One Brick at a Time!!

The last three weeks have been incredible!! After speaking on March 17 as part of a panel, I attended the final event of the Festival of the Book on March 23rd in Charlottesville, VA which was a celebration brunch for all African-American authors who participated in the Festival. It was attended by 200 people and every author had four minutes to speak about their book. After the event, you could sign books and talk to the crowd. I sold more than 30 books after the brunch, and there was even a line of people waiting for their book to be signed!! It was Amazing and I was actually overwhelmed! Another author who is a Director at the Smithsonian, purchased my book that day and has since hired me to do another event in May. She and I chatted about our love for creativity and that my first job as a kid was at the Smithsonian. She was thrilled! 

Then last Saturday, I spoke at an Assisted Living facility in Hyattsville, MD to a group of 15 folks who have loved ones at the facility and are thinking of starting a support group. During that presentation, one of the things I talked about was my love of Legos, and how much I loved playing with them with my Mom when I was a kid. I had a large baggie of Legos with me, which instantly became the hit of the event. I shared with them that when my Mom and I play with Legos today, it keeps her calm, and that she always focuses on only One Brick at a Time. 

We live in a world of multitasking, focusing on many things at once, and I’ve always believed I was a Master at it!! Then in the last couple of weeks, I’ve made a couple of silly mistakes, overlooking a few details that could easily have prevented the mistakes. I decided that I needed to slow down just a little!! The huge project I’d been working on for the last couple of months was now completed, and I needed to take a break and to catch my breath for a minute. Maybe I could read the same lines in a book over and over like Mom, or I could focus on One Brick at a Time!. 

I decided that this past weekend was the perfect time to assemble the latest Lego projects I brought a few weeks ago when we took Kendal for her first Lego store visit. It would be a great opportunity for me to just have some fun playing with bricks. So for all of Friday evening and most of the day on Saturday, me and the fam assembled some amazing projects! I had forgotten how much fun it was to focus on assembly instructions One Brick at a Time! But the most fun of course is seeing the finished project! 

By Sunday morning, I had a dining room table full of an entire city of Lego bricks that I’ll use in my management training or security and emergency management table top exercises. My Lego city has a really cool car, a crane that works, a fire engine with hook, ladder and a fire hydrant, police cars and boats, a helicopter, a city bus, a pizza restaurant and bike shop, a police command center, a security gate, many security folks, police officers, firemen and regular city folk. I’m proud of my City, and can’t wait to show it to my Mom. I look forward to telling her that once again I’ve learned a valuable lesson from her, that I don’t always have to do things at 100 mph and it’s ok to slow down long enough to focus on One Brick at a Time! Love you Mom!

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