By: T.D. Dickinson

Have you ever achieved a goal in your life that was so big, you felt lost after completing it?

Have you ever checked off that item on your bucket list and felt like more of a failure after completing it?  

Have you ever prayed so hard for something, only to finally get it?  And in the answering of the prayer, do we finally realize that we should be careful what we pray for?

Well, for me, the answer to all three of these questions is, YES! YES! and YES!!!!!

I began writing as an outlet to safely express my imagination.  Throughout my life my imagination has been weaponized against me.  So needless to say, that I had a major issue with the whole “No weapons” thing.  I had become my very own weapon of mass destruction.  

Before writing, my “storytelling” would just me Lying of sorts on my friends and loved ones….

But in writing, did this pass time of “story telling” take a more productive shape in my life.  

I began using my mind and started creating fake narratives for fictional characters, often using qualities of personalities in people I admired as muses, but just for fun of course.

But in doing this, it safely took my story telling to new heights, not to mention the levels of elevation my personal and social life began to take after I stopped using my friends and family as real life muses for storytelling.

Once I began writing, I realized that writing had this profound effect on me.  I began to speak differently, and even food tasted different.  I slowly turned off the TV and began filling my brain with my own thoughts.  Once my thoughts were my own, my outer world reflected the same.

I began to dream again, and in dreaming did vision for my life return.  

Skipping a lot of details but I finally completed a novel that I was proud to release.  I felt that the essence of the story reflected who I had become, and I felt that Fear Faith Love reflected a part of my journey that I was proud of and was willing to share with the world.

Let’s interject right there, I was proud to share this particular part of the journey with the world…….

Some thoughts do not need to be posted, not every song should get air play, and there are some books that could AND should be left on your C Drive, but hey, guilty as charged, OK.

Every day is not perfect, and there will always be those individuals that will find something wrong with what you do. (That is their purpose, and all we can do for the soulless is intercede…. thoughts and prayers work wonders) 

 As long as when you read your book or post, or when you hear a child sing along to your lyrics, or even when you look in the mirror, that you are proud of what you are reading, hearing, and seeing, that is all that matters.

Deeper than even that, before you put out something that can influence a persons mind, you should know your own ideals.  Ideals are your absolutes, what you like, what you don’t like, etc.

Either way, I had finally produced a product I was proud to present to the world.  

Now to the hard part, PUBLISHING IT and then an even bigger task was ahead, MARKETING IT!

No one wants to have a product that they can not sell!  This is the curse of the artist who uses their talents for the wrong reasons and in the wrong light.

I approached this task as I have many other tasks in my life, intellectually. I did not know it then, this was where I messed up, but I assure you that I know that now.

Always approach a situation with prayer first and listen (mediate) for instruction.

Either way, I researched all things “books”.

Not only did I want to get my book on the shelves, all wrapped up pretty and shiny, but I also wanted to make money off of it as well.  I mean, I truly believed, like so many authors out there, that I had the best book ever written and when anyone read it, they would love it and be instant and forever fans…….

HAH, nothing in this world works like that, but I have always been known to dream BIG and when I say BIG, I mean BIG!!!!

I went to the best school out there in my mind at the time to learn as much as I could at my own pace, so I mentally enrolled myself unofficially of course, to YouTube University where I sat there for countless hours learning the ins and outs of the publishing world.  

Or so I thought.

I would soon learn that, even when armed with all the knowledge you could possibly take in, wisdom is only gained through experience.

Writing was also an escape from my situation at the time.  I had lost my will to live, giving up on my children, my love interest, and most importantly myself.  I was in a very dark place after the death of my mother and had turned to drugs and a very reckless lifestyle. I used writing as my way back to them.  

I told myself that the only way back to them was to achieve what I had left to do, and that was to follow my big impossible dreams.  I was determined to not come back empty handed, so the search for the perfect publisher began. 

Everyone told me I was insane for dreaming so big, but hey, I heard this all of my life……

I went to elementary school at Quitman Elementary School in Quitman, MS and during my 2nd grade year, my mother, Yogi, and her then boyfriend, Kenny, had taken me to see a show with the likes of Dione Warrick, John Forsite, The Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders, and many other celebrities. 

 I had gone back to school and told all of my friends (or shall I say peers) of the stories of my family’s weekend adventure.  The girls in my class all laughed at me and called me a liar.  Interjecting, these same group of Caucasian girls also refused to believe I took dance lessons, and I snuck my ballet slippers to school in my bookbag to prove I was not a liar. 

Two weeks later, we had gone to Mexico for spring break, and I had crossed the Rio Grande with my cousin Matthew Fagan from Corpus Christy, TX.  When we returned to school, we had started a new lesson in school and we were talking about the Rio Grande, which is a river that separated the national borders of the United Stated of America and Mexico.  I raised my hand proudly to announce to the class that I had just crossed this particular over, and I also had a funny little story to boot to go with my eye witness account.  

At this point, my teacher had had enough of my “exaggerations” and would speak to me after class. Too her defense though, I also did things that did not help with the exaggeration claims such as wearing my 70 year old grandmother’s eye glasses to school to lie like I wore glasses.  I mean come on…….Obviously no mother would allow their daughter of the second grade to wear grown up glasses, and my grandmother had no glasses to wear all day while my but was at school…….I would have been tired of me too

After class and before the buses took us home, my teacher gave out our report cards.  Now, I was excited because I knew I had great marks as school came very easy too me, but when I got my report card, I noticed I had an F.  It was too late in the day to discuss this with the teacher, and I had to catch the bus.  (I was only in 2nd grade, but I knew if I went home with this, it would be awful for me, but I did anyhow, oh well….)

I got home and Momma gave me one of the worse whooping I had ever gotten.  She also accused me of lying to her about doing my school work.  My grandfather gave me a spanking as well but before Mom because he saw the report first.  

The next day, parents had a conference with the teachers, and you would not believe what the teacher told my mother…….

The conference went something like this…….

I am sorry for Tia’s recent performance in school.  She really is a very bright kid.  I don’t know what is going on for her to have an F.  What can we do to help her bring this up?

Miss King, I am sorry to have gotten you up here on such drastic measures, but Tia does not actually have an F.  She actually has an A+.  But she also has an issue with lying and exaggerating.

Oh, really like what?  Give me an example…

Well, about a month ago, she came in and said she spent the weekend with Dione Warrick and John Forsite, and that they call her Miss Thang

She comes in wearing elderly glasses that are obviously not hers…

And after spring break, she claimed to had been over the Rio Grande just as we were learning about it.  I don’t think this is healthy for her to have such a huge imagination and believe it so strongly as she does to fight to defend her stories. 

She had gotten quite defensive, and we had to restrain her over defending someone’s ballet slippers she snuck to school.  I mean, she is definitely a BIG DREAMER for sure……

Well, Ms…. (I don’t even remember at this point, I’m 42 SOOO….) I do apologize for the glasses, they were my mothers, and we have talked with Tia many times about these things, but as for the ballet slipper, they are hers.  And, we did go to Mexico for spring break, and she was with Dione and John.  She does things like this quite often.  Do you understand that education is important in our home?

I’m sure it is Miss King (in her Karen voice)

I physically punished my daughter for her unsatisfactory marks that she did not deserve.  Going forward, we will focus more on educating my daughter than trying to mold her morals and ideals.  I assure you, we are doing the best we can to ensure she becomes a great person.  Please help in ensuring that she is as knowledgeable as she can be.

-Now, knowing me, we all know that I put my own little vernacular spin on it but trust me, it went very close to that, and to have known my mother, you really understand that it is pretty close.

So yeah, I have been a big dreamer.  My dreams would be rooted I reality yet fertilized with lies.

So, after months of dreaming up being a published author, I began acting on those dreams.  I wrote a query letter over two years ago and compiled a list of hundreds of places to send them to and I did just that.  I also did broad searches on the internet, and this led me to an agency that promised many things for a great price, way cheaper than the average and of course, I went with them.

They delivered, but at a cost.  

Many of the things that they promised were of poor quality and I would often get quite discouraged, leading me to go into a shell.  

Hermitization only delays the promise, so I would hear a voice tell me to keep going.  It would often come in a subtle smile from my son, or a simple, thanks Mom for the most random things. Or even a random I love you Mom for no reason.  Or in the laugh of a child, still innocent, without a care, worry or fear in or of this world.

Either way, I just kept going.  Determined to deliver to my children what I set out to do.

Although I was not a fan of the finished product of the book, Fear Faith Love was ready to hit the shelves so that would mean I was ready to go back to my loved ones.

I did just that but with a finished product that was not all the way true.  You see, this agency turned out to be a fraud, a scam

 And I learned really quick, that everything that glitters isn’t gold baby.  I returned to my family the same way.  I was polished up but still there were holes in me that when squeezed, the pain from the past still oozed out.

Was I just as fraudulent in my healing as this agency was in publishing?

The first week out of the gate, the system was showing that my book was doing great.  The numbers were racking up on one end, yet, there was no revenue coming in.  I would look on Amazon and it would not reflect back the graphics and analytics they were sending me.  

Something was not adding up.

This company also promised many things that they could not deliver, or would partially deliver but to go live, that would require more funds.  I knew at this moment that I needed to go back to the drawing board.

I had gotten what I prayed for sure but with the wrong vision, it came wrapped up in a pretty messy bow.

My career and life at this point were at a standstill.  I had become TRANSVISUAL. I saw myself as Big but in reality, I was just a BIG DREAMER.

Problem: I was doing too much DREAMING and not enough DOING.

Solution: BE LIKE NIKE AND JUST DO IT!

So, I laced up my running shoes and decided that this time, I would go the distance, not cutting any corners.  

The only way to get, support, and keep the lifestyle I want, not only did I have to learn about it, but I had to experience it.  Wisdom came in committing to living the lifestyle that I wanted, which meant the following:

Changing my people places and things

Learning my absolutes

Making goals and sticking to them

Loving the word NO

And asking myself the hard questions of:

Is a published author a Luke warm Christian or is she all in?!!!!!!!

What does a published author eat?

Where does a published author live?

Where does she shop?

How does she spend her days?

What kind of car does she drive?

What do her friends do?

Does she do Pilates or is she a gym girlie?

Does she do her own nails?

Is she financially responsible, let alone financially intelligent (there is a difference.  One is knowledge and the other is wisdom)

Is she soft and confident in her femineity or is more comfortable in her masculine?

Is she an Alpha Female or an Omega Female? (she is definitely not a Beta for sure)

Like, I had to ask myself all of these questions in order to manifest the life I wanted for myself.  

I came up with a recipe, and now it was time to cook……

In order to check off such a huge item off of my bucket list like becoming a published author, I had to establish some pretty firm boundaries, but I found in this was that this started to filter out, by natural vibratory selection, those who did not have a place at the table with me, and this left me feeling like I failed.  

I had to go on a journey back within to start the recovery process to rebuild those bridges and until the world understands that bridges can only begin construction from within, bridges will continue to collapse and be left vulnerable to metaphorical arson.

Prayer was the answer to everything for me, but I thought I was already doing that.  My outer world reflected that, although I was in the presence of Jesus daily, I was not walking with Him daily.

My prayers needed better vision so that I would not suffer from vision confusion any longer.  

I chose to walk with Him, daily.  And in that walk did miraculous things began to happen and my life began to shift.  I think somewhere in his presence did I want to start walking, so I went from being fed spiritual baby food to being fed spiritual chicken tenders and fish sticks.

And somewhere in between the spiritual chicken tenders and spiritual fish sticks, did one of those query letters finally land.  

I was home alone and all of a sudden, my phone rang.  It was an agent reaching out after getting a query from me some time ago and wondered if I was still interested in collaborating with Franklin Publishers. 

I sent in two manuscripts, and the rest was history, a revamp was in order.

Many people ask why do a revamp of something you have already presented to the world, I say, because I changed my mind, I renewed my spirit.  

I released what no longer served me, and in doing that, I realized that the old way of thinking, cutting corners, going about it the easy way, will never help me achieve all of these BIG DREAMS that I now know and am very certain that I was destined for, can only happen with Christ.  The righteous way.

Is there something you have always wanted to do, be, own, drive, etc.?

God wants us to enjoy this world, for he created it all, but what he does not want for us is to become of this world but be transformed by the renewing of our spirit.

What ever you do, give God the praise.  He does not ask for much, all you have to do is simply believe He will make a way and watch Him make a way out of No Way.

So, if you ask me why I revamped and re-released an age old tale, a tale as old as time, a tale of life, of struggle, and of perseverance, I will tell you simply because……

I changed.

That is why I revamped, Transformation comes with accountability and a whole lot of self-awareness.

And as always, follow me for more life transformation tips!

Happy Monday Yall!