“In the case of good books, the point is not to see how many of them you get through, but rather how many can get through to you.” —Mortimer J. Adler

Every so often, we read a book which “gets through” to us. It’s the book that we begin to underline passages that have meaning for us. The one that has our little notes in the margins making short observations about what we’ve read. The one that we start quoting from when we’re engaged in a deep conversation with someone.

This will be the first of a number of entries about books which created change in my life. My first choice for my booklist is Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert. It is a book about creativity. 

As she points out all of us have that “aha moment” for a book, a painting, a song, a new business venture or a myriad number of other creative ventures. We feel energized and excited about this newfound opportunity. And then as so often happens we keep pushing it off or delay our start date.

Then one day to our dismay we discover that someone else has written that book, painted that painting or started “our” business venture. What happened? Ms. Gilbert believes that initial inspiration of creativity comes from a Higher Place. Its visit to you is a gift. But, it doesn’t stick around forever. When you don’t follow up, it lingers for a period of time and then lands at someone else’s doorstep. When they grasp it and run with it a new creative idea or object enters the universe. You lost your claim to it.

In my life I have been graced with a number of creative moments which I neglected. Then I read Big Magic. At about the same time I had the idea to write about the Twelve Step Program. Instead of going back to a state of sleep, I decided to blog about it. Mind you I had never blogged before. That very day I started my blog, Insights from the Rooms (insightsfromtherooms.com). Then, the idea popped into my head to blog every single day without fail for a year. I honored that commitment which in retrospect amazes me that I was able to do so. Along the way I had thousands of hits on my blog from all over the world.

After a few years of blogging, I was graced with another creative moment and decided to turn my blog posts into a book. Though there was initially some inertia over this I finally did commit to an editor, then a book designer and finally a publisher. In April of 2019, my book Insights from the Rooms was released (https://www.amazon.com/dp/173299420X/ref=cm_sw_em_r_mt_dp_U_3FU-CbHYDS191).

That my friends is Big Magic