I can’t remember the last book that I devoured. The last book I read? Yes. Devoured? I need some time to do a deep and thorough brain scan and that may take a while because my mommy brain can’t recall things as quickly as it used to. I wish there was a way to defrag my brain but I digress and I’m having flashbacks of my 486 college computer.

Like many fans of Shonda Rhimes’ TV shows I was excited when I heard that she had written a book called The Year of Yes: How to Dance It Out, Stand In the Sun and Be Your Own Person. I didn’t even know what the book was about but I expected it to be great, to love it but this book has put her in a realm of my life that I didn’t know could exist for someone that I had never met. I have read books by other genius storytellers but she’s in another realm because it was as if she was telling my story and I couldn’t wait to know what would happen to me next.  Shonda (we’re on a first name basis after this book) expressed many of my thoughts, feelings and lessons that I have learned as though she knew me, was me, except she is not me. Our experiences are completely different yet I felt connected. Her “Year of Yes” paralleled my “Journey of 1000 Miles” and I felt as though we compared notes along the way about the process of finding your way back to yourself and the lessons that I learned from my relocation to London and more recently from my marathon.

That’s the funny thing about life; no matter how different we are, we are somehow the same.

I had a long and crazy work week but throughout it I couldn’t wait to steal a moment to turn a few pages. Shonda’s style is personal and relatable and she certainly got in my head this week. I got to the point where I felt as though my thoughts were being written by Shonda. I recall one such moment while I was on a conference call at work with several application developers and they were talking their techie talk about a problem that we were trying to solve and a metaphor of them swimming in the deep end of the pool while I’m standing on the side holding the towels popped in my head. For this I blame Shonda because certainly she knows that I’m not a good swimmer nor am I very technical so she must have written that metaphor because I don’t think in metaphors.

I’ve already talked several friends into reading the book and I can’t wait to hear what they thought of it.  I won’t spoil the book for you but put it on the top of your reading list and come back so that we can chat about it.