The Alchemist

My brother-in-law the teacher, the one with the schedule all us office workers are insanely jealous of, recommended this book to me.  I was hooked within minutes of reading the introduction, and continued on with little voices shouting "yes!" and  "so true!" in my head the entire time.  It is about a shepherd boy who literally follows his dream - a dream that tells him he will find a buried treasure at the pyramids in Egypt.  Along the way he meets characters who teach him about the importance of not giving up because the very next time that you try could be the time that you will succeed.  The book is an allegory and gets deeply philosophical at times, but the message is very basic and unbelievably inspirational. 
 


And now blog readers, consisting of my mother and possibly one coworker, I am going to put my latest goal up on the Internet so that I will have to answer to someone besides myself if I don't at least pursue it.  I wrote a novel a few years ago about an unhappy secretary.  I wrote for a year straight and then put it away and haven't thought about it since.  I recently entered it into a contest, and although I didn't make it to the final round, I received surprisingly good reviews from the judges.  And so, thanks to finishing The Alchemist right before my contest results arrived, I am vowing to take my novel out and spruce the old girl up. 

But my goal is bigger than that.  I say that one year from today I will have found myself an agent who is willing to work with me to find a publisher.  If little Santiago the shepherd boy can trek across the desert in the middle of tribal wars, then I can certainly give up watching The Sing Off in order to work on my book. 

See you back here in a year.