Dare to Step Outside of Your Comfort Zone

A couple of years ago I started the tradition of taking at least one week a year and going to a writing retreat.

While visiting Eureka Springs, Arkansas for our wedding anniversary, I discovered the Writer's Colony completely by accident. If you love Victorian architecture and small town vibes, Eureka Springs is truly inspiring. My heart felt happy there, surrounded by artsy fartsy types, 1800s buildings, and cracked sidewalks. And inside one of the bookshops, I started talking to the shopkeeper and she asked if I was staying at the Writer's Colony.

I was instantly intrigued. I looked it up, booked it, and stayed in the Maya Angelou suite. An amazing stay!

And thus was born a tradition of driving the four hours trip from Kansas City and staying for five days, a week, whatever I could manage.

And like most trips, I had only a few amorphous ideas of what I wanted to do while I was there. A stack of tarot and oracle cards, journals, and bags bulging with reference books would come with, and I would sit down and just open myself up to the flow, ready for whatever might come.

And my last visit, in September 2025, the oddest thing happened. Instead of a story idea, or a series I wanted to flesh out, somehow I found myself eyeballs deep in designing oracle cards. As I told the others at our communal dinner, "that was NOT on my bingo card!"

I designed a total of 54 cards, their meanings and concepts and details, and the title Compass of Creation flew into my brain, as well as the order of it all, the focus, who it was for, and what it could do.

I often use tarot cards to help me focus on a concept, a stray story idea, or even plot out my week or month. For me, it is less divination and more about tapping into my unconscious understanding of myself, my capabilities, and my dreams. The answers provided by the cards are not from the outer world, but instead come from within.

As a small example - this month's indicator card was The Tower. While it is often associated with chaos and destruction, it might be more accurate to say that it contains sudden, drastic and often unexpected, change. And while I did eye it with some amount of concern, I found it expressing itself in my short-term rental business as we added a second major rental to our plates - Cottage East.

And oh my yes, it was challenging and full of change! It created havoc, and work, and stress galore. It also more than doubled my monthly income, so you will not hear me complaining, not at all! And while we did roll out in mid-April, we were delayed by several things, and it meant a temporary shut down in early May of nearly a week before everything took off like gangbusters. And as we enter the summer season and World Cup, well, I expect it will only get better from here.

But I digress. Explaining tarot was not on my bingo card for this post. Instead, it is what happened after I returned from my writing retreat last year. I was jonesing to do this, to make it happen, to DO IT. I posted a pre-order for the tarot book on Draft2Digital.

I did a lot of research, checked out different printers, fleshed out the handbook that would accompany the cards, refined images and descriptives, and then... the sputtering sounds of this old jalopy ended my forward movement.

Why?

• The STR renovation we still hadn't finished.

• Money concerns as we quickly ran out of money and had to do the remainder of the renovation project on our own

• Other undone projects (G581 audio edits)

• FEAR, UNCERTAINTY, and TERROR

Oh yeah, even 18 books in, that's still a thing for me. What can I say, I'm human!

I began to question everything. I even convinced myself that this was a project I had no place doing.

• Is the art good enough? What if I need to redo all of the cards?

• Does it make sense, progress through the different creative stages properly?

• Will anyone even be interested in it?

I had similar fears just the other day about designing my pool league team shirts.

Design Two

I figured my teammates would think I was full of myself, self-obsessed, and generally obnoxious. But somehow, I got my nerve together to send them a couple of images I'd mocked up in Canva and everyone responded favorably. One even said "take my money!" and wanted both design options.

Design One

And it struck me then how often this is a theme in my life. Consumed by fear and uncertainty, so sure I am far from the mark and that no one will ever like me. And there's been a few really close people in my life who have seen that, keyed into it, and used it to hurt me, which really sucked, because they knew just how to twist the knife. It's taken until my mid-50s to realize those aren't the people to have a relationship with, family or not, and my life is better off without them. Ah, but there I go again, off on a tangent!

This morning, the oracle project was far from my mind. Organizing my books on Draft2Digital (one of my book distribution sites) was. And as I looked down the list, I saw that pre-order for the Compass of Creation up, realized I really needed better art for the cover, and instantly fell into the project - visualizing the handbook, a workbook, and even a branded notebook that creatives could use as they moved through the exercises in the workbook and reclaimed their creativity.

And before I knew it, I was taking steps to make it happen. I uploaded the images to a card printing site and I designed a notebook on Canva. And I'm now reviewing exactly what I need to put the whole project up as a Kickstarter.

I keep going back to the thought of finishing energy. I've started so many projects, books, et cetera. And the time to finish them is now.

I'm moving into the next phase of focus in my life now that the renovations on the short-term rentals is done. I now want to make enough to afford to farm out the cleanings and possibly even the management of the Airbnb properties - so it becomes an income machine that chugs along without needing me - how cool would that be?!

I had stopped for a variety of reasons - some very real, like the renovations work. But it is time to dive deep - on audio edits, Kickstarters, and more. Dare to step outside of your comfort zone, the world is waiting for you!