if I stop now, what’s the point?
So I did it to myself. And when it’s all over, I’m going to do it again.