Alright… I’m not saying I was gentle when I snatched the package out of the postman’s hands. Considering it was my very first hard copy ‘proof,’ and it was being delivered 5 days past it’s due date (felt like a kid who was told Christmas was delayed), I thought I was very Buddha’esque’ about the whole process. That is if the Buddha hastily snatched packages out of postmen’s hands.
I handled myself with as much emotional constraint as I could, gave the postman the casual, ‘thanks for the package nod’ (no big deal), waited until he was out of sight… then BOLTED into my office. I unwrapped that box like a birthday present (quickly with lots of tearing). BAM!!! There it was. The very first hardcopy proof of my book. In my hands. All shiny and professional!… Only one itsy bitsy thing…
It was bound on the top, not the side!
“What?!” They bound it like a calendar?! How could they do this to me?!? Personalizing it, as if the binding-guy was twisting his mustache over in the CreateSpace printing department, while the girl from shipping joked about how the book should be called the “Changing Your Weather Calendar.” None of this was happening, of course. But, by personalizing the mistakes Amazon made with my book, I created a brain fog that clouded my ability to give the same weight to the successes I saw in the first printed version of my book that I was giving out to its flaws.
Yes, it is 100% true that there were mistakes with this proof. But, really, what kind of mistakes are we looking at? The Create-space team bound it on the wrong side, so what! My colors were popping off my illustrations as if I had drawn them in crayon and pen right on the page! The glossy cover looks AMAZING, and my cover illustration that should have been a colossal problem because the “Big Bad Amazon People” said the image wasn’t 300dpi, printed as though it was 600dpi. (Not confident I would know what 600dpi would look like, but I bet it’s pretty darn good quality… Once my internal coach’s voice gets rolling, there is no stopping him :).
I was disappointed that the proof didn’t come out of the box 100% perfect, and that frustration must be felt. If I don’t give my uncomfortable emotions their moment in the sun, just ‘glaze’ over them, they build up in the back of my brain. Then, suddenly, I find myself jumping over the counter at some poor unsuspecting cashier at Dunkin’ Donuts for putting two sugars in my coffee (I don’t take sugar). What I don’t have to do is stay in that disappointment or irritation. I can choose to put my focus on all the other great ‘wins’ that are present, taking in all the feelings of accomplishment, pride, and happiness that are just as real. Basically, acknowledging all of my feelings…the ‘Whole Truth” of my situation.
So, here’s the plan. I’m going to take some time to really ‘own’ that I have received my very first published work in the mail. Allow myself to feel the full weight of that accomplishment. I’ll celebrate the ‘win’ tonight with a seriously large amount of candy (enough that I will definitely regret eating it while slogging through my run tomorrow). Then, and ONLY then, will I begin to fix the ‘glitches’ that need fixin’ (or more accurately, I will ask for some help fixing those glitches). Hopefully by the end of the week, I will start eyeing all those libraries for my “Changing Your Weather” Workshops. I’ll let you know how it all goes… Wish me luck! 🙂
