On my recent trip to Europe with my family, we decided to rent bikes in Amsterdam and ride through the park. It didn’t start out well for me. I did a proper Roy Kent (If you know…you know 😉) and fell straight off my bike onto the hard pavement the first time I got on.
I wanted to quit. Before I even made it to the park, I wanted to return that damn bike, find a cafe to sit in where I could rest and generally feel sorry for myself. But I didn’t.
Instead, I cursed the bum knee that gave out on me and caused me to fall…and then I got back up, got back on and went with my family to the park. What followed was one of the highlights of our trip. A once in a lifetime experience for our family that we’re still talking about today.
Now while I wouldn’t say falling off my bike was exactly a turning point for me, it was a perfect metaphor for how my life has been feeling lately. Getting knocked down by something unexpected, and being forced to continually get back up again.
I know I’m not alone in this, I know many people feel the same way about life right now. And I wish I had a better advice that went beyond “just get back up again and try again.” But what else is there to do?
Case in point, it’s been more than three years since my debut novel came out, and rather than having a new book to promote, I find myself without an agent and querying once again. It’s not where I imagined I’d be at this point in my career. But you know what they say about the best laid plans and all that.
So there’s nothing more for me to do other than see this as an opportunity I didn’t know I needed. I have a completed book I love, that I know is good and I want to share with the world. And I have so many more books inside me that haven’t even been written yet.
Which is why I’m back up on my bike and feeling hesitantly optimistic about the path ahead and where it will take me. And if it eventually leads me to the New York Times Bestseller list that should be good enough to help me get over the whole falling-off-my-bike-in-front-of-a-bunch-of-strangers-in-Europe thing.
