Weekly DiVa | Jan 7 2024

Hiya!

 

How've you been? All rested up from your wild and crazy holidays, right? Me too. It's been a week of head down, focus on, getting the job done. I don't yet have that feeling that 2024 is almost over; I expect it to settle onto my shoulders sometime in March. 

 

Twenty-twenty-four holds several exciting things for both me and you (they tend to overlap. Aren't we lucky?) and one of the first ones is the return of Samantha Kidd in RANCH DRESSING. From the very first book, when she makes a disparaging comment about western fashion, I knew one day I'd have to make her confront that. I've got a special giveaway in the works for anyone who preorders, which I will tell you all about next week! But trust me, you're going to love it!

RANCH DRESSING isn't the only exciting thing I'm bringing you in 2024. Did I tell you this will be my fortieth book? That calls for a celebration, don't you think? And I can't think of anybody to celebrate with more than you, so on January 19, I'll be kicking off 40 days of 40 videos and 40 giveaways, all counting down to RANCH DRESSING. You can mark your calendar now, if you want, but don't worry, I'll make sure to remind you :)

 

I think I've mentioned that I like to plan Freecell, the internet card game, to relax my mind. Figuring things out is very satisfying to me, so I actually turned off the setting that lets the cards fly into place when there's a move available. I wanted to be in control of every move of the game!

 

Recently, it occurred to me that this mimics my approach to a lot of things. I have an unhealthy belief that hard work is necessary for success. I say “unhealthy” because we all know successful people who don't appear to work “hard," so we know there's no cosmic rule about this. Sure, practice makes perfect and expertise comes with effort, but sometimes things can come to us easily. But not to me, not if I believed that I had to work hard to get what I wanted. It was as if there were special rules that applied only to me and everybody else got things to be easy. 

 

When I realized what I'd done with an internet card game--supposed relaxation--I saw so clearly how I had actively made things more challenging because I believed I'd enjoy the win more if I felt I'd worked for it. But isn't that like saying no thank you, I don't want help, I'd rather push this boulder uphill all by myself? (Yes, yes it is.) 

 

I changed my settings and started playing again and I realized the point of the game isn't to figure out every card move; it's getting cards out of the way so the game can proceed. It's not about doing small tasks, it's about removing big barriers. Just like life. 

 

xoxo,

Diane

 

p.s. My word of 2024 is UNCOMFORTABLE. Did you pick one?