I Wrote a Book
And I didn't let myself feel it until this week.
Hey friends,
I’ve plopped myself down feet from the water and I don’t plan on leaving until dark.
Josh and the family are down here for the week. For the first time in 18 months, I have nothing on my calendar.
That’s not an exaggeration. I have been writing, editing, rewriting, launching, talking about, posting about, podcasting about, and sweating over The Nurture Method for a year and a half. Eighteen months of waking up with a chapter on my mind. Eighteen months of “I’ll rest after.”
The book launched April 28. Four weeks ago. And I kept right on going. Launch party. Instagram. The Amazon thing (don’t get me started). Screenshots flooding in from Barnes & Noble. Reviews. Interviews. The list of people I still need to thank.
I told myself I’d rest after the launch.
The launch came and went and the rest didn’t.
So I said it’s time for a beach trip to fill my soul. Because at some point I had to look at the woman who wrote a book about not running yourself into the ground and ask her, with a straight face, when she was planning to take her own damn advice.
Here’s what’s happened in 48 hours of sitting in this chair.
I have, for the first time, looked at what I did.
I wrote a book. A real one. A whole one. With chapters and a cover and an ISBN. Somewhere right now there’s a woman reading something I wrote on the couch with Nugget next to me and Blue at my feet. A friend hollered at me across a coffee shop a few weeks ago holding her copy, tabbed and highlighted within an inch of its life, and I stood there like an idiot trying to figure out how to feel about it.
I couldn’t see any of that while I was in it. I was too busy.
The old me would soften this part. “I’m not bragging, but...” — y’all know the move. I’m not doing it.
I wrote a book. It is the biggest thing I have ever made on my own. Eighteen months, most of my sanity, every weekend for I can’t remember how long. And I hope it does for some woman out there exactly what I wrote it to do.
It took sitting in this chair to feel any of it.
Nobody warned me about the stopping part.
So that’s what I’m doing this week. The book is out. The work is real. And I’m going to let myself sit with that for a few days before I figure out what’s next.
The tide’s coming in and I’ve got a beach read to get back to.
xx, Heather
Incredible.