BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU ASK FOR

Be careful what you ask for, you might just get it.  It’s funny how “almost” everything I have wanted keeps coming my way, just not in the form that I expected or thought I had asked for.  For years, I said over and over that I wanted to write for a living.  Then I landed in the medical services profession in hospital settings for close to twenty years.  Most of the time spent in this profession was sitting in meetings, taking minutes filled with a lot of medical jargon followed by writing policies filled with dry legislative and accreditation regulations.  In addition to that, my job responsibilities included writing training manuals and developing guidelines (writing them).  After many years, I finally realized I was earning a living as a writer.  That is what I had asked for, right?

So to clarify what I wanted, my mantra became I want to write for a living and I want to work from home doing it.  A little later, I added travel to that mantra.  I wrote my wish in journals, spouted it to friends or to anyone who would listen, and I thought about it all the time.  I do believe that thoughts become things.  I wanted a writing career to earn a living, writing from home, and writing while traveling to become a reality.  And it did, somewhat.  I have written two suspense novels, and I am no longer the queen of minutes though policies are still a big focus.  I work full-time outside of the hospital setting now where meetings no longer permeate my entire day that included insanely early morning and maniacally late night schedules coupled with a long arduous commute through Atlanta traffic, congested no matter what time of day. 

Thank God I moved from hospital to managed care, which now fills my day with hundreds of emails, instant messages, and more policies to write or tweak.  The electronic conversations alone comprise more than enough words to write numerous books.  Though management is something that wasn't in the plan, I went from managing a staff of two to eight to twenty-six, most of them remotely from their homes.  I, too, work remotely on occasion and soon will be working from home, that’s right, full-time. And travel, right now it's mostly done for my employer.  Over the last two years, I have traveled across country, across regions, and most recently back and forth to Nashville so many times, I sometimes drive there in my dreams. 

Isn’t that what I wanted?  Remember, I wanted to work from home to write for a living and travel.  Oops, need clarification again of what I am asking for; so far I haven’t gotten what I truly wanted. So the mantra has changed to writing novels from home or from wherever I am and to traveling for fun or to promote my novels so that I can become a consistent New York Times or Amazon best selling author. And I have added, to turn those novels into movie scripts and television scripts and write non-fiction books on how to get what you want.   Is that clear enough?  I hope so.  I will keep you posted.

In the meantime, remember this secret which is not really a secret.  “Ask and it shall be given unto you.  Seek and you shall find.  Knock and the door shall be open unto you.”  But, don’t forget, “Be careful of what you ask for, you may just get it.”

Dilsa Saunders Bailey is the author of two hot, sensual suspense novels called The Sperling Chronicles.  She shares her random thoughts in her blog at simplydilsa.    Like her on Facebook’s page - The Sperling Chronicles and join her on Twitter at simplydilsa.