Well, I have been sucking in my Author ambitions over the last year.

As this title suggests, I am coming clean that I have really dropped the ball on my creative writing side and it frustrates me to no end. I find it very hard to now get back into my energetic creative run and finish my final edits with my editor Marissa. I can give all the excuses in the world, but bottom line if I have the drive, I will make it happen. I have the desire, but finding the drive has been the issue now for almost a year due to extremely long hours with very productive results from my main job as the GM of a fast-growing Powersports store. My other love and which I have now been doing for 38 years.

I find it very rewarding to be able to put processes into place that I know work after many years of doing it that many times in the past I was not able to do because of upper management or owners. Now it is all on me, and so far my enthusiasm and drive have paid off in spades with incredible growth for my dealership and its staff members. Just in the last 6 months, we have added two more franchises in which those same franchise companies are thrilled to come on board with us and both expect us to be one of their big guns in the Raleigh/Durham metro area like we already are for Honda and Yamaha. That is the challenge. To be a that big gun as we want, and they want, it takes a LOT of work behind the scenes. Thank goodness for my Management team and staff who have taken up the mantle to support my ideas and help implement them.

All that work though has taken its toll on me mentally and physically, so I had to look at a better life balance of going back to the gym (a work in progress still to find the time for that as well, but a must, and I have joined a really nice gym with my oldest daughter Emma for that endeavor), as well as trying to give myself more downtime. No easy task especially when we open back up for 6 days again for our summer hours just a couple of weeks ago.

My creative juices have been let loose on this dealership to help get it to what I feel the buying public wants to go to these days. They are tired of the boring dealerships with a big open space filled with rows of bikes, they want to be wowed. Just like when you go to a Motorcycle Show. The vehicles need to be beautifully displayed on dynamic flooring with creative, powerful lighting, or on raised displays. Information on those vehicles needs to be shown properly on all of them in a professional tag, feature and benefits stand's like when you are at a show to educate you on a particular model's cool features. Then add in large mural images with the vehicles in action in beautiful colors both on the walls, and hanging from the ceiling. Well, I have done a LOT of that in our store. So that has been exciting to see it go through its transformation and all the compliments that we are now getting.

It has all paid off with record-breaking dollars and volume unit sales month over month. The only thing still holding us back is the manufacturer's inability to produce enough product to meet demand. That problem though has allowed the dealership to maintain full MSRP grosses which helps override the volume issues. The only drawback though is Service, Parts, and Accessories all suffer from the lack of more units to sell products or labor to. Still, we have been selling 10% more year over year now for 3 years which is a nice healthy growth pattern and our google reviews have soared through the roof over the last couple of years since I took over, now doubling what the store had previously over 7 years of business in 2.5 years now with a 4.7 score and over 740 reviews as of this writing when it was just a little over 300 reviews back in early 2019 when I arrived.

So after that blab about how great our business has gone, my long hours involved in that process, and my creative abilities being applied to the store to get it where it is today, yes it has massively paid off. Unfortunately, though, there is just not enough time in the day to allow me to focus on my writing talents. As I have stated before, I need to be able to sequester myself away for hours on end so I can first lay out my plan of attack at where I left off and then allow myself to flow. You read about other who say, you just need to "Do it", and "Make the time!" Easier said than done. Many of those same "Just do it, and make the time" on the side writers work 9-5 jobs, 5 days a week.

Now I know there are probably many who may put me to shame working multiple jobs and still finding the time to write. My one job though is the equivalent of two jobs hours-wise. I currently average 65+ hours per week, sometimes as high as 80hrs per week. Plus I have my commute time which averages 35-45 minutes one way. So I lose another 1.5 hrs per day on average. I wake up at 6:00 a.m. on average (haven't needed a time clock in 30 years) and I am on the road by 7:15 (or earlier), arriving at work by 8 am, and then get home on average between 7-8:00 p.m. It is a real treat on some days when I can actually leave on time or even early (which is rare) and get home when it is still light! I am trying to make it happen that on my days off I do not do any work-related duties. Not easy as a GM with either Corporate or Staff contacting you over questions or issues. I just need to turn off the phone and not look at my texts. But that has bitten me a couple of times in the past costing us money for different reasons.

Hopefully, now that we are back on a 6-day work week, I can find a rhythm and make the time once or twice on weeknights, and then use half a day on my day off at least once a week to put that time into writing. So I do think about it all the time, as you can tell from this blog post. Time is critical and the challenge. I will find a way, bare with me and send good wishes my way so that I can finish this final edit of my first book and finally move on to the next phase of getting it published. I think the many, many, edits that I had previously gone through did burn me down a bit. As a writer, I just wanted to write and use my creative side to shine through. Editing, while still needing some creativity with rewrites after adjustments, is more analytical, than interesting. So I wish I could just burn through it passing it along to my editor to do all the final work, but my control side still wants the final call of course since this is my story and I know how I want it to come across.

So hopefully by the next blog you read here, I will have gotten back into it full swing and I can tell you about that. These are things I am sure all writers deal with, but I am new to all this overall, so need to get my own mindset back into the groove. Wish me luck! Cheers, and thanks for reading.