Starting Over Can be a Good Thing (Sonya Weiss)

This month’s theme is on starting over professionally or personally. I did both at the same time.

In 2012, I discovered something that rocked my world and gutted me. Shock waves rolled through me and the trauma of the discovery gave me nightmares. Made it difficult to eat. I lost weight thanks to that going-through-hell diet.

At that time, I was an unpublished writer working on romantic suspense novels. I had to quit completely. I couldn’t bear to write about dark deeds performed by a cowardly villain with a twisted mind.

I walked away from that, and left the fantastic writer’s group that I was in.  I bid goodbye to my critique partner who is a New York Times and USA Today bestselling author because I could not read about any crime-related stuff.

Writing is ingrained in my DNA and so not writing wasn’t something I could do. So I started over. I switched direction and wrote novels filled with love and hope and humor. That starting over was the catalyst that launched my career and I sold my first novel.

But when you’re in the middle of the whirlwind of starting over, you can’t see that it can bring good things into your life.

You might be in the same situation that I was in. You might feel like there’s no way out of it or around it. But there is. It doesn’t matter how old you are, what your dream is, or what your circumstances are, you can start over.

Just ask yourself if you’re really doing with your life, both personally and professionally what you really want to do. If that answer is no, starting over is the best gift that you can give to yourself.