Feels Good

It's taking a lot of time but, slowly and surely, my book based on this blog is coming to fruition. At this point, I'm really enjoying the journey of working on a dream. My dream.

I've wanted to write a book for a long time. I'm enjoying just the glimmer of the possibility that this book might open the door to other opportunities. I'm enjoying the fact that I never started this blog with the intention of making money from it, nor did I intend to write a book based on it. I'd been struggling with a novel for years until it dawned on me: You've got a boatload of material right at your fingertips. Use it.

I have you, my dear readers, to thank for encouraging me. You made me believe I had a gift. You don't know how empowering that is, and I am truly grateful.

It's been fun seeing which blog entries I deem worthy of making the cut -- "The Big Pimpin' Awards," "Hotter Than Fish Grease," and "Got Sou-Sou?" -- while reluctantly letting go of others that don't robustly express who I am. But at the end of the day, each and every one of them is mine. I own my work. It's a small but significant step toward owning myself outright, so to speak, because if you have to work for someone else, you really don't own yourself. Or your work, for that matter.

I've had one blog entry published by an e-zine, and I've been approached to grant permission to reprint some of my blog entries. I recently declined to grant a royalty-free license to my blog for a profit-making entity because if anyone is going to profit off of me, it's me. More than anything, I'm enjoying the prospect of freeing myself financially, even a little bit, while doing something that I absolutely love.

I, in turn, want to encourage all of you who read my blog to devote some time on a regular basis to whatever your dream is, even if it's just using a coffee break at work or a few stolen hours on the weekend. It feels so good to know that I'm serving my own purpose and fulfilling my own needs and not just the needs of my employer. You just might feel the same.