Leigh Ann Lane

Following My Passion

At the age of 52, my life swerved down the road less traveled when I bought my first JKU. I like to call it "middle-age awakening." I felt alive! I felt brave! I wanted to do things I've never done. My Jeep, Grasshopper became my best friend.

Two months later I had a dream. Not an action dream, more of a single image clip from a scene. It consumed my mind until I thought I would go nuts. My imagination began weaving a story from that one clip. I knew I had to write it, so I did. It consumed much of my life for over two years. During that time, I joined a local a Jeep club, drove some amazing trails in a Barlows Jeep on a few trips to Sedona, and built Hopper into a beautiful rig.

My Jeep experiences found their way into my novel, but what leaked into it was my experience with overcoming shyness. While all the events in the novel are fictional, well most of them anyway, Following the ups and downs of the main character taking steps outside her comfort zone became the underlying theme.

During the writing process, I began a Twitter account with tips to overcome shyness (which was recently published as a self-guided journal) and discovered my true passion is helping women and teens gain the confidence to become whoever they want to be.

As I look back on the events in my life, it's eye-opening to see that pieces were gradually moving around to prepare me to pursue this passion. I became a policy writer, which honed my writing skills, then a corporate trainer, which gave me workshop development and public speaking skills, and a few years ago I became a community outreach speaker, where I gained experience engaging a variety of audience demographics.

Applying for the Ladies Co-driver Challenge was done on a lark. Being selected to participate in the Top Ten Finalist Training weekend pushed me further down the path of self-discovery in more ways than I can even describe. My next exhilarating step is SEMA. I'm still not certain, but I'm starting to see where all of my life experiences may be culminating into something that blooms. I can't wait to see the flower burst forth.

Oh, and just in case you like to read, my novel is called Nine Million Minutes and is available at http://www.amazon.com/dp/B01775OHFO