There are signs everywhere: signs that inspire you, motivate you; sometimes even those that disappoint and frustrate you. They keeping appearing and disappearing. You miss some, you catch some. One could say they reside in your head. Or you could believe that they were planted before your eyes by someone else.

I have some real ridiculous stories to share, but you’re going to call me nuts so I won’t. In a few short words, I have been inspired at different times by something I read in the paper (that reminded me of something I had to do), the shape of a shadow in the night (very complicated to explain, but the next day I got an email I was waiting for), a name that keeps popping up (the name of a character in my story), a message or a call at the precise moment (with words that held a deeper meaning), a person who turns up for no reason at all (and said something that made me work harder), things that all of a sudden seem to mean a certain thing, oh the list is endless. Too long to be called a list of coincidences.

Someone once told me that it’s merely an ‘association’ – the signs (as I call them) were there all the time, but only at one point in time would I have made the connection. For instance, I was reading a book, in which the climax was supposed to take place on a certain date in September. I was jolted out of reading and I looked at my calendar. It was a day or two before the date in the book. (Different years, of course.) So if I were reading the book a couple of months later, I would not have even noticed it. I was just associating it with today. A pure coincidence. The name is quite common, it is all over the place, but because I have named my character so, it holds a special meaning to me, and only to me. It’s probably just a case of things crossing paths by accident. Get what I mean?

Everyone has them – these short moments when you’re startled at something that has tickled your memory; you could choose to ignore them, or take them as signs. I choose to believe they are indicators. Because they inspire me, they motivate me, they encourage me, they make me rise from my seat of procrastination and get something done.

Anything that motivates us must be good.