The idea for this project had been brewing for years, but the ambition just wasn’t there to give it the gas. Suddenly, I felt my foot mash it to the floor. I knew what this project was all about. I had to start over – just like I did with my emotions. No one would believe me if I shared my story in a way that made it seem unachievable to anyone. When a person has any kind of success, it’s like a highlighter has swiped those events, and the rest of the person’s life is just wadded up, crinkled, pieces of paper shoved under the bed. People are invisible until success illuminates them. I had to step back and become invisible again. I chose my alias and didn’t say a word about this idea to anyone. A few close family and friends just knew it as “my project”. I simply told them that the secret was what made the project, and that’s why I couldn’t tell them. The secret was that no one could know who was writing this or it defeated the purpose of being invisible again.
I started from scratch and began to wonder how anyone would find this when I had no groundwork. All social media profiles were blank slates. My name was untraceable because it didn’t really exist. This is how I felt decades ago, but times were different now and I believed this to be a huge advantage. I loved marketing, and I spent a large part of my life trying to tell people how to market their own projects. Now it was time to show them. The biggest marketing project I could ever take on would be this one – one with no identity, no friends or followers, and essentially no existence at all. I wasn’t even sure how to start. Should I build followers with this personality? Should I just market the project only? Should I create challenges to make people try to solve the mystery of who I was? I tried a few tactics and ultimately decided to scale back and see where fate could take this. Most good things in life come from working hard and being persistent until the right opportunity shines like a spotlight of blessings beaming down on you. I wanted that approach. I decided to write just because I needed a creative outlet. I wanted to get at least half of the project finished before I worried about people finding it. I didn’t set an outline, and I didn’t even know the ending – I just knew I had to be transparent.
See, the crazy thing about life is that sometimes you have no clue why you do what you do – you just feel these forces pulling you down these rabbit holes of situations and opportunities. I believe that while not every decision is the right one, they all lead you down the right path. Every failure and mistake are pieces of this insane puzzle that’s been handed to you in a giant plastic bag… and you don’t even know what picture you’re trying to make. I think the biggest problem people face is that they forget just how big their picture can be. Everyone is underestimating their puzzle. I believe that one day I will sit down and have a conversation with this celebrity that I feel connected to deep within my soul. I fully realize this makes no sense and out of billions of people in this world, the chances are almost zero that I would meet this one person… and that he’d make time to have a conversation with me. The thing is, I don’t believe the world operates in logistics. I believe feelings are there because sometimes you just know how things are going to be. I see myself being good friends with this person regardless of how rare the opportunity is. I’m patient because fate doesn’t care about our timetable. If I’m 80 years old and can only be friends with this person for a week, it will be an incredibly meaningful week that I will be grateful to have. Events don’t have to be long-lasting to be life-altering.
When I met my other half, I had a similar feeling. We shared the stage many nights in a row. After each show, I had a very odd but persistent feeling that he was supposed to come home with me. I couldn’t make sense of it then, but it just felt like that was our routine. At the time, I didn’t feel a romantic connection at all… it just felt like that’s how it was supposed to be. Logically, there was no reason why this would ever happen. I was married at the time, he was 15 years older than me, and I didn’t feel attracted to him other than a close friend that I felt like I’d known forever. Fast forward almost 20 years later and he comes home to me after every show. Sometimes I look back and wonder how I could picture someone coming home with me but felt no “love at first sight” vibes. I suppose it was deeper than that. He was my person – not a fling or a fleeting romance. He was just always supposed to be the one coming home to me.
I think these are the types of thoughts that are terrifying to people and make them question their own sanity. I have found, however, that entertaining these possibilities proves to be true more times than false. I’ve also found that others could, at any moment, declare you insane if you share these thoughts as though others have them, too. I can’t tell you why some people walk this earth as surface dwellers who are accepting of everything that is easily explainable, while others seem to have an altruistic view that spans what the eyes can see and the mind can comprehend. All I know is that a deeper and timeless energy exists for those willing to go with the flow even when the river seems dry. Sometimes life sails you swiftly without effort and sometimes you have to pick up your boat and walk for miles… but in those times, unearthed fossils in the riverbed can reveal just as much as the wind that powered your sails and the water that imposed your path.
I wanted to convey a real-life testimonial that made people think deeper, explore more often, and embrace the “what ifs” more times than they discounted them as evasive thoughts. So, I started over – a blank slate, a new name, and an untold story that would evolve into a set of circumstances that everyone could understand and apply to their own lives. Humans deserve so much more than just the ability to live. We all deserve the right to dream and push boundaries in a way that creates unselfish positive outcomes for one another. In a perfect world, one person’s success should lead to mentoring another person into success. I wanted to be the person that could pass the baton to as many people as would listen to me. I wanted to level the playing field so that everyone could find a way to dream with confidence.
In the meantime, I continued doing what I had to do to keep the bills paid and the progress moving forward in other areas of my life. I spent a lot of time writing odds and ends – from children’s books to pharmaceutical articles. In fact, I wrote so much that I stopped feeling the need for writing to be my creative escape. The very project that had consumed my thoughts was beginning to feel like just another job. That’s exactly what I never wanted this project to be – so I stopped writing. I hit the brakes and decided it would wait. This whole idea was never intended to be commercially acceptable or fill anyone’s expected timeline. In fact, no one even knew about it yet, so there was no reason to be in a hurry. Summer was coming to an end, and I felt a small piece of my creativity leave the day I docked the boat for the last time in September. My boat had brought so much life and freedom to my world, and I didn’t want it to end. It felt like I had just made the final curtain call to the greatest play I’d ever seen. I was certain this was going to be the longest winter ever. That night I looked down at the ship wheel tattoo I had gotten that summer, and I decided that might be my favorite tattoo I had. As silly as it might seem, it was a subtle reminder that the boat was still mine – that this wasn’t all a dream – and I’d be back behind the wheel soon enough.
Winter was like a script that had fallen on the ground and then picked up a week later after the snow melted. It wasn’t that it was a bad winter at all, but the memories were like blurred ink on stained paper. I was somewhere in this strange purgatory of life’s autopilot mode while having this new understanding of the life I wanted to continue to fulfill. I had people to reach, dreams to achieve, and places in other countries I wanted to visit. I envisioned taking my kids to Italy and Greece, while I settled for making sure they had the best life I could provide until then. Many people don’t seem to realize that success doesn’t make you rich. In fact, when you work for yourself with any level of success, there are times when you are just as low on funds as you were before you had a name. Sure, you have more assets, but the cash-in-hand problem still exists when you aren’t living off an employer’s paycheck. The difference is that people only see the pool in your backyard, the boat at the dock, and the nice car you drive… and they don’t understand that you have to say no to some of the same things they can’t afford.
I contemplated how I was going to continue to achieve these dreams without letting them get lost again in the daily grind of living and raising a family. Christmas was over, January lasted 300 days, February was 9 days long, and suddenly it was March. My senses began to wake up again, and I felt my ambition emerge from hibernation. I needed to get my nest settled before I could comfortably work on this project again. My goal shifted toward making a life that would allow this project to see itself through to the end that I hadn’t written yet. I needed to be financially at ease in a way that didn’t take up all my time every week. I looked over my budget, my current projects, my hours spent on each project, my current clients, my obligations, and the time I wanted to spend with my family. After looking at it all in a spreadsheet, it was easy to see that I needed to spend less time working and making more money in that allotted amount of time. Without giving it another thought, I decided to double my rates for my daily work and roll out another project that had the potential of making a larger sum of money if I played my cards right. I stopped worrying about projects that weren’t on the lower end of my pay scale, and I focused hard on getting projects that fit my new rates. Little by little, the smaller gigs dwindled, and the larger gigs began to accumulate. I carved out a 30-hour time slot over 3 days to create a new book that I felt had the potential to be highly profitable. I worked with my other half on some of his projects as well because I believe that a relationship can’t survive if both people can’t progress equally. He needed my help to jumpstart some of his own projects, and I needed him to stay far away from the depression that always lurked in the background like extras in his own movie.
Around that same time, my best friend also needed me. She needed a place to live, and I had extra room. I don’t think you ever say no to a friend in need, so she moved in. Part of me felt like I was sliding back down that hill with the tumbling rocks about to head my way. I was once again holding back the tide for everyone else while simultaneously trying to build my own sandcastles. However, this time I felt like I could be helpful without completely losing myself. I knew my limits this time. Each time I felt feelings of hopelessness beginning to brew, I reminded myself that this was all for the greater good. I remembered the old binder I used to have with the picture of the boat on it, and how I looked at it for years before that dream came to fruition. This time my goal was something I wasn’t even sure of. I just kept my eye on the lifestyle I knew would come to me, the people I had to meet, and the places I wanted to show my kids. Once again, I set my eye on a reverse goal – I envisioned the results of the goal rather than the goal itself… and I needed another tattoo.