Collaboration

I can no longer do any automatic physical activity without the company of an audio book. A good set of headphones, my phone in a pocket or a belt and I am good to go. Cutting grass or painting lawn furniture, ironing or prepping vegetables for canning, get accompanied by a book listening.

Today I was painting two Adirondack chairs while listening to a self-help book. I read many such books and I took lessons from each. But this book was special because the author collaborated with me. She told me the entire story of her life, without leaving out the parts that people don’t usually talk about like breast implants. She started writing a blog and became so dedicated to it that it grew into a business and people adored her. That was until they asked her how she can possibly do everything she does and have a family with two small children. She was honest and disclosed that she did not do it alone, that her husband helped with house chores and they had a nanny for the children. She told people that she had help and that attracted major criticism from her fans. The critics were aggressive and she took it all to heart until she fell into depression. She recovered! Then wrote this book. I love that she wrote with transparency and candor and I felt like she collaborated with me by telling me how to make sure that I have large and small goals, that I need to step out in the world and chase my goals, and more importantly that I must ask for help. She also spoke about her breast implants, her hair extensions and the professionals she hires to make her look like a goddess for all the photographs that she posts on her media. She spoke of her relationship with her husband; not great as she was raised to be very conservative; and how she changed it to be an exceptional one. A few years after she wrote the book her husband asked for a divorce. She did not see it coming. She wrote a new book that I did not read but I was sad for her and watched her re-collect herself and continuing her mission.

Collaboration is the action of working with someone to produce or create something. (Google knows it all.)

Am I collaborating successfully? I am not sure, but my daily goal is to work with someone to produce or create something; anything that will move projects farther along even for a fraction of one inch, or that will make a person even a fraction of one percent happier.

What is the name of the book?

“Girl stop apologizing” by Rachel Hollis