The Last Post.

For the past three years, I’ve been fleshing-out my writing whilst holding down a full-time job.

It's a familiar process to many ‘dream-biggers’ who put themselves through such an unforgiving routine, and we do it because we want to share our imaginations creations with people who connect with it; we believe, we conceive, and then we achieve.

It’s Boxing Day 2016 today and I sit here exhausted, reflecting on the posts I’ve written for my website.

I’ve touched on many-a-flicker moment from my separation and divorce journey, but did so to connect with other people in the same depressing predicament. My hope is that my story shows them they can and will get out of the dumps sooner rather than later…

Just on that quickly - my ex husband got married again a few weekends ago.

10 years to the month we got married, he took the plunge with the love of his life, and wed the woman of his dreams.

I am very proud of him and am very, very happy for him too, and after writing what I have these past few months, I’m glad he has a happy ending to his story. So to them both - Mr. and Mrs. Depiazzi - I sincerely wish you all the best.

I also finished and published my first legacy book a few weeks ago for a Lebanese family in Sydney, which I did hand-in-hand with working as the Operations Manager for Sydney Harbour Tallships. The software I used to produce it, was in its amateur stages of being built, so the paragraphs, indentations and photo layouts weren’t great, but the owner of the software wouldn’t upgrade or make the necessary corrections to fix them either. She was marketing the software as a pay-per-month subscription product, so I made a ’show-and’tell’ book to show other interested story-tellers what the software could produce.

It took me three months to create my legacy book on four living generations…only to be told on the day I handed the books over, that one of the family members was against the book being published, and didn’t want a bar of it.

But I'd had my photo taken with the owner of the software company showing the family’s published book, and the owner went ahead and posted a photo of us on her business Facebook page to show everyone what her technology had produced. After asking her countless times to respect the family’s wishes to not have the book publicised in any way, the owner blatantly rejected our requests to remove her post, and subsequently blocked me from that Facebook page because I kept posting comments asking her to take the photo down. In my eyes, there was no respect for the family, and money and business came before them and their wishes…

That is NOT how I roll…

I could also name-and-shame her by calling her out by name, but I won’t because - again - that’s not how I roll - that’s not my style. She knows who she is, and she knows what she's done by choosing publicity-before-the-family, so all I can say is I’m happy we won't be collaborating again.

So after feeling energetically depleted from putting the book together, surely that would be enough to put me off doing this ‘writing gig’ anymore - right?

Let’s not forget the three years of hard slog I’ve been doing here too…alone…with no family in Sydney…and with all of my friends back in New Zealand…no relationships…and all the rest in between too…

Such a drainer....

But I won’t throw this in.

And I won’t give in this easy.

I won’t back down from the initial intention of why I left my family, my friends and my country, to pursue this creative venture. I’m sure the road will turn to yellow bricks soon, just as they did when Dorothy and her three friends ventured to the Emerald City in the Wizard of Oz, so that’s where my focus is now - onwards and upwards.

I’m due to leave Australia in a few months and am really looking forward to it. This will be a new adventure for me and for all involved, so for those interested in finding-out more about it, please feel free to contact me directly.

Until then, I thank you for checking me out and hope to hear from you soon…either to talk about my story, or to talk about writing yours.

Bring on 2017.

With love and kindness always,

K.M Harris.