This time

At this time last year my new book, The Given Self was just coming out. It “arrived” on December 8, a few days before it’s official publishing date. Obama was assigned the Nobel Prize around the same time and a friend in Norway wrote me with the headline there that said, “It’s not his fault.” I was making occasional forays out to my back yard cabin in my down coat, just beginning work with a new eldercare client, trying to find the time to do all the things my publisher suggested I do, and beginning to get anxious about the book launch scheduled for January (which came on a day of bitter cold and perilously ice-slicked roads).

I had also just begun to have those feelings of – “How can I write a book like The Given Self and then go against myself and my own nature?” At the time those feelings were about the publishing suggestions. (Do I really want to try to do radio shows when I never listen to them?) The promoting didn’t feel as if it fit me, but I received advice from fellow author Nouk Sanchez, that she was an introvert and anxious about such things initially too, but that they were also exciting. It was funny because, as little as I consider myself a public person or public speaker, I was told, a month later (at the book launch) that I was “a natural,” and anyway, I’d know for a while that I can do it, it’s just…you know…the Do I want to question.

My life this year is different in a lot of ways but I still ask myself those questions. I’m still discovering who I am now. The books I’ve written and read, and the readers who share with me, keep pushing me to be true to myself.

I love books.