“Every experience carries its lesson”

“Every experience carries its lesson.” – Dune by Frank Herbert

Hi Everyone,

15 years ago on February 13th, I opened up my laptop, created a blogspot account, and decided to use writing as a form of creative expression.

Writing at that time was a means of survival and tapped into my hustle drive. I was about to graduate from my masters program and had no job lined up. I spent the next two plus years unemployed and hustling to make money to pay bills. That mentality continued through graduate school.

My building of a blog and my desire to build a business, helped me make some money and also helped me gain skills that proved useful as I found work, went to school, and started my career.

With the decision to sell Intellectual Will guided journals, I decided to push and build a proper business, but something was happening‒it was increasingly becoming difficult for me to separate the business from my career path. There was a lot of overlap and simultaneously, I was losing the joy that came from creatively expressing myself through writing. And curiously what I was learning at work was actually helping me think about the business and improving my blogging skills.

The roles reversed.

I had been pushing so long and hard to survive because I hadn’t yet reached my career goal. Then I reached my career goal and I kept hustling. When I actually didn’t need to anymore.

My hustling served its role. It got me to where I am now. And I don’t need that mentality of survival anymore. It’s time to rest and get back to the roots of why I started the blog in the first place—I wanted to create a place to share my lessons, thoughts, and ideas.

I’m happy to return to that. I’ve stopped trying to build a business and I am returning to writing for the sake of writing because I enjoy it, not because I’m trying to make a profit.

I’m blessed and privileged enough that at this moment I do not need the additional income. I can actually build and write in peace. And build and write and create until the time comes for me to become a full time storyteller.

May you have the clarity and courage to upgrade your vision. This next chapter will build on all the prior chapters. Nothing wasted. – Dr. Thema

Anyway, I love how the first 15 years of this blog was as much a mix of experimenting and figuring things out, as it was filled with frequent and infrequent writing. It was full of it being a hobby to me trying to turn it into a business, to me deciding to go back to a hobby set up. Right now the blog is a place for me to explore writing at my own pace with no pressure and if it makes me money great, if it doesn’t, that’s okay too.

Thank you and cheers to 15 more years.

I’d love to hear from you: What lessons have emerged from your experiences?

*** Dr. Lisa-Marie

Note.

From outside it's easy to see a result and not know all the components that made it a reality. For me it can be as small as a quote shared with me that makes the light bulbs go off. Or a conversation. Whatever it is. I’m grateful.

Thank you to Brahaani for illuminating through our conversations that I’ve reached a new book and volume of my story.
Thank you to Ayanna for sharing that timely quote from Dr. Thema that articulated the phase I’m in and our subsequent conversation that provided clarity on what I wanted to write this month.
Thank you to adrienne maree brown whose book Emergent Strategy has great footnotes. A couple of the footnotes urged the reader to put down Emergent Strategy and read Dune. I’m happy I took heed. I finally sat down and read Dune. I finished it two weeks ago and the lessons of the story and the background of the author proved timely in helping me frame the sci-fi stories I want to write. I am now ready to read Emergent Strategy and I’m excited to see where it will take me.
Thanks to Tim who in our most recent meeting, listened to me worldbuild and provided guidance on where to go next.
Thank you to Karla Renee for saying you were proud of me for making tough decisions and resting. Sometimes reassurance goes a long way in helping someone continue on.
Thank you to you all for continuing to read, some of you have been on this ride with me since my very first blog post on 2/13/2009 and I don’t take that patience and interest lightly. You all serve as an indicator that it’s okay to build slowly. You serve as an indicator that thinking about people over profit can be an aligned direction and I thank you for that. I can’t thank you enough for entering this space of exploration, experimentation, discovery, and knowledge sharing.