This morning, I woke up sad.

For several minutes, the inaugural minutes of this July day, I didn’t know why I felt this way. I looked around me for clues. My legs were tangled in powder soft sheets. The door to the bathroom was ajar; through the opening I heard the rumble of Husband’s shower. Out the window, tree branches swayed, flirting with the sun, cocky even at this early hour. A muffled melody came from the corridor; the sweet chirping of little girls. And, at all of this, these small things that are so big to me, these mundane morsels of the everyday, I did smile. But that smile faded too quickly. And I was left there, alone in my bed, swaddled in sadness once more.

But like a good existential trouper, I sat up, reaching for my glasses on the bedside, eager to see. Eager to see more clearly the lines of my life, my good life. Eager to see more clearly the lines of my melancholy. Because there is one thing worse than sadness: unexplained sadness.

I paused on the edge of our tall bed, my feet dangling freely like that of a little child. I continued to listen. The sounds changed. Husband turned off the spray of water. My girls started calling for us. And it hit me. Suddenly and swiftly. I am sad because we are moving. Because one week from today, our life will be in boxes and crates. Seven measly days into the future, my family will migrate.

And I know this is exciting. That it is a distinct privilege that we have been able to dream and design, brainstorm and build, and pick wild purple papers. I know. And I know that it is a matter of time before we are settled there, before the new place is home.

But for now. For now, this is home. This is our place. This is the place where I have spent seven-plus years, stumbling and evolving. I arrived here a young girl, a student of life and law, confident and confused. I will leave here a different breed. A wife and mother and wordsmith, a student of love and loss and longing, ever confident and ever confused. Husband proposed here. Our babies were raised here. Dad knew this place. I wrote my first book here (and at Starbucks). I threw killer parties here. A lot of good things happened here. A lot.

In the kitchen this morning, as we were pouring our coffees, I hugged Husband. Like always. But this time I lingered, not letting go. “I’m sad that we’re moving,” I said.

And he hugged me fiercely. “I know, but we are moving in the right direction.”

With these words, something lifted in me. Lightened. A smile settled. And, this time, it didn’t fade.

“Thank you,” I said. To my man. The man who moves me every day. Who will move with me next week.

And then I felt a rush, a tricky emotional tide. Of sadness, yes. The sweet kind. Of happiness, in muted and magical tones. Of excitement, building. Of change, scary and sublime. Of relief, that I can be honest, that I can be sad, that I can say what I’m feeling. To my guy. To you.

With my cup of coffee and my computer, I went to the couch. The couch that will be soon hoisted by strong strangers into a big truck. I did what I so often do when I’m a bit lost. I looked for words. Words about change. And I found something that made me smile.

“There is nothing wrong with change, if it is in the right direction”

Winston Churchill

This made me smile because Churchill and my man said the very same thing. I told Husband. You are a very smart man, I insisted. And I kept smiling.

But behind that smile, this smile, the complex sadness lingers and asks. What is the right direction? Is there such thing? How do we find what is right? What if we are not as happy in our bigger home with the high ceilings and crystal door knobs and  fancy wallpapers?

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• Do you ever experience unexplained sadness? How do you cope?
• When you approach big change in your life, are you more confident (a la Husband and Churchill) or confused (like I am)?
• How have you handled the moves in your life? Has it been hard for you to leave behind the space, the memories, the years?
• In life, do you think there is such thing as the “right direction”? Or do you think there are just directions, paths, this way and that, and we tell ourselves they are “right” to feel better about our choices?
• Am I a spoiled brat (indeed likely) for not being 110% ecstatic about moving into our lovely new place?

{Shameless self-promo. Because I want a big, bad writing career and rumor has it that sales matter }

Life is like riding a bicycle.

To keep your balance you must keep moving.

Albert Einstein

I am not very good at stopping.

My days are stuffed with chaos. Profound chaos that emerges from a brilliant mixture of choice and chance and children. Persistent chaos that defies my clumsy attempts at boxing it. And this chaos, this chaos that has come to reign, it keeps me on my toes, keeps me acting and reacting, thinking and saying. Night time offers no solace. There is chaos there too; a choppy storm of images and insights. Each morning, I awaken with shards of more chaos to carry with me.

My days are full of flux. Activity. Motion. There are creatures crying and singing and laughing and running. There are emails dancing. There are things to do, mouths to feed, goals to envision, words to write, hands to hold, memories to tend, fears to accommodate, hopes to fluff. There is Time, that beast that has no choice but to tick and travel, marching on with us and past us. There is no pause button. There is no status quo. There is evolution with is soft core and hard edges. There is change, good and bad and indifferent.

Life moves and morphs. We cannot ask it to stop. It does its own thing. And so. We must move with it, spinning those wheels, our wheels, looking ahead and around, speeding and slowing, the world’s wind whispering sweet nothings and sweet everythings into our tiny ears, toward destinations unknown. To keep our balance, we must keep moving. Always moving.

I am not very good at stopping. Which is good, I guess. Because I am in the business of living.

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Do you believe that to keep our balance in life we must keep moving? That if we stop fully to study the landscape of existence, to question things, to discern order, we will fall?

*** Would you like to join Team LAY? Click for details!***

I have two words to utter on this fine Monday morning:

Thank you.

In case you missed it, there was a fascinating conversation in the ILI comment box last week about whether it is good to be “nice” or not. I encourage you to check it out if you haven’t yet. But in that original blog post of mine, I posed a question, an honest question that I was a bit afraid to ask:

How do I continue to promote my rookie novel Life After Yes in a non-offensive, yet effective way?

Here’s the deal. Here’s why I asked the above question in the first place. I am a new kid on the writing block. A rookie in this delightful game. And, frankly, I am thrilled beyond measure to have a uniform at all. But. Because I am a newbie, an unknown entity, it is hard – and understandably so – to gain exposure. I’ve been so excited to hear from so many people who have read Life After Yes and loved it, but the plain truth is that there are many many people who will never ever hear of my book or of me because that is the way things work. And this is not a sob story. No. This is reality.

But I am a scrappy little tomboy here and I’m not willing to play dead, to curl up in an air-conditioned corner and pray that strangers stumble upon my words. No. So I asked you guys for some advice, and, man oh man, did you come through. You were full of ideas, many of which I plan to follow through on! And let’s not veer too far from reality. Heeding your genius suggestions will most likely not morph me into the next J.K. Rowling (even though my name A.D. Rowley is auspiciously close), but it will help. Because of you and your thoughtful ideas, more people will meet Quinn and that simple fact? It makes me smile. So, one more time:

Thank you.

Here are some of the ideas you all proposed. I list them here because I honestly feel this blog post could prove useful for fellow bloggers and authors and people who would like to get the word out about their creations!

1. Blog Tour

When LAY first debuted, many of my loyal blogging buds wrote reviews of my book or interviewed me on their sites. (You know who you are and thank you!) The result was incredible! There was a tremendous amount of buzz about my book around its birthday. I was also fortunate enough that TLC Blog Tours set up a blog tour on my behalf. Here is the link. Here we are, two months later and I would love to keep touring! If you would like to interview me on your site (about the book or the writing process in general or insecurity or anything), please leave a comment or contact me! Also, if you plan to review or run a Q & A and would like to giveaway a copy of LAY, let me know and I can send one along.

2. Book Clubs

The “niceness” conversation last week was prompted by my visit to a wonderful book club outside of Chicago. It was absolutely fascinating for me to participate in a discussion of my creation and I would love to do this again. And again! If you have a book club in the NYC area and plan to read and talk about LAY, let me know and I will do my best to come (only if you would like me to)! If you have a book club anywhere else and would like me to participate via Skype or a call-in, let me know!

3. Guest Posts

If you would like me to write a guest post on your site (I will link my readers your way), please contact me. Again, I would be thrilled to write about the book, or about almost anything else (within reason!). OR and this is where it gets fun, if you would like to be considered for a guest post here on the weekends, please let me know. I have been planning this for a while, but, hey, let’s launch it now. Since I do not blog on weekends, I would love to make weekends my ILI Old School where I showcase your best archived posts (or original posts that tie in to the themes of this blog).

4. Tweet Ups

Twitter parties! I know that many of you are on Twitter and if you are not, I encourage you to join if only to attend one of my forthcoming Tweet Ups. How does this work? I pick a time and we all gather at our computers (hey, we are here anyway) and we chat via Twitter. About what? About Life After Yes. Yes, the book. But more so about life after yes – all of the issues and questions that come up in life after we commit – to a marriage, to a family, to a career. I will post more details about this, but I honestly think it will be fun and juicy.

5. LAY Ambassadors (Passing out free copies! Covertly leaving books in strategic places!)

How to get the word out and gain exposure? Give out copies of my book. For free. Yes, that’s right. For free. I have done this a handful of times now. I have walked up to strangers and said, “I just published my first book and I was wondering if you would like a copy?” And the recipients have been excited! I plan to do this some more particularly since LAY takes place on the Upper West Side of Manhattan where I live. But… This is where you guys come in. How fantastic would it be if I could do this – handing out copies of books or leaving them in strategic places – all over the country? If you read my book and enjoyed it and would like to be a LAY Ambassador, please contact me! I will go ahead an mail you a slew of copies to distribute where you live!

I know this post is a bit boring and technical and lacking existential vim and vigor. But this post is important to me. Because, honestly, I wanted to pause and thank you for your ideas and for your continued support. This might all be for naught (oddly love that word). These strategies might prove to do zip for my literary baby. But still. Still, there is something immensely encouraging about having a virtual team around me, shouting from the sidelines as I go to bat in this game for my very first time. Still, there is something vastly rewarding about standing up there, here, and swinging for the fences. Yes, even if I ultimately strike out.

I’m getting redundant here, but I love redundancy, so:

Thank you, Team LAY.

(Don’t worry. Tomorrow, I will abandon this self-promotional sludge and go back to clumsily contemplating the modern cosmos.)

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Please leave a comment and let me know if you have any thoughts or additional ideas! (Additionally, I plan to look into advertisements and video).  Also, please leave a comment or email me at ivyleagueinsecurities [at] gmail [dot] com if you would like to:

1. Interview me on your blog.
2. Review LAY on your site.
3. Guest post here or have me guest post chez toi.
4. Host a book club discussion around LAY and have me visit in person or virtually.
5. Attend a Twitter party. (What are ideal times during the week to host these?)
6. Receive a bunch of free copies of LAY to distribute where you live.

Life After Yes, my rookie novel, has been out in the world now for almost two months and I want to give you guys a bit of an update. And, as is becoming par for the course chez ILI, I also want to ask you about something. Something philosophical and something very practical. Here goes.

A few book highlights. Before I left for vacation, I was pushing Baby in her stroller by my local Barnes & Noble. Without realizing it, I slowed to a stop outside the bookstore and stood there with no real agenda looking at the window display. I told myself that I should go inside and see how LAY is doing. Baby was thrilled as she knew this meant a new Dora book (Mommy is a sucker) and I was oddly a bit nervous. We made our way to the New Paperbacks section where LAY had been displayed and it was not there. My heart sank. I was tempted to pout and leave, but no! I moseyed on over to the Information Desk, asked about my literary baby, and what do you know? It was on the Paperback Favorites table! The nice man (I believe his name was Alex) asked if I would sign some books and so I did. And I met the mother of a fellow lawyer who wants to jump ship and write. She bought my book for her girl!

While in Chicago, we visited a local TARGET. I was thrilled to see that the book section was right there by the entrance! When I inched closer, I saw a little label on an empty shelf in the Bestsellers Display that said Life After Yes. So, my book was on the bestsellers shelf and was sold out. Score! You know who else scored? Toddler and Baby. They are now each proud owners of utterly-flammable and not-at-all-hideous polyester Thomas the Train pajamas that they must wear every single night. They also got their very first (metallic pink) soccer ball which is a big deal since they will both one day be collegiate soccer stars like Daddy. (No pressure, kiddos.)

Do you guys know Leah Stewart? Well, she is a wonderful author (her latest is HUSBAND AND WIFE) and she organized almost fifty writers (mostly women, including moi!) to do an epic book giveaway. The contest was a follow up to Allison Winn Scotch‘s earlier brilliant giveaway and the winning book clubs received books for a year! Anyway, I plan to write an entire post on this fabulous community into which I’ve luckily stumbled because I am beyond honored to be included in this amazing and diverse group of authors.

Speaking of book clubs, my good friend from law school who now lives in the Chicago suburbs encouraged her local ladies to read Life After Yes and she arranged the discussion so it would fall on a night when I could attend. (Thanks, D!) Truth be told, I have never been part of a book club, so I didn’t know what to expect, but I was excited! And for good reason. There was something completely fascinating about immersing myself in a discussion of my own story, of the characters I created. My fear, my biggest fear, was that the women there would censor things because of my presence, that they wouldn’t be as critical as they might have been if the author weren’t there.

Well. The women loved the book. Or most of them did at least. Or most of them said they did at least. But. Yes, there is a but. A big one. There was plenty of criticism. Not of my writing or my storytelling ability, thank goodness. But of the main character. Quinn. Now, I know many of you might not have found the time in the last two months to read my book, so let me give you a little color on this leading lady. Quinn is a confused modern soul. She is a bit lost. She makes mistakes. She has not been plucked from a Disney movie. Are you with me? She is flawed and struggling and, ahem, real.

These book club women had a hard time sympathizing with Quinn. They felt like she was indulgent, that she drank too much, that she was a shred promiscuous and untrustworthy. One woman in particular, a lovely mom of two who was our host for the evening, summed it up well. She said something like:

“I just didn’t like Quinn because she was not nice at all.”

Wow. Interestingly, this was kind of hard for me to hear. And, frankly, I got a little defensive and protective of my protagonist. I said something like, No, she is not nice and perfect. She is struggling and having a bit of an identity crisis. And she might not be a nice person, but I think, ultimately, she is a good person. Honestly, I rambled a lot more than this, but I will spare you. The point is that though LAY is fiction, and is not a story about me, I felt personally invested in this discussion and even a bit hurt. Why?

I am not nice. Not a quintessentially nice person. Now, I’m not mean either. I am nice a lot of the time. I am polite and civilized (most of the time). But I’m not sure the first word anyone would use to describe me is “nice.” I would like to think of myself as thoughtful, empathetic, trustworthy, honest, loving, etc, but nice? I’m not so sure. I’m a city girl with an edge or two. There is some cynicism and skepticism pumping through my veins and sentences. Do I cheat on my husband and swear like a sailor? No. I don’t. But I’m still not sure that I’m “nice.”

Okay, Aidan. What ever is the point? Well, I’m not sure, but there is one and I think it’s kind of interesting. What is niceness? Is it something we should all strive for in our lives? Should we expect it of people and of protagonists? Or, maybe, is life more real and interesting when the barometer is core goodness and intention? Maybe no one can be nice all the time? Maybe we should be a pinch suspicious when we encounter someone who is nice all the time? I don’t know. I do know that I am rambling, that I love rambling, and that I feel very privileged to have made a cameo at such an interesting (and eye-opening) discussion of my own work that has left me questioning not only Quinn’s character but my own.

Now, the practical bit. I will keep this quick, but it’s important. I need your advice and expertise. It appears that LAY is faring quite well in the world. People seem to be buying the book and liking it. That said, it is very important (for the health of my first book and my sanity and my writing career) that the book continues to sell and that I continue to spread the word about it. But how? How do I continue to promote my book without it being overkill, simply too much? I am just not willing to throw up my arms and say “whatever happens, happens.” Not yet at least. There has to be a way to continue to let people know about my book and to encourage them to pick up a copy. You guys are smart. So, bring on the ideas!

Whew. That was longer than I expected. Recap: (1) I am not nice; (2) I am seeking a nice way to continue to promote LAY.

• Are you a nice person?
• Are you interested in reading stories about nice people?
• Are you suspicious of people who are always nice in every situation?
• Do you agree that it is possible to be a good person without being a permanently nice person?
• Do you agree that there is an important difference between being “nice” and “not mean”?
• Do you have any genius ideas about how to boost book sales two months into the game?
  

Time. It floats. It fades. It flies. It flits. It flees. And the thing is, the haunting thing is, that we can’t get it back. Once it is gone, it is gone. And I know this is obvious. I know I am not saying anything revolutionary here. I am stating the obvious. That time moves, and past us, and away.

And another thing. Another obvious thing is that time is not unlimited. Minutes pass. Hours turn. Days dry. Months finish. Seasons cycle. Years evaporate. Decades die. Lives end.

And so. It matters immensely how we spend our time. How we utilize the increments of our energy. Because how we spend our time is really how we spend our lives. It matters fundamentally and fiercely whom we spend our time with. Because the characters in our stories are our stories, aren’t they? They are it. It.

On this Friday in mid-June, this eighteenth day of the sixth month of my thirty-first year, I am thinking about these things. These simple and complex things.

Time. Creatures. Limits.

For the past year, and for the past several months in particular, I have worked very very hard. I have not slept well. I have not stopped. I have not logged nearly enough time on the wood floor singing and giggling. My fingers have done far more typing than tickling. And this makes me sad.

Because there are three creatures in my life, one big and two tiny, who need me. And I need them. And when I think about it, really think about it, when I allow myself to be honest with myself, I realize that I have not been there for them. Not in the way I would like to be.

Instead, I have been here. Tethered to this screen, loyal to my sentences and to my stories. I have spent much of my time (too much of it?) here. And good things have come from this. Brilliant things. Friendships and partnerships and ideas. A blog. And a book. And these are exquisite things.

But they aren’t my creatures.

And so. On this morning, I am left here. At the screen that has sustained me and supported me and taken me away. And I sit here now, a bit shaky, my cells tired, at a crossroads. Do I want to be here or do I want to be there? Really, I want both. I do. But sometimes, in the cracks of my days, in the cavernous crack of this particular day, I wonder – and worry – if both is possible.

It is a big question. A bold one. One that deserves me. One that seeks gentle thought and true embrace. I will give this question what it needs. I will let it soak me.

Tomorrow, my three creatures and I leave for vacation. There are plane rides and fishing trips and sand castles in our immediate future. And, up until this very moment, I have been terribly torn. Tugged. I have been confused about what to do. Because there are words to wax. A blog to maintain. And a book to promote. This is a critical time in my career.

But you know what? This is also a critical time in my life. A time when precious plates are shifting within me, when impossible questions are saturating my soul, when things are awash in grit and gray. My girls are young, but growing. Too fast if you ask me. My identity feels frail, fractured, full. Blogger. Author. Wife. Mother. Please note the order in which I list my aspects.

This says it all.

For the next two weeks-plus, I am taking time. Time off. Time away. And this scares me a bit, more than a bit, tremendously, but deep down I know. I know this is what I need. What they need.

My three creatures.

My three reasons.

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I hope you all have a wonderful couple of weeks, a great Father’s Day, and Fourth. Please do not give up on me in my absence. My words and I will be back and soon. And fresher than ever. Thanks to you all for your sweet support and understanding now and always.

*The lucky winner of Allison Winn Scotch’s The One That I Want is Lena!*