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Thank you for subscribing to the ginagreenlee.com bi-monthly newsletter. I hope you enjoy this inaugural
issue.
What can you expect in exchange for your time? Information and inspiration you don't read everyday.
Promise.
Newsletter features:
- The Symbol Life - True stories about how we can use everyday objects and experiences as metaphors for living our best lives.
- Book Updates - The latest on my first book
- The Leap - A narrative serial about my leap of faith into a full-time writing career and my subsequent adventures
in book publishing. This is an ongoing journey and I invite you to join me.
- Readers Write - On life's metaphors and leaps
I think in metaphors all the time. Twelve years ago, I went through a brief period where objects in my
life kept getting stuck. First, an audiocassette permanently lodged itself in the tape player of my car. Then the car
ashtray, which I use for toll change, refused to slide open - this as I approached the Mass Pike tollbooth on my way
from Boston to Hartford.
A day later, my bedroom door wouldn't open. When I stood outside the door wondering how I would enter
the room, a voice inside my head said, "Don't aggress it."
I let go of the doorknob and stepped back. In that moment, I recognized that the door and other stuck
objects were metaphors for how stuck I felt in different areas of my life: I felt trapped in a job wholly unsuited to
my sensibilities; I longed to be in a meaningful relationship but ended up, instead, dating a string of peculiar men,
and I wanted to write full-time - to realize a lifelong dream of financial gain through creative effort. Yet, none of
it was happening. I interpreted the experiences with the tape player, ashtray and bedroom door as having lessons to
teach. That's when I discovered the transformative power of metaphor, what I call The Symbol Life.
Once I connected the concrete stickiness of these objects to how I felt stuck in my job, romantic and
creative lives, I had a new tool for making changes to move forward.
The lessons of the ashtray were, "don't assume" (just because the ashtray has always opened, doesn't
mean it always will) and "be prepared" (have a back-up plan to avoid feeling trapped).
The lesson of the door was "don't aggress life's situations; be more in the flow." Life's dynamic
energy is inherent to all objects, people and events. I needed to ride that natural wave rather than force my own
will.
The lesson of the tape player reinforced one my father taught me as I was growing up: Silence is one
of the keys to life's riches. Rather than fill every pause with ambient noise, I needed to invite more silence into my
world to better hear instructions from my instincts for creating positive change in my life.
Now I notice metaphors for living everywhere. Most recently, I noticed how my relationship with my
hair stylist is a metaphor for how to ask for what I want - of a boss, lover, friend or family member - in a
respectful, yet assertive way.
When my hair wasn't looking quite the way I wanted, my instinct was to bolt and find a new stylist.
That's how uncomfortable I felt about asking for what I wanted. This instinct represented a pattern for how I had dealt
with other, more intimate, relationships. I was so terrified that my requests would be met with disdain, anger or,
worse, abandonment that I refused to risk asking at all.
So, I took what I believed to be the easy way out and found a new stylist. And it was good - for a
while - until she dyed my hair and scalp carrot orange four days before a Christmas party. And, in her unapologetic
attempts to repair the damage, she caused a chemical burn that left a dark, albeit temporary, mask across my
forehead.
So much for the easy way out.
I returned to my original hairdresser because one, she wasn't dangerous and two, I finally understood
that avoiding my fear was futile. Also, avoidance as a lifestyle approach ran counter to my risk-taking philosophy and
undermined my goals to live more broadly. Bolstering the courage to ask my hairdresser to style my hair in a specific
way was an opportunity to practice a skill that would serve me well in other areas of my life.
In the end, she responded favorably to my requests. During those months of give and take between us, I
learned how to sustain - rather than throw away - good relationships that need only a bit of tweaking to make them even
better. This triumph emboldened me to ask for a raise - I didn't get it but I asked! - and to approach all my
encounters buoyed by the knowledge that the gift of asking is not so much in the getting but in the personal power
that's born from a willingness to try.
What do metaphors have to do with my first book? Everything! Cheaper Than Therapy: How to
Keep Life's Small Problems from Becoming Big Ones,
illustrates The Lesson of the Paper Clips - literally, through the talents of graphic designer, David Schulz. Playful
images of pliant paper clips show how choosing what seems to be the easy way out of life's small problems, often
results in bigger, more overwhelming ones. Paper clips that hook onto each other and wind up in a tangled mass on our
desks at home or the office have lessons to teach about expanding our comfort zone and becoming more skilled at
handling whatever life brings our way.
In the previous episode, Gina waited to hear from a literary agent who expressed interest in her non-fiction
book proposal. As she waits, she ponders the creative and monetary rewards of writing from the inside out versus
writing to the marketplace. In this installment, Gina learns news of the agent, returns to the corporate world and
decides to self-publish her first book.
Six weeks passed with no response from the agent after I mailed my follow-up letter asking about her
intentions for my book. I took that as a sign she wasn't interested in representing me despite her enthusiastic request
for my proposal. Just to be certain no ill had befallen her, and that I wasn't leaping to conclusions in the absence of
all the facts, I phoned the author who gave me the agent referral for more information. The author told me the agent
recently had been sporadic in her communications even with writers she had under contract. What had so captivated her
attention at this time? She was on tour - promoting her own book.
This latest disregard for basic courtesy and six months of my time I can never recover only fueled my
increasing weariness of living on society's margins as a freelance writer and would-be book author. Three years had
passed since I had taken my original "leap" from my corporate day job to focus my energy on a full-time writing career.
Yet, I was buying food at the Dollar Store to make the rent. I learned a lot in those three years - about my writing,
the publishing industry and myself. But I began to wonder how long the value of those lessons would sustain me as I
funneled more of my creative energy, not into writing, but toward stretching a dollar.
Returning to a corporate job for the sole purpose of earning money was one of the most difficult life
decisions I've ever made. When I decided to go back, it took me exactly two weeks to find work paying me seven times
what I was making annually as a freelance writer. I am grateful to be in such a position when others with families to
feed and clothe are being laid off all around me, or are working two or three jobs just to meet expenses. Yet, I felt
like a failure.
A friend reminded me I hadn't failed, and that I would never give up my dream of book authorship. She
assured me I had merely put it on pause.
She was right.
That was two years ago. In addition to returning to work full-time, also, I decided to abandon my
search for an agent and, instead, self-publish a book based on an idea that popped into my head during my three-year
hiatus from the corporate world. Then, my father died.
When I cleaned out my father's apartment, I noticed hundreds of books with similar how-to titles such
as Learn How to _________ (fill in the blank) Play Piano, Speak French, Master the Computer, Draw Figures and Write a
Book. My father never played the piano that collected dust in his living room, or learned how to use the computers he
purchased in the later years of his life. He didn't draw, speak a language other than English and, he never wrote a
book.
While my father was living, I was aware that he yearned for a more creative life but his fears kept him
from it. In rare, unguarded moments his sadness of dreams unrealized would surface. With all due respect to a
man I loved with all my heart, I'm not going out like that.
"Tomorrow is promised to no one," Daddy often said and I agree. In addition to my father's death in
2004, I lost a friend and a former co-worker to cancer. It seems not long ago that when I looked in the mirror, a girl
of 16 smiled back. Recently, she's looking more like a gal in her forties.
That means I no longer have time for mailing book proposals into the black hole of the trade
publishing machine. Yes, I hope to sell a bazillion copies of my first book, Cheaper than Therapy: How to Keep Life's
Small Problems from Becoming Big Ones. Yes, I want to pay bills, buy food and vacation with money earned from
authentically creative endeavors. But even if I never sell one book, I know this for certain: No one will ever be able
to say I never wrote one.
In the next episode, Gina self-publishes her first book - Cheaper Than Therapy: How to Keep Life's
Small Problems from Becoming Big Ones. Does she go with offset printing? Print on Demand (POD)? Find out in the next
installment of The Leap, Part 7: Decisions, Decisions!
How have metaphors shaped your life? What leaps have you taken? I'd love to hear
about them.
Thanks for taking time to read my newsletter. I'll be writing to you again soon.
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