It’s Okay. It Really Is.

Ever have words of wisdom show up just when you need them the most?

So I’m getting ready to start promoting Spirits of Christmas, and I’m thinking back to just about a year ago (exactly a year ago yesterday, how ’bout that?), to when 44 Years in Darkness came out. I’m thinking about the hopes and dreams I had for that book when it came out. Man, I was gonna take over the world!

I was at work today, covering books, and I came across a book called The Self-Love Experiment by Shannon Kaiser. In it, she described her “real life” ( as in, “as soon as I accomplish XXXX my “real life” can start … we’ve all been there): sitting next to Oprah, with Elizabeth Gilbert heaping praise on her book, standing on the stage for a TED Talk and getting a standing ovation. This is pretty much identical to the hopes and dreams I had for 44 Years, I’m not gonna lie. Of COURSE I wanted to do a TED Talk on Rhoda Derry’s life. (I still do.) And I really, REALLY wanted to get onto NPR with Rhoda’s story, on Weekend Edition or The Diane Rehm Show, before she retired.

Well, none of that happened.

But another book had more words of wisdom for me. In the book Code of Trust, by Robin Dreeke, I happened upon this little gem:

“Dreams don’t always come true. Sometimes they don’t even come close. But falling short of your ultimate goal can be fine, if you come close enough to savor most of its rewards.”

That is really, really what I needed to hear. And I DO get to savor most of the rewards of the goals I set for myself. So maybe I’ve never been reviewed by Publishers Weekly. So maybe I’ve never been interviewed on NPR. So maybe I’ll never get to sit next to Oprah. Instead, I get to do one of the things I love best in all this world. I get to stuff myself silly with true ghost stories, and cherry-pick the best of them and share them with you guys.

(I still want to do a TED Talk on Rhoda Derry, though. Someday…)