Look ahead!

Sometimes in life, things don’t go our way and we can’t help but wonder if it’s just us.

For the past week, I have been trying to place an order on Fiverr to get an e-book cover done from an artist who assured me that she could do the kind of art that I really wanted, only for the price of five dollars. I even showed her examples of complicated beautiful designs and she insisted she could do one for me even better. She did not have a portfolio ready but I decided to trust her. Everyone has to start somewhere, right?

So, I eagerly hit the order button but to my disappointment my payment was not getting cleared. I wrote back to Fiverr and PayPal and then finally made trips to the bank to understand what was wrong with my account and my card. The woman told me that she was already done with the cover and I started feeling even more frustrated.

 All of a sudden, she attached the cover that she had done for me, asking me what revisions I wanted for it. Even though I did not download the picture because I had not paid for it yet but just looking at the image from the thumbnail told me that it was a stock photo with the title of my book slapped on it.

At that moment, I thanked the universe for halting me in my steps from making a big mistake. Even though it’s just a matter of five dollars, I would not use such a cover for my books even if they were offered for free.

I politely told the woman what I thought of her design, apologized to her for wasting her time and left it there. I am not going back to her again or answering her queries because she is definitely not a book cover designer. Slapping on a title and author name on a stock photo does not make it a book cover.

So even though, it felt like life was against me, it was actually working for me. Oftentimes we cannot see it or even want to believe it but life always wants to work for us, with us. It doesn’t matter where you are in your journey at the moment, if you keep your focus and work hard, you will make it.