Sign Here, Please

The sign.

Being author-y. Molly blocking me with her beauty as she talks and signs. And if you're wondering about the lady with the pageant sash, well....it's a long story. Consider her the mascot. Signing. (All photos by E. Zhang)

I recently returned from a quick trip to Orlando for my organization’s annual conference to promote a book a friend and I put together for work. Typically I would have gone for the whole event to sell books and meet with authors, but I didn’t plan to return to work after maternity leave until May 3. However, as we know, Charlotte was born a week early, pushing my return-to-work date up a week. Then we had to enroll her in day care a bit earlier than anticipated to keep the spot, so I returned even earlier. In other words, I was here. I could go to Orlando. My job there was simple: sign books and look pretty on opening night. So what’s this book? Well, over a year ago, my friend/co-worker Molly and I were playing buzzword bingo during a staff meeting while the bigwigs talked about making the occupational therapy* profession’s new brand, “Living Life To Its Fullest,” resonate with members and the public. After putting an “X” on the word “utilize,” Molly leaned over and said, “We should totally do a book. You know, collect stories. Sort of ‘Chicken Soup for the OT Soul.’” I stared at her. Well, why not? Molly can spot crap writing a mile away, I know how to make books, we have access to the thousands of OTs who have thousands of stories, and, let’s face it—we can meet a deadline. It made sense. It also made sense for the organization. “Living Life To Its Fullest” is a cliché that has such broad meaning. This book would be a way to for folks to articulate what the phrase means to them within the context of their work or experience with OT and raise it out of cliché territory. You know, have it mean something. Oh, and it could generate some revenue. So we got approval for the project and started doing calls for stories in various outlets, schmoozed folks who we knew had good stories to share, and crossed our fingers that we wouldn’t look like idiots a year later. Stories trickled in and we began accepting or rejecting them, asking for rewrites on some, and merely editing others. It was tricky to jam yet another project into my workload, but I wanted to see this book finished and I wanted it to be good. Sure enough, I finished what I needed to do for the book about 3 hours before going into labor with Charlotte, and then it entered production and was out of my hands. In Orlando, the book was promoted at the opening ceremony, and while we waited for the torrent of people to arrive in the expo hall from the ceremony, I looked at my pacing boss. “Um, Chris? What if it doesn’t sell?” I asked. She offered little in the way of comfort. “Yeah. I thought of that.” Great. Well, the people finally came and . . . the book was a hit! We SOLD OUT of the book (100 copies had been shipped to Orlando), and folks were really excited about it. I’m told a lot of orders for the book were also taken when inventory ran out, so it seems like this baby struck a chord. Occupational therapy is such a difficult thing to define, but the book encapsulates what it is in a tangible, meaningful way. Several people told us things like, “I’m going to buy this for my mom so she understands what the heck I do for a living.” And I’m not going to lie. Molly and I made the most of our newfound—albeit temporary—diva status. For starters, we had several glasses of wine brought to us during the signing. That could have turned out very badly, seeing as how I hadn’t eaten since that morning and am still rebuilding my post-pregnancy alcohol tolerance level, but Molly solved that problem by coercing lobbyists to fetch dinner. We demanded tiaras as well, but apparently you only get those when you’ve published a second book. After the signing, which, as you’ve probably caught on, was loads of fun, we headed to the hotel bar for a couple hours, and my coworkers joined us as they finished up their various duties. I had not been in a bar AND able to actually drink for the past year, and I have to admit, as much as I missed my baby girl, it was so nice to be kid-free and in a grown-up place without any obligation to hurry up and get back to her. The whole Orlando thing involved a lot of travel and schedule juggling for such a short trip, but I couldn’t stay longer. Fun as it was, I needed to get home to Charlotte. (Do you know how NOT FUN it is to be breastfeeding while traveling away from your baby? It’s painful, messy, and a logistical pain in the ass.) Nonetheless, I’m extremely glad I went. I’m still waiting on that tiara, though. *What is occupational therapy? Well, it suffers from lacking a clear definition, which is part of why our book is so important. However, it has nothing to do with finding work or helping the unemployed, contrary to what my own mother thought for the first 6 months I worked here. Note. And what’s the actual book? Living Life To Its Fullest: Stories of Occupational Therapy, edited by Ashley Hofmann (woohoo!) and Molly Strzelecki, published by AOTA Press, 2010. And it JUST came off press, so it’s not up on our website or Amazon.com yet. Stay tuned, and I shall shamelessly plug the book in a future post.