i think i can

In July, I completed the recording, editing and mastering of the audiobook version of The Best Advice So Far, right on schedule.

By mid-August, the audiobook had been submitted to Audible, approved and officially released.

From the very start — before I’d ever even penned a word of it — I knew that I eventually wanted The Best Advice So Far released in digital, print and audiobook formats. At long last, that vision had become a reality.

Within days of that milestone, and while still on vacation in Florida, I’d begun outlining my next book. And by September 12, I had completed the preface.

It felt strange, after all that had gone into the first book, to be at the very beginning again with a completely new book. Yet I’m excited about it. I can envision, even from here, what it will become.

Thing is, it wasn’t “becoming” very quickly.

Here we are at the beginning of December, and I don’t have even a single completed chapter to show for it.

All the while, I’ve grown increasingly aware that lots of stuff I’d set out to do — some for more than a year now — also hadn’t gotten done. Instead, they continued to scritch–scritch–scritch like proliferating mice inside the walls of my brain.

Well, a week or so back, I declared that enough was enough. It was time to figure out why I was stalemated on so many personal goals.

I’m not lazy. In fact I stay quite busy. So that was definitely not the culprit. I’d even go so far as to say that most people who know me would describe me as downright tenacious.

In fairness to myself, I had attempted early on to get somewhere with several of the tech-related tasks (such as getting the “Like” button to function on my blog posts, a feature that has not worked since the site went live). But I’d been stonewalled or left hanging by every representative I’d contacted. Still, I thought during my recent ponderings, I’m smarter than the average bear. I designed my entire website myself, having learned everything I know about coding on my own over the years. So I knew that, ultimately, these problems were not beyond my ability to solve, whether anyone else helped me or not.

I’m creative, as well as clear on what I’d like to accomplish. For instance, where the new book is concerned, the outline is finished. I’ve got plenty of ideas, which often play themselves out in great detail inside my head throughout the day. And, as I say, I’m plenty interested in and motivated by the topic. Yet for all of that, I was still perpetually finding myself with nothing to show for it.

Furthermore, I’m not a procrastinator. As a matter of fact, I’ve said or typed the following statement about myself so often that it feels almost cliché: I’ve never missed a deadline to which I’ve agreed. And that is absolutely true. (Well, except for that one time I forgot to get on a plane for a major event I was supposed to be running — sorry, Steve — but that wasn’t so much missing a deadline as having sincerely mucked up the date somehow).

That’s when it hit me… [click below to continue reading this post at the main site]

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