Barnes & Noble

I’m on the road teaching and choreographing––which is par for the course for me during this time of year––surprisingly I have a chunk of time off to myself; so I decided to walk over to a Barnes & Noble to be creative.
The moment I walked through the threshold, I was transported to my earliest memories of the bookstore mega-chain.
When I first moved away from home, I spent most of my downtime in Chicago (when I wasn’t at the gym trying to bulk up to secure a place in the concert dance company I was apprenticing for) sitting in the alcove of books; searching for answers.
I was still in the closet, broke, and consumed with gaining knowledge on: art, history, acting, style, design, fashion, philosophy, and spirituality.
Hours would pass effortlessly as I combed through stacks of books and magazines––keeping detailed notes in my journal (prior to SmartPhones or a laptop.)
When I moved to New York City, I continued to find solace at Barnes & Noble––finally out of the closet, I hoped to meet my future husband; he would also love books and be passionate about wasting days drinking overpriced coffee while researching the latest ideas in entertainment and pop culture.
Finally at a point where I was open and honest with myself, I decided to dream big and I found inspiration to do so everywhere I looked.  I knew that one day I, too, would be an author with a book on these shelves.
(Hey, I kept a journal––and I knew that I had important things to share with the world. So why shouldn’t I think about becoming a writer?)
When I met my boyfriend (now husband) Jeff, we discovered early on that we had a mutual obsession with killing time in a bookstore.  It was my match made in heaven.
We moved to Los Angeles together several years later, and continued to find bliss in the Newsstand at the Barnes & Noble at The Grove.
So now, as I walk around the store today, I’m reminded of the journey that I’ve been on.  It’s bizarre to accept that twenty years have passed since I first fell in love with getting lost in a sea of words on a page.
I’m a published author now, and my book sits on the shelves in the very store I first decided that I could do anything I put my mind to.
The word surreal doesn't even begin to define my emotional reaction.
Not at all in the place I imagined I might be when I was eighteen, and setting my sights on a brilliant future––while I still feel that kid inside; I have evolved into a version of myself that God has designed, far more rewarding than any goal I had envisioned.
I have been blessed; and I just re-discovered that, in a bookstore.