A Story Of My Book and My Life
It was a freezing winter day of early January 2018. Four co-authors, including myself, met at a study group for workers. The class started with about ten people, and as most classes do, only few people remained. The victors of this long boring race were four of us, the most sincere and desperate ones.
One of the members popped a question saying “why don’t we publish a book?” which was obviously a joke at first, but we started give more serious thoughts to the idea. The next thing I knew, the project for publishing a book was already ongoing. It would not be possible if I had been alone. The only reason why we could write down a period mark on the last page of this book was because of the team work; all four of us worked together for the same goal.
It took about a year for the book to meet the real world. While preparing the book, I doubted many times whether this could really be published. Several publications have given us positive feedbacks, or even suggested to have contract with us after receiving our book proposal.
The publisher we made the contraction with is a small one man company. However, it seemed that the editor and the CEO would fit us well, thus no hesitation existed. It was October 2018 that the contract concluded with the publisher. For the first few months, time flied with so much admin work to do; deciding and reorienting the title, design of the book, and other details. It required so much time and gave me stress to manage both my original job while prepare to publish the book altogether.
Even few days before the actual publication dates, I had endless doubts in my mind whether this is actually happening or not. Once the publication was confirmed, another fear flowed over me that what if no bookstore wants our book.
When I saw the book in the new book section of Kyobo Bookstore, I sincerely thank to God and thought ‘Thanks God, this is enough.’ When the book got ranked into the bestseller within a week, I felt both happy and greedy. I thought again to myself, ‘Thanks God, but this is not enough.’ I wish God would continue to help me! Our book has been designated as the "book of the Month" in May at the Kyobo Bookstore. Ever since the book was published, I went to the bookstore every day, which I think will repeat in May as well.
It is always hard to expect what will happen next. This might affect my career a lot or not. I just think that life can not be known before. To be honest, I had no idea that I would be working this long. While I do not think of myself in the following way, but others usually think of me as a precious youngest daughter in the family.
Everyone thought I would soon get married and quit the job. This is hard to deny, since even I believed that about myself. My goal was not to become a C-suit in a company but to become a mother of a kid or kids before 30. Growing up in a conservative family, I was strictly educated to be a good mother and a good housewife but I had never been guided to be a professional worker. My colleagues even made me a name “Seungahrown”, which is supposedly meant to have a girly, pinky, lovely, with cute notion, far from being success-oriented.
Now I realize that life never turns out the way you expect it to be. I always plan, but I also know that the story of my life might not unfold as I expected. The only thing I can do is to walk at my own speed to become a person who is not ashamed of myself. I just do what I have to do in my daily life and what I want to do little by little. Sinece Life is a matter of direction, not speed, I will finally arrive somewhere if I go in the right direction.
