Fourth Quarter, Week Forty in the No Longer New Abnormal

We are entering the last quarter of 2024. I feel like I’m rushing to accomplish what I had intended this year. Some things take longer than others. I had hoped I would have been able to promote my book more, but I had so much to learn. And some of the promotion is not for me. Given it isn’t what I had imagined, it’s important that I am grateful for what I could do. I am grateful for all those who supported me and the book. And, I am grateful for the lessons I’ve learned thus far, like the fact that I prefer smaller discussions to larger presentations. And that I don’t enjoy marketing, nor have I ever enjoyed it. Sharing something freely and needing to sell something are very different.

I was in sales for a number of years in my teens and early twenties. I started by working the cash register at my father’s shoe store. I learned quickly that the description of a job and the job itself weren’t one in the same. Being a cashier also meant vacuuming, stocking shoes, running lunch orders, and doing inventory. I stayed in sales at local department stores, and when I came to New York City in 1981, I worked at Bloomingdales. It was a glamorous store where I got to see many celebrities, imaging that this tentative connection…