Friday, September 3, 2010

Slo-o-o-o-w-ing down

It happens to all of us! We start blogging, then we get busy, and the blog posts start to fall off. You feel guilty, you know you should make time for it. But the day is gone before you know it. I SWORE it wouldn't happen to me. That I would be different! Ha!

These past few months, I've been swamped finishing up the manuscript for my book, Miracles and Moments of Grace. It is a book of inspiring stories told by military chaplains. My deadline was September 1st. That was Wednesday. And... I made it! The book will be published in March 2011 by Leafwood Publishers. I'll be sure to let everyone know about it when the time comes!

This book was easy to write, even though it took me a year. But, in essence, it was exactly like the manuscript I wrote that was intended to be a book of weight loss success stories titled How We Did It. For that book, I interviewed 30 people and wrote up their stories of how they lost their weight -- anywhere from 20 to 220 pounds. Alas, though my agent and I sold the book, the contract fell through. Then the economy fell through the floor, and with it went my manuscript.

That's when I started this blog, Thirty Ways. In it, I tell the stories of some of the people in my book. But it felt wrong simply transferring their stories to a blog without asking permission. So, as I've gone along, I've been contacting my sources and telling their stories as I get the okay from them. I must say, though, that people have pretty much moved on and I can't contact them, or I don't hear back from them.

So... the posts have slowed down. And I've moved on. But I'd still like to tell weight loss success stories here, because I've heard from so many people how life-changing weight loss can be. I know it has been for me. Though I lost only 30 pounds, the new lightness is not only in body, but in my mind. The dark places in my head, the places I repeatedly went to -- I'm ugly, Where can I hide, I'm a failure, I hate myself -- have dissipated.

If you'd like me to tell you story here, or if you'd like to be a guest poster, just let me know. I'd love to hear your story of success. While the guilty voices chiding me about my weight have disappeared, I still have those guilty regrets about my poor neglected blog.