The common application of this particular freedom, to explore dreams deferred, is usually called a “mid-life crisis”. What do you call it when you havenot yet reached that mid-life mark and you realize you have not been following your hearts true desires? Rebellious? Flighty? Get-Rich-Quick Schemer?

What I do know is that there are dire consequences to ignoring your hearts truest desires. Sometimes it is hard to know what those are and it can take time to figure it out, but at the end of the day you should be able to say “I love my life!”. If that phrase just made you scoff, then this post is definitely directed at you!

My heart’s desire as a child was to read as many books in as short a period as possible. At the age of 9 I read “The Yearling”, a 428 page book, in less than two days. Considering the time spent in school and doing homework, this was maybe a total of 5-8 hours of straight reading. My teacher was so impressed she didn’t believe me, and I had to write a very detailed book summary for her to give me credit. Somewhere between 9 and 25 I forgot how much pleasure I derived from reading books. Long, short, boring, funny, scary… any kind of book would do when I was younger. Thanks to the Kindle, I have since recalled what the feeling was like.

New realities form with each book I read, I plunge myself into the mind of the main characters and visualize each scene as if it were a movie. I cringe when they cringe, yet still scoff when they behave in ways even I could see was just trouble. A new world for each book, a new happy or sad ending and a new author through which to view the life beyond. And as I continued reading, 65 books in less than a month, I recalled my childhood dream: to be a publisher. Not just ANY publisher who was too concerned with mainstream trends to care about what the author wanted. I wanted to delve into the minds of other writers, see what they saw and give them the opportunity to share it with the world.
We are all unique, and I have found that for every person who hates a book- there are two others who it hit home for.

I decided to start a publishing company, finally! I believe I have a talent for visualizing the picture an author tries to build and helping them fill in the missing pieces on their canvas. Combined with marketing skills, internet savvy, and book publishing discounts, I believe I can make a difference to many writers. Yes, maybe once they get popular they will take their later works to a highly publicized company that can fly them to great locationsand get them on Oprah’s Book List [working on that, by the way]. But should that happen I will still say that I reached my goal. That author would have reached their full potential, and in my mind it will be in part because of what I was able to do for them.

So, I encourage YOU to think about this: what dream of yours have you been delaying? Why not go after it today? That is one freedom no one can ever take from you. It doesn’t mean you have to quit your day job, it just means you spend your off hours making your dreams come true!