What if I Can’t Do It?

What if I never make it onto the NY Times Best Seller list? What if I never become “famous” as an author, is that going to diminish everything that I have ever done? Is that really going to deny me of the accomplishments that I have achieved?

The answer that is no, of course, but at what point do I give up this writing thing and get a real job? because I am starting to think that I may have to think about that, and the thought is terrifying.

I don’t want to work for anyone else, I want to continue to have the luxury and privilege to work for myself. I want to earn my place in this world and I want to do it with my own two hands.

I want to build something that other little girls look up to and think about joining when they get big enough. I want to do these things because it’s important for me to chisel out a corner of the world for myself.

I want to look around me and think to myself “I built this” and I want the “this” to be office space filled with content creators and writers. I want to expand LMBG into a Global organization of writers from around the world, and the only way to do that is to give every moment of time I have to it.

But it’s fucking difficult, the only thing that I have to offer you, are a bunch of pretty words that I hope will convince you to believe in yourself. That I hope will inspire you to have the kind of life you have been dreaming of.

I look sometimes to these Instagram Models and I think about the lives they are living, dressed in fancy outfits while attending fancy parties, and I smile to myself and think “no, that’s not it.”

What I want is to cultivate the kind of life for myself that allows me the privilege to travel when I want to, and to share my expertise while simultaniously learning from others. What I want has nothing to do with being famous, it has everything to do with proving to myself that I have something of value to offer the world.

Yes I have a clothing line, and a Newsletter, a Fictional Blog, a Book and a Podcast, but it feels like I am missing out on something. I realize that the more that I do, the more experience I will get, but I am not quite sure what the next step is.

The hard work keeps me going, and if you think that trying to create new content every day or every few days isn’t difficult then you must not use your brain very often. It can be debilitatingly exhausting, but I do it because creating this content is helping me to heal.

I keep hearing about people who are writing books on the news, a lot of them are living in my community, and I keep thinking “one day that’s going to be me,” and then in the next breath I remind myself that I am nowhere near ready yet to be on the front lines of this work.

Self empowerment comes when you learn how to do the things you were absolutely certain you couldn’t figure out. Whether it’s building a desk or giving your car an oil change, when you learn to do something new, you become more empowered.

The same is true about building a brand and learning how to market yourself to a world that wants you to believe your life doesn’t matter because of the color of your skin. It takes time, effort, energy, and sacrifice, but the measure of my success won’t be quantified in the amount of money I make.

It will be qualified by whether or not I gave up. I never want to give up on LMBG being a world class brand, but I also have to be responsible and remember that in the growth of my business I have to find a way to pay the pills. So I am a book writer, I write books now.

Each one I write describes a different phase in my life, a different part of my existence, and each one that I add to the library of Devon J Hall is another feather in my cap. Whether one person reads my books or one hundred thousand people read my books, no one can change the fact that I wrote them with my own two hands.

No one can change the fact that I had a dream and after many years of false starts, missteps, and sacrifices, I shifted my reality to make that dream come true. I did that.

When I look back to my twenties, I don’t see that as me wasting time, I see that time as me taking the time, to do what I needed to do, so that I could survive what I had to survive, so that I could be the person I am now.

It was worth it. I am finally writing books, and while they aren’t the books that I thought that I would be writing by this time, I am finally doing what makes “me” happy.

So no, I didn’t make it onto the NYT best selling list my first time out, but I am slowly building a name for myself and learning as I go. I am pushing myself to write in such a way that others are inspired to believe they can too…and that feels fucking amazing.

I hope you’re having a wonderful Saturday,

Sending all my love,

Devon J Hall