Stopping to smell the roses.

It’s March already? How the hell did that happen? Wasn’t it just last week we were all in a turkey coma from the holidays? Apparently not.

This has been one of the busiest years of my life so far and I am loving every second of it. There’s a better than zero chance I’m not getting enough sleep, and a ninety percent chance my house needs a top to bottom cleaning that it’s not going to get any time soon, but apart from that, it’s been amazing. The only trouble is that I’m so busy chasing my dreams I sort of forgot to enjoy the moment.

I load an ARC copies of each of my books onto my kindle as they come out. It’s a rite of passage, something I do to mark that story’s arrival. This weekend I finally got a chance to tackle my ever-growing “To be Read” pile and thanks to a mis-click I ended up opening one of my books instead of the intended one. And that’s when it hit me: it was my book; a book with a title, a cover, and a story to be told. As easy to open on a kindle as any other I owned.  I will confess I giggled like a school girl as a very basic truth finally sank home. I’m a published author. I did it. That only took five months and the writing of four more books to really sink in…*sighs* Sometimes I am a little slow on the uptake.

It happens to all of us, we get so caught up in the race that we forget that the point isn’t to arrive at some arbitrary point as quick as we can.. It’s not even about getting to that point at all. It’s about the experiences and moments we get to have along the way. After all, when we reach the end of the race, we leave this life behind us. So why be in such a hurry? So this weekend I went out shopping with my best friend and spent too much money on clothes. I had a brownie, napped and watched my honorary niece work as “crew” at her high school drama class’ production of “Peter Pan.” I didn’t make my word count goals for the weekend, but that’s okay. The words will be there tomorrow. Peter Pan only ran for a week.

I’m going to try and remember to take a bit more time to smell the roses. At least I will, once they finally bloom. For now I guess I’ll settle for admiring the snow drops and daffodils.