We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Douglas Robbins a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Hi Douglas, thanks for joining us today. So let’s jump to your mission – what’s the backstory behind how you developed the mission that drives your brand?
Well, I’m not a company. Just a man with a pen. or well, really a computer. If it was just a pen you probably wouldn’t be able to read what I’m writing. My penmanship is that bad. I even struggle reading what I put down. So I’m glad I don’t write long hand any longer.
My mission is to get at what it is to be human. To get at that under current. The good and bad, the happy and sad, what drives us. It drives us to hide and it drives us to stand in the light and take a chance on love.
The mission is meaningful to me, because looking back I realize that I hid myself away as a child. I wasn’t rewarded and praised for being myself, so that part of me took to shame and hiding and I didn’t know it but I mourned myself deeply for a long time. That sense of loss and innocence unprotected.
My mission in writing and podcasting The Douglas Robbins Show is to take the dreams we have buried in our souls and bring them to light. I do that in my writing, everyday challenges regular people endure, and bring them to life. In the show we address what’s often swept under society’s dirty rug and thus moving the world forward.
Douglas, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?
I was always a dreamer and would go to the woods near my home to ponder. My writing career started at a young age when one of my teachers asked the class to write a poem. In that moment I found a power in words that I’d never found anywhere else.
As time passed, I started to write more seriously because it was the only profession that ever made sense. It wasn’t so much a career move; it was a move out of necessity.
I attended college, joined the workforce but continued to write. Frustrated with one soul sucking job after another, I finally decided to take my chances with the only profession that ever made sense.
I left my thankless corporate job after years of waking up sick and dreading each day. Though I had little money in the bank, I decided right then if I were going to live or die, it would be by the pen.
In 2019 I released Narican: The Cloaked Deception, my first book in this sci-fi series. It’s philosophical and adventurous and gets at some modern day issues embedded within a sci-fi story.
Love in a Dying Town: a story of struggle, love and commitment, set in a dying factory town, came out in 2021 and Baseball Dreams and Bikers is about dreams that get stuck and dreams that get realized came out in October of 2023.
I write about the mirror of life.
I live near the Catskill Mountains Of New York with my family. During nicer weather I’ll be motorcycling on these country road.
Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?
There was a period that I completely lost faith in myself, life, God/Source, or whatever you want to call it. I had moved to NYC and was finishing up my first novel. After completing it, I sent it out and thought the sky would open up, but nothing happened. I was devasted, heartbroken, lost.
I had not learned resiliency as child so this was overwhelming difficult. I lost faith and walked away from writing. but really I walked away from myself.
But then in time, words came back to me and nothing else made sense. Writing still did once I opened that door again. There have been plenty of tough times since then but i have held onto what i love much tighter.
Looking back, are there any resources you wish you knew about earlier in your creative journey?
Yes, I never knew how to ask for help. I had no guidance and without guidance or community, it is easy to get lost.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://douglasrobbinsauthor.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/douglasrobbinsauthor/?next=%2F
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/douglasrobbinsauthor