Chore day April 10, 2022 --- Life hands you a lemon and you feel gratitude

Not a life-shattering lemon. Just an annoying lemon. This time the unsavory fruit is a refrigerator that won’t refrigerate. The buggy machine has been a hassle for years, and now it’s just giving up being useful. I spent most of the day trying to get the defroster to work. I learned about arcane error codes and about pressing two buttons simultaneously for three seconds, and when all of the magic incantations had been studiously applied, the refrigerator still wouldn’t refrigerate.

So now I’m scouring the Internet in a mad dash to learn about refrigerators so that I can buy one that won’t torment us with annoying antics. And guess what! Every refrigerator that fits my requirements is out of stock, back ordered, or not available for delivery until August (it’s now April 10).

Then I think that my problem is trivial. It’s annoying. It’s an inconvenience. It’s just a matter of waiting a few days and all of my petty irritations will evaporate. It could be so much worse. Then I begin to feel gratitude for all that I have, my family, my dogs, my friends, my job, my health. And I send out a few words of kindness to all the suffering people and animals I will never meet.

May you be happy and content. May you be safe, protected and free from inner an outer harm. May you be healthy and who to the greatest degree possible. May you experience ease of living.

My First POD Sales Report

After I published The Jaybird That Jumped Down A Chimney, I was able to let it go and move on to the next book. I didn’t think about sales except to remind myself that I should try to do some promotion. It would be a good idea to at least put a link to Amazon in the side bar. But I got distracted with the new book and spent all of my time working up the storyboard for the new book. Eventually I procrastinated on adding the link until a few days ago, after my partner said, “I looked at your blog. How can anyone buy the book if you don’t give them a link?”

When I published my book at the beginning of January, I dialed my expectations down…all the way down to zero. Were someone eventually to buy my book, that would be a good day and I would be calm and appreciative. But when I visited my Ingramspark dashboard this week and read that 3 more units had been sold, I felt an unexpected welling in my chest as my dialed-down expectations all expanded to life. Selling three copies of my book triggered an intense joy and gratitude that made my eyes and nose sting with emotion. Three people had bought my book!

To my three readers, wherever you are, I send you my sincere thanks. I hope you enjoy the book as much as I enjoyed creating it!