The Timing Was Finally Right!!
The old saying goes timing is everything and I whole heartedly believe that. It couldn’t be truer about the time to write my first of many children’s books. Ever since I had my second daughter, I wanted to write a children’s book. She used to walk around everywhere with cotton balls in her hands and called them her puppies. I knew there had to be a book around that somehow, but the timing was never right so that was just something that I talked about periodically but could never really act on it. When I became a travel advisor, I was asked to write a monthly column in the Agent@Home travel magazine as well as their sister publication Vacation Agent and occasionally was featured in/wrote articles for Travelpulse.com; that kept my creative appetite for writing satisfied until they were sold just prior to Covid.
Once Covid lockdown hit, my travel business went on hiatus, a REALLY long hiatus. I had wanted a sheepdoodle puppy for years and for some reason at the end of January I made up my mind that I deserved to have one and was going to do something for myself and buy me one!! I reached out to the breeder that came highly recommended, sent the payment, and met my new furry not-human best friend Bentley at the Atlanta airport on February 18th, 2020. Shortly after that day the world went into lockdown, my travel business stopped and like everyone else, I had to fill my days with other things. You would think that is the perfect time to start writing my first children’s book, but not quite.
One of those things that I filled my day with was just doing nothing. I have always worked 2+ jobs since my daughters were born and if I am being brutally honest, I was exhausted. While the lockdown and the temporary end to travel was really scary, devastating, and heart-breaking, unbeknownst to me, it was a break that my mind, body & soul desperately needed. For the first few months I did nothing but play and be with Bentley. Taking tons of photos, making him an IG personality, and just doing things I never would have done otherwise. I needed to spend some timed doing mindless things because the future was so unknown and a real worry, so the nonsense stuff was a welcomed distraction.
One of the things I had to do at the beginning was train Bentley which caused us to spend a lot of time outside behind our house and that is where/when we met Mr. Bee. Mr. Bee started coming around the first time I took Bentley outside. He was larger than most bumble bees and we found it so funny that he always buzzed around Bentley when we were out there and at one point, even landed on his head. It was the cutest scene you could ever imagine seeing and at that point I said to my daughter, The adventures of Bentley & Mr. Bee sounds like a great start to my writing career. I thought about it a fair amount and envisioned their antics in my mind over and over. I took a lot of notes and wrote down a lot of ideas.
You are probably thinking that has been almost 4 years ago, so where is your book? Don’t forget, Timing, timing, timing.
Planning my youngest daughter’s wedding & my oldest daughter’s baby shower both took front & center and left me with minimal time. My daughter’s destination wedding took a lot of time because we were in the middle of a national crisis and that made planning difficult, it also was difficult to find our vision, so we designed and purchased almost everything for the wedding. I designed & planned everything for the baby shower as well with the help of my youngest daughter. A Charleston wedding and an Annapolis baby shower. Not a small feat especially when I am as meticulous as I am.
Time flew by, I moved from Auburn AL. to Atlanta GA. and then needed to find work. My savings was dwindling, and I needed a job to survive as well as pay for a wedding and a baby shower. I grudgingly went back to accounting, the profession that has been good to me for over 25 years. Where is the writing coming in to play? Did I forget about it? No not quite, but I had to do what I had to do to survive. I worked for one company that I thought might be my forever job. After a little over a year, I knew that was never going to be the case. I started hating getting up and logging into my computer, there was a bully that made life miserable every day and I knew I was going to get out of there as soon as I could. That wouldn’t however be for another year. During the time working as an accountant, I still dabbled in travel but always knew in my mind 2023 was going to be the year that I dove back in because the issues with covid wouldn’t be a prominent issue that we had to maneuver around. My business, however, wouldn’t just jump right back to where it was at in the beginning of 2020 so what was I going to do?
In August 2022 I had decided I needed to stop putting this company first that was putting me last and start doing for myself and putting myself first. I wasn’t sure how to do that because I have never, in my entire life, put myself first, but I knew that things had to change. My grandmother passed away in December 2020 from covid and I took it really hard. I struggled from that moment and still struggle with it today. My youngest daughter kept telling me to start therapy. I finally gave in and started in May 2022. I know hard-headed right? After Miranda’s wedding I totally fell apart (that was May 22, 2021). I went through a really bad time, very sad, depressed, I wasn’t liking the job as much as I thought I was going to but like most I continued to muddle through. Starting therapy in May 2022 was a big step and a huge turning point in my life. At the end of September, I knew I was just riding out the job until I was no longer needed. I hated it and was tired of being bullied pretty much on the daily. I had started making changes, setting boundaries, only working during certain hours, not answering messages/emails after that time. It felt great. In October 2022 I read the book “6 Phases of Meditation” by Vishen Lakhiani. The book had a big effect on me. I started meditating daily and haven’t missed a day of meditating since. I manifested the time to finally write my first children’s book. It was a dream I finally wanted to tackle. After a few days of meditating and including writing a book into that, a children’s book mastermind class showed up on my Instagram feed and the rest as they say is history.
I researched the program and signed up in November. I was going to either quit or go part-time at the job I hated in January 2023. At exactly 2 years to the day they said they were cutting back and I wasn’t needed which was amazing. This opened the door to my true happiness. The year 2023 was going to be all about taking chances, focusing on self-care, living a healthier life and reaching for another dream. I had about 1 month of not working and just focusing on the holidays and my book. By mid-January I had a part-time accounting contract that I was looking forward to because it was only 10 hours a week and I really like the owner of the company and I had submitted my manuscript for the first round of edits. By the end of January I had landed a dream corporate client to plan their travel & events, something I truly love to do which never feels like a job.
In a few short months I turned everything around and was happier than I had been in a really, really, really long time. The TIMING WAS FINALLY RIGHT to write my first children’s book. I have enjoyed the process immensely and have 2 pages full of additional book ideas. Bentley’s Fantabulous Idea is coming soon in 2023. Visit www.MikiTaylor.com to share Bentley’s Funtastic World with your kids and let their imagination soar.
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