Life At This Point

As the semester and also 2016 comes to an end, I am left here sitting in my new home grading essays as well as pondering what goals should I aim for 2017. For most of my twenties I have loved to travel and yearned to travel even more. But as I have built a career and home I don't need to escape from, as well as my wanderlust satisfied for the past decade or so...I find my mind wandering and wondering about what else can I achieve? What other places can my career bring me? And for many years even before I started writing the manuscript of my novel I simply wished to be a published writer. That was the goal. But somehow that shifted recently. I still want to be published but I want it to be published in my way, a very socially corporate responsible way, and so I want to start my own publishing company. I want to adapt the model of:
1. Every time you buy a book, a book will go to a child who needs one
2. If you send in a second hand book, you can get a half price discount, that book again will go to a child who needs one.
Selling 3 manuscripts (novel, nonfiction and my short story and poems collection) as well as this business model is almost hard to achieve at all, much to say in the short future) so why shouldn't I start my own publishing company? With this business I also want to help the many writers who keep feeling rejected by the major publishing houses because their writing is not "commercial" enough. I want to create a publishing house that is not just printing money but printing heartfelt pages.

At this point in my life I also don't need to broaden my network at mixers because I know that if I really go through with this business model, I know the trusty friends I have whom I can contract as editor, designer, IT, tax advisor and legal advisor. I have been reading up whether LLC or S-corp will be a better business model, costs of publishing paper books and ebooks. I have even been fiddling with names for my publishing house. I think the more serious I get with this project, the more it would come true. It's like the self fulfilling prophecy I had for my novel. Telling myself I could do it, while I kept doing it made it come true.

Life at this point is about taking care of myself, my family, and giving back to the community that blessed me with their help. Life right now...is still going to be challenging (I wouldn't ask for any less of it). And life right now...is pretty damn good...=)

#GivingTuesday (It still is Tuesday on the other side of the globe)