Hi,

Visiting Portland, Oregon when I was a kid, I walked into Powell’s Books—this was before big box bookstores existed. It was the first time I had ever seen that many shelves and bins of books all in one place, more than anyone could read in a lifetime. I remember thinking—no one ever needs to write another book… unless something deep inside them tells them to.

It was in one of those bins that I fished out C.S. Lewis’s The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. Ironically, it was Lewis’s writing that first made me hear that “something” inside myself.

I started writing my first book that summer at age eleven. I did not finish it.

Instead, I got older. I got my real estate license at age eighteen. (If I can read, write, travel, and make enough to invest in real estate myself—why go to college?) I got lured into higher education anyway. (I blame the untamed desire to learn things.) I ended up graduating summa cum laude with a degree in psychology pre-med. I then got my doctorate in naturopathic medicine and became licensed as a general physician.

Years later, I ended up leaving private practice and starting an IT-based venture with a close friend. We ran that business for 12 years—defying the warning of mixing business with friendship by still being dear friends. When I exited, I ended up investing in, of all things, real estate, as if life were having me retrace my steps.

In the vein of retracing steps, I moved back to the East Coast where I grew up. Despite countless moves, I still have the copy of that first book by C.S. Lewis that I found at Powell’s. And I still have that voice inside me, telling me to write.

I am so grateful that it stayed around all of these years because writing has consistently been one of my greatest joys.

Sharing my writing at this point is my reckoning with that voice. Not only listening but finally saying a full-throated yes to taking the time: trading hours, weeks, years of my life in order to spend moments in a world of imagination—and making the effort to share what I have heard.