I am usually the last person you’ll hear talk about “submitting” to anything or anyone, but sometimes “submit” brings with it the greatest feeling of freedom. In the words of Luvvie Ajiyi Jones, it’s like going from swimming to floating.
As I type this, I’m floating. I’m in warm Caribbean waters, floating on my back, letting the gentle waves bouy me. Water laps into my ears, drowning out all sounds. The sun is warm on my face and chest, and every part of me is relaxing on the water, trusting it to hold me up. In my fantasies, of course. In reality, I’m sitting in the living room on a grey, chilly winter day.
You see, today was a “submit” day. Today was the day I chose to do our taxes for the year. My goal used to be to have them done before the beginning of soccer season just because taxes take a number of hours to do, and I didn’t want to start late or have to take a break from them once I got started. It quickly gets addicting having the relief of taxes done and the refund sitting in the account before the end of February. I was going to work on them last weekend but got invited out for coffee, and that was a more important thing in my world.
Today I clicked “submit” or, rather, “file federal return.” Our taxes are done. The IRS has accepted them, and I don’t have to worry about them now. Having that burden off my shoulders was tremendous! And even though I only usually promote my personal stuff, let me just say that Tax Act made filing so ridiculously easy!
On Tuesday I clicked “submit” on another big project–my book. It’s gone through a bajillion tweaks, especially the cover. The last copy was the best, and I ordered a print copy to see how the beautiful eproof will translate to paper binding. Hopefully, that’ll arrive late next week. That was something else that I’m happily getting off my shoulders so I can turn my focus to my next book.
Ahhh, yes. The next book. A work of heart, soul, and psyche. This one is brutal to write. It started with a really good therapy session, a session that left me feeling like my psyche had gone ten rounds with Mohammed Ali and also that it’d taken 240 volts. It felt bruised, battered, worn out, and energized all at once. That’s a damn good session, right there! I texted that to my male bestie. I didn’t want to blow up his phone with texts about it so I just texted that I’d fill him in tomorrow. (It was evening when we were having this convo.) I was going to email it, but then I thought, I want to be able to build on this as necessary without fear of accidentally clicking “send” prematurely. So I put everything into a .doc. By the time I was done, it was 3 1/2 pages, single-spaced. (To give you an idea, a solid 20-minute sermon is four pages.) I emailed it to him. The following morning I started editing. Not long after that, I put it into my bookwriting app. I’ll share more details about this book in a future post.
In beginning this book, I submitted to something bigger and more powerful than I alone–the power of story and its ability to connect us to others who share our pain.
