Yep, I wrote a book! (You can see inside and everything, on Amazon.) I figured if I was going to hector college students about getting involved, taking on more, being adventurous, and making things happen, then I should hold myself to the same standard. If students’ academic load wasn’t a good excuse for their being too busy, I didn’t think my work life should be either. I told lots of people I was writing a book, so I’d be irrevocably committed. And with many thanks to the dozen or so who swore they’d read it, or make their high school or college student read it, I knew I had to actually get it done in a reasonable amount of time. I sat down every Sunday afternoon from Memorial Day to Labor Day, taking over Nick’s abandoned desk for the writing, and eventually moving up to Jake’s for the layout and rounds of editing.
For the first time in my life since college, I put on headphones and wrote for two to four hours at a time, week after week. I hired an art director friend, Jessica Gheen, to come up with some cover ideas (she’d already gifted me the Launch logo), my husband, Mark, built me an InDesign template for the inside, had my mom, my father-in-law, and another friend, Amy Cahill, do a read of the draft, and I hired another friend, Eileen Haley, to do the final proofing. I implemented all their feedback and changes as I saw fit (any typos or errors are entirely my fault).
And, as expected, it was a little uncomfortable. I wasn’t totally sure I could do it and I was a little in over my head at times. But when I give advice to students now I can really say from personal experience that moving outside your comfort zone to accomplish new and different things is incredibly worthwhile, if only in the change in creates within yourself.
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