I’ve been having a pull-back week this week. It’s kind of like a mental health day, only longer. On emotional overload after my uncle’s funeral, and after seemingly every one of my close friends has had some kind of crisis, I finally had to pull back. To limit phone calls and emails and invitations in order to process some of what I’ve taken in. Death often causes us to do this. To look at how we’re living, to see if we have our priorities straight and our “house in order,” even to the extent of updating our wills and health care powers-of-attorney.

Before I learned about the death of my uncle, I had been struggling with a career decision. An agent expressed interest in my first book, Thinking About Therapy. She wanted to try to sell it to a mainstream publisher–every self-published author’s dream–except that, in her opinion, re-marketing it would require pulling it off my website. At first glance, it seemed like a no-brainer. I could have an agent! One who doesn’t intimidate me, is passionate about my topics, and returns my phone calls.

On the other hand, I had a visceral reaction when she mentioned pulling the book, especially after the enormous effort that went into redesigning my website last fall. Add to that the fact that I’m getting some traction on various fronts online, and the timing felt completely off. It would have meant switching gears, perhaps even backtracking. In the end I decided to decline the offer, although we left the door open for working together on future projects.

Then, this week, the webmaster for an online magazine for women responded to my request to blog on their site. A few weeks ago they had put out the word that they were looking for bloggers, and, in a high-energy moment, I had signed up. They sent me an application, and asked if I was interested in writing a regional or national blog. As my husband likes to say, “Is that a trick question?” Don’t all writers want as much exposure as possible? At any rate, the application asked me to explain what I thought I could offer to their readers.

Isn’t it amazing how hearing the right question can set your brain straight to the task of answering it? Part of my emotional funk this week has been due to a lack of focus. Self-published authors face a dizzying list of shoulds. In order to build an audience and sell books, we are told that we should blog, set up book signings and speaking engagements, send out books for review, write magazine pitches and sell articles, create book trailers, mine the web. And, oh, by the way, write the next book. I’m guilty of switching haplessly from one to the other, sometimes getting overwhelmed in the process.

Which brings me back to the “What can I offer?” question. I know the big-picture answer because I’ve done a lot of work in this area and I have a personal mission statement: “To inspire others to live a more joyful, purposeful life.” I want to share my personal experiences with other people, particularly women, in the hopes of saving them some of the emotional struggles that I’ve been through.

I just needed to be asked the question again. Refocused, I know where to put my efforts going forward. I have a feeling that, as a result, next week is going to be one of those pull-ahead weeks.

As Greg Anderson says in his uplifting book Living Life on Purpose, “You have a mission in your life…Truly, the world has need of you…You are here, now, where you are, how you are, given the personality you have, with the unique abilities you possess because this is your moment to contribute to the world.” 

How about you? What can you offer to the world? Do you need a pull-back week to figure it out?

Take all the time you need. We’ll wait.

This entry was posted on Sunday, June 29th, 2008 at 10:26 pm and is filed under Health and Aging, Inspiration, Psychology & Personal Growth, Writing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.