I have a box of CDs in storage, perhaps eighty or so total. All are copies of the same CD: mine. I self-produced it in 2003—right after I got my Ph.D.—and sold or gave away 15 or 20 copies or so in the first year. I boxed up the rest and have moved them twice.

I stopped even trying to sell them about three years ago, yet I still hang on to them and plan to move them again when the time comes. Why?

Sentiment? No.

Wishful thinking? No.

Or maybe I'm just a pack rat? True, but that's not the reason either.

The reason I keep that box of CDs in storage is to remind me not to make the same mistake again. I self-produced a CD, and all I have to show for it is a box of unsold CDs.  I will not self-publish a book.

It will take far more time and effort to find an agent and a publisher than it would to go it alone, but that extra work will all be worth it someday.

And whenever I get fed up, depressed, or desperate. When the pile of rejections becomes unbearable. When I feel so overwhelmed that I start to think "f' it all, I'm publishing this thing myself!" I'll go down to the store room and look at that box of unsold CDs.

I'll ask myself "do you really want to take the easy way out? Do you want to come back down here in a few years and see a box of unsold books?"

And then I'll go upstairs and get back to work.

My daughter loves the swings. Every time we go to a park, I ask her “What do you want to do first?” and every time the response is the same: “The swings!” My daughter is only three-and-a-half, though, so she hasn’t come close to mastering the kick that older kids use to keep up their momentum. So I get to push.

Now don’t misunderstand me, I love pushing my daughter on the swings. She has a blast and, like all young children, her joy is infectious. That said, after awhile it gets just a bit tedious. The time comes when I need to take a break and let her go slide for a while.

So I would tell her “OK, just twenty more,” and I would count the last swings so she knew when she’d be done. After a few times she started counting with me. Then an idea hit me: I can teach her to count while she’s on the swings.

My daughter is a smart girl. She knows her numbers as well as the alphabet both forwards and backwards. My wife and I both firmly believe that any child her age can learn what she knows. Kids are sponges; they just need encoragement.

So I ask my daughter to count—to twenty, fifty, one hundred, and beyond. At first I had to help her with the multiples of ten, but soon she got them straight. At our last trip to the park she made it all the way to two hundred.  Now my wife and I are starting to count by two, fives, and tens, and it won’t be long before she picks those up too.

Kids are smart. It’s up to us to make learning fun so they want to learn.