The other week I was getting the book ready for the 2nd proof and I hit a snag.
Apparently there’s been a technical issue with Kindle Direct Publishing which made my lovely stick drawings look blurry and terrible.
One of those weird things that’s never happened before, and stops a project in its tracks. I’m waiting for them to get back to me – hopefully by Thursday. Sigh.
At the time, it was a disaster. Like, the worst thing that could happen. And I went into meltdown mode.
You know…”oh forget it, I give up, I’m not going to write any more books. The universe hates me.” And so on.
(A few other things were going on in my life that day too which contributed to my feeling of doom.)
Fortunately the next day, I woke up in a better frame of mind, decided not to give up after all; and reminded myself that this edit of my first book will be done when it’s ready to be done, all in Divine Timing, and that there is undoubtedly some reason that this project is dragging on for another month.
I might not know yet (or ever) what that reason is, but there is probably something going on behind the scenes that means that this delay is for my benefit.
When I was in meltdown mode, I was wondering why this was happening to me.
When I was back in my right (calm) mind, I started to think about why this is happening for me.
Do you believe in a benevolent universe?
Because I believe in a benevolent universe. I believe that life happens for us.
When this sort of thing last happened for me (several things conspired to cause a 2-3 month delay in the release of the paperback of my 2nd book), I had a lot of time and opportunity to practice detachment and patience.
Not qualities that naturally come easily to me.
I clearly need to learn some more of both, but I’m far more relaxed about it this time around because of that previous experience.
I’m also remembering the lesson to accept life rather than fighting it.
The fact is there’s a delay. The fact is it’s taken 5 months so far to do this edit. The fact is I can accept those facts or fight reality.
Fighting it won’t help get it done though. I don’t know why the universe is slowing me down on this project. I just know that’s how it appears to me right now.
But as I believe that life happens for me, I’m not going to worry too much about it.
I’m not going to see it as a sign that I’m not meant to do this work.
I’m not going to freak out too much. I’m just going to go with it and trust that the universe has my back, that I will learn something useful from this experience (as I did last time) and that maybe, just maybe, the divine has a better idea of the best timing for this project than I do?
Whether all that is true or not, what I do know is that if I act like it’s true and chill out, it’ll be a much better experience than if I act like the universe hates me and I should just give up!
Sometimes the lessons of a difficult situation are not immediately apparent. Sometimes it’s only with years of hindsight we can see why a particular situation worked out the way it did.
But if we trust that there is something positive in a delay or a difficult situation, we can relax and let life take us where it will.
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