Die With Memories. Not Dreams. | #makeamemory

I hear variations of this theme often:

Your many vacations are the stuff of my dreams.

From the outside, the author life looks glamorous, doesn’t it? Jetting between interesting locations. Meeting new people. Eating cool food. Seeing awesome sights.

The reality isn’t packed with glamour. I share the most titillating snippets of every trip. Here’s a sample REAL appearance day:

• Wake up at 4:30am to allow enough time to battle traffic and get to a 7am presentation
• Lug heavy book suitcase into venue
• Set everything up
• Shake hands with everyone in the room; listen to their stories; BE ON (and anyone who knows me knows how NOT ON I am at 7am)
• Give dynamic motivational talk
• Sell books, listen to more stories, and make correct change (which is almost always too much multitasking for me)
• Pack up and lug less heavy suitcase to car
• Map to lunchtime location
• If time and distance permit, pop into some really cool site and snap a photo there; post on social media like that’s all I’m doing, because reality is boring social media fodder
• Drive myself to my next appearance
• Repeat lugging suitcase/setup/handshaking/etc above
• Map to evening location
• If time and distance permit, find a decent coffee shop; mainline two lattes
• Drive myself to my next appearance
• Repeat setup steps
• Evening presentations are always longer and require more energy; psyche self out to perform; possibly more lattes
• Repeat all setup and teardown steps above
• If readers want to go out afterwards, NEVER say no; I’m honored when they want to spend extra time with me; be ON when I’m about to fall over
• Drive myself to wherever I’m staying; it is probably now 11pm
• I haven’t looked at my computer all day; return emails, voicemails, and Facebook messages
• Attempt sleep by 1am
• Repeat cycle the next morning at 4:30am

Anyone want to join me for a glamorous life on the road?

For the past week, I repeated the above list every single day. I do this to myself because I’m passionate about convincing people to make memories. Every time I meet someone and inspire them to make a memory, it’s another awesome memory for me. I’m determined to influence everyone to live this mantra.

Die with memories. Not dreams.

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This is part of a series of pictures about making memories. If you liked the story why not share it with your friends? Let’s meet on Facebook or Twitter. If you prefer pictures you will surely like my Instagram. I’ve collected inspirational things and more on Pinterest! Any comments? Write them below!