How much cake is enough cake? This much? A teensy bit more?Last week it would have felt like 'enough' if my novels had sold one hundred thousand copies.
Today I got the weekly sales figures for The Letters. I sold 23 and 33 came back, making a grand total of minus ten. I felt grateful for every single one of the 23 copies I'd sold.
How did I get from there to here?
By going deeper. My feelings of lack last week weren't really much to do with my book sales at all. They might just as well have latched on to food, and made me eat too much, or to money, and make me worry about my finances all week long.
The details of what happened will stay between me and my therapist, and I don't really understand it all yet anyway. It has made me realise afresh HOW DIFFERENT the world can look, depending on what's going on inside our heads and bellies.
Thank you for your supportive messages last week. I'm all better now, until the next time. But that's OK too. As my Daily Dharma email reminded me this morning, life is as it is, not how we want it to be. I wouldn't have it any other way. How else would we learn anything?
Rather than worry or obsess about enlightenment, why not be honest and accept that we will have our good days and our bad? We will have some enlightened moments of loving-kindness, as well as some dull ones. This encourages all of us to stay real and experience the moment as it is—not how we want it to be.
–Donald Altman, from Living Kindness (Inner Ocean) (you can sign up here)
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6 comments:
Well, I'm quite proud to say that I own a copy of The Letters. I enjoyed reading it very much too!
You know, Fiona, your descriptions of daily life are so evocative that sometimes when I'm fiddling in my kitchen, I'll think of you gardening or maybe making tea and I'll just feel happier to know that there are such good, interesting people scattered throughout the world.
A lovely day to you-
marie
Brilliant! Thank you Fiona. I've been feeling sorry for myself under a pile of marking until I read your post and remembered how lucky I am. Here I am, sitting at my desk, working from home with the radio babbling in the background, stopping for tea when I fancy and doing work I love -most of the time! It's what I've always dreamed of. Tommorrow I have a one to one session with a student who is struggling. I'm not quite sure how I am going to help her yet but my guess is we will feel our way and learn together. Perfect normality restored. Beth
Aw, thank you Marie : ) A lovely day to you too.
Beth - it's so hard to keep remembering, isn't it? Here's to how lucky we are.
And I'm proud to say I just received my copy of The Letters from the Book Depository!
I'm looking forward to reading it.
As you say, it's all about the emphasis. That's 23 copies you would never have sold if you hadn't sat down one day and written one word to start one sentence.
And who knows what the next one will sell, or the one after that!
Thank you Emma! Hope you like it.
And jem - yes, how lucky I am to have a couple more lined up. It's all a matter of perspective...
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