When I was a kid there was a book series I loved. It was called The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole aged 13 and 3/4. The secret diaries told of his love for Pandora, his adventures in the housing estate in England in which he lived and the break down of his parents marriage and the sister he ended up with along the way. Years after I read the series, when I was an adult – and so was Adrian Mole – I came across a book called The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole: The Cappuccino Years. It was like visiting with an old friend whose life hadn’t necessarily turned out the way he had expected.

I’m in the middle of a cleaning frenzy at the moment and the other day I stumbled across the Cappuccino Years sitting on a shelf. I’d forgotten I had it, or all about the teenage adventures of a spot covered Adrian Mole. As soon as I saw the book however, I remembered so much of the story instantly. It was one of those books. One of the books that shaped a young mans love of reading and it’s one of those books that when asked why I want to be a writer, I mention.

I was thinking today about other books that have helped to shape my career desires, my hopes and my focus. There a several books that made me what to write, the first of them being a picture book from my childhood that I still have “My Sometime Soon Book“. My Sometime Soon Book told a variety of short stories about a young boy. He wanted to be a journalist, a pilot, a doctor, an engineer, an architect. Each o the stories focused on one of those adventures and told the story.

Another book was Where The Wild Things Are. I’ve written before about how that book fired the imagination of Little Me and transplanted half my brain to the lands of the Muse and the Monsters.

But I came across a book the other day, not a novel, more of a self-help book, my aunt gave me when I was struck down with Whinny-Emo-Teenageitis. It was a book about focus, and about intent. It was a called Creative Visualization by American author Shakti Gwain. It was some fairly heavy, esoteric reading for my then 13 year old self, but it was the beginning of a journey that would cover my life in a spotty kind of way.

It was then I discovered that I could manifest and create pretty much anything in my world. When I put my mind to it, followed the nudges I got along the way I’d end up in a far more magical place than I had thought possible. The copy I have of Creative Visualizations now isn’t the original one Robin gave me. That one feel apart years ago. This is one I picked up at the Mind Body Spirit Expo a few years ago. Around the time I had a lady draw my spirit guide.

I find it easy to sink into what can only be called a funk. When things don’t go my way or go the way I assume they should I get the poops and find myself barely able to get out of bed, barely able to function. I smoke too much and I drink too much coffee and I shave about once a week. I sit and watch movies and hate on the creative team behind them because obviously if I’d had those breaks – i.e. I’d worked hard for what I wanted – I could do that too. I read books and feel seething anger towards these hacks who put words on paper and get published, because I could do that too.

There comes a time though in all stories ,where the hero has to get off his arse and actually do something. He can’t sit on his bed like a moody teenager, texting people and barely grunting as conversation. He has to take action.

Taking action isn’t necessarily something I’m overly good at. I tend to worry about what could go wrong. I tend to “chicken out” of any game of “lets see what happens”. I tend to think every chance is the only one I’ll have. It’s a load of nonsense and there’s no logic behind it. But there you go.

I’ve come to that point in this unemployed hobo journey where I have recognised I have an amazing opportunity. I have the opportunity to re-craft my world. To put all my talk into practice and to recreate a world where I have the ability and the time to do exactly what I want to do.

I wrote yesterday about a control freak losing anything to control, a workaholic who has lost his identity through losing his job. I write today thinking about how much use I could be putting into doing something that is meaningful in my world. Not just grabbing a new job as a permanent distraction from where I truly want to be, but writing, going back to meditating and creatively creating my world.

A few years ago I wrote an ebook called Meditation for Busy People. It’s available on Lulu.com and also through Amazon and the iBooks store. Every month I find an email from Lulu sending me royalties through PayPal. Never much really, certainly not enough to live on, rarely more than $10. But the point is for years, people have been buying that book and I’ve never really focused on making it successful.

I’ve tweeted out links here and there, and I’ve posted pictures of the cover, but it’s a part of my nature not to acknowledge the good. Not to acknowledge when I have achieved what I set out to achieve.

I guess the point to this post is that it’s all well and good to have dreams, but they take work. You have to acknowledge when you do the right thing, and you have to acknowledge the success of a project before you beat yourself into the ground. I’m always looking at the horizon. I’ve always done that. When one project is finished I move on to the next with never a thought to what’s gone before it.

I wrote a book and it did well. I’m writing a gay romance novel at the moment. I put up a couple of small sections on a forum I’m a member of to get feedback. That was a daft idea. It’s a forum attached to a gay porn website. Everyone seems to be waiting for the 50 Shades of Grey moments and I’m not ready for the characters to be getting their groove on. Besides, I’ve read some of what passes for Gay Romance and they’re all sex scenes no substance, no emotions, no anything other than anatomically impossible men doing things that make my eyes water 😉

I allowed the ease with which the story was flowing and the lack of noise when I posted the two sections to derail me. I have to believe more in myself. I have to believe that if I’m looking for something – and writing it – others will be looking for the same thing and will be interested in buying it. Who knows. The only thing I do know for certain is nothing ever sold if it wasn’t created first. And to create it physically I first need to create it in my mind.