Savor the Success - Business Network for women entrepreneurs

I've used the analogy of birthing Celebrate Green! ever since I sent it to the printer. But tomorrow really is its birth day, the day it is "officially" launched into the world, the day we have been waiting for since last November when we received an email from the editor 15 minutes after we submitted the proposal that simply read, "Yes."

If you've been along since the beginning of this blog, you know the road has not been easy. And you don't know half of it. Every single day, we've been faced with at least one roadblock. I told my husband not long ago that if I believed in such things, I would think this book was never meant to be born at all because we'd dealt with so many obstacles.

Today, I had planned to get out our itinerary for the blog tour featuring 34 "stops." It's been a bear to organize, but here I am down to the wire and my computer starts acting up. I turn it off. The mouse is frozen. Change batteries. Still nothing. Windows comes up but I can't enter my password. Try another mouse. Nada. Try my Wacom tablet, zilch. Turn the computer on and off half a dozen times, plugging and unplugging everything I can think of. My panic is interrupted by a phone interview for a radio show and a client (one of three I'm still trying to gently "lose" as I move away from coaching). Then I have to leave to babysit for my grandaughter, Ella.

I get to my son's house, open the door and then can't remove the key. It's stuck. Jammed. Grab a fork and try to yank it out. Nope, guess we can't go to the park. We'll have to play in the backyard. Come back in after a game a tag. We're having a tea party in Ella's bedroom when I notice a FOUL smell issuing from...ME! I check myself and when I get to my shoes, realize I've stepped in dog poo WITH BOTH FEET. How is that even possible? They have a tiny dog who normally drops pellets the size of M&M's. Not today.

OK, none of this but the computer has anything to do with the book, but still...I can't help but see it under the umbrella of the book because every single moment of every single day for the last two months since the publisher went belly up and I took on publication, has been a series of stuck keys and doo doo on my shoes. And yet...

Here we are. There are 3000 books (less the few hundred we've sold in the last week) waiting for homes. We have interest from a dozen magazines. We're now the celebrate green "experts" on a number of blogs. I've recuited about 100 of the 500 villagers who will help propel our book from the basement where most self-published books languish, to the top of some yet-to-be-named mountain. I have not the tiniest shred of doubt that this book is going to impact life in this country and on the Earth for the good, which is the reason I put myself through all this agony.

I'm grateful to our cheerleaders including everyone here at STS. Honestly, the opportunity to blog the experience has been helpful to me in many ways. I hope it has been for those who have read it.

CelebrateGreen.NET and our book are the culmination of a big dream, but they also are just the beginning of a new phase in my life. It's rather extraordinary when I think that only 18 months ago, I had the rest of my life planned. Nowhere in those plans had I made room for a new passion and purpose. But it materialized anyway. And despite the challenges, the naysayers, the non-believers, the hassles, frustrations and fears, I wouldn't have it any other way.

Like Ella's childhood, so much is behind, yet much more lies ahead.