There is a strange irony in achieving everything you set out to accomplish, only to wake up one day and realize you’ve forgotten how to live.

For many years, I believed hard work was the answer to everything. It was how I built a career, earned respect, and created opportunities that didn’t exist before. I measured success in milestones reached, goals achieved, and problems solved. Looking back now, I realize I was so focused on building a life that I forgot to actually live it.

For more than twenty years, I worked at executive level, with my final position being General Manager of a national training company I had built from the ground up within a large corporation. It was demanding, challenging, and incredibly rewarding.

But throughout those years, another dream was quietly growing alongside my career. I had written two books and published them in the early nineties. Then life threw me a curveball with a divorce, and that was the end of it. But the dream remained. I wanted to be a writer.
From mid-2014, every evening after work, I disappeared into imaginary worlds. Stories became my escape. Characters became friends. I sacrificed sleep, weekends, and holidays because creating stories filled a part of me that business never could.

In late 2015, I made what many people considered a brave decision. Others thought I was being stupid. By mid-2016, I walked away from the corporate world to pursue writing full-time. I had already published thirty romance novels independently by then. I believed I was finally choosing passion over profession.

What I didn’t realize was that I wasn’t escaping the long hours. I was simply exchanging one demanding career for another. Being an independent author is a beautiful dream—but it’s also relentless. There is no clocking off.

There are books to write, editors to coordinate, covers to approve, newsletters to send, marketing to manage, readers to engage with, advertising to monitor, and endless algorithms constantly reminding you that if you stop producing, you disappear.
So I worked. Eight to ten hours a day, seven days a week. For nine years. No vacations. I rarely went anywhere. Slowly, I became a hermit.

The strange thing is that I didn’t even notice, because I loved what I was doing. I preferred being alone, and I convinced myself I was happy because I was living my dream.
And in many ways, I was. Over the years I’ve published more than 150 romance novels. The very first series I released became an international bestseller, and many others followed. It was everything I had hoped for.

Yet somewhere along the way, success quietly came at a price I never expected.
Without realizing it, my entire identity had become my work. I had no hobbies and very few close friendships. There was no balance in my life. If I wasn’t writing, I felt guilty, like I was falling behind. The person I had once been slowly disappeared beneath deadlines and word counts.

Until the day came that broke me.

Someone I deeply respected—someone who had mentored me as a writer for years—told me they simply couldn’t connect with my writing anymore. That one sentence and one opinion was all it took.

I know it shouldn’t have mattered. By then, my writing had improved enormously. My readers constantly reminded me how much my books meant to them. Thousands of them laughed, cried, and fell in love with my characters. Objectively, I knew my writing was stronger than it had ever been.

Yet emotionally, I shattered. I’ve asked myself why countless times. Why did one opinion outweigh years of success? Why did I allow someone else’s belief to become more important than my own?

The answer wasn’t really about writing. It was about where I had placed my worth. Without realizing it, I had spent years holding onto one person’s belief in me. When that disappeared, everything else vanished with it.

The result was a complete burnout.

My passion for writing disappeared. I’d stare at my laptop blankly, with no desire to write. What I loved doing the most suddenly became what hurt me the most.

Since then, I have struggled to write. Not because I have no stories, but because I had no belief left.

During that time, my readers showed me who they truly were. They didn’t demand another book or complain. Instead, they checked in. They sent messages asking if I was okay. They reminded me they would wait—and this still humbles me—as long as it took.

Those simple acts of kindness became the foundation upon which I slowly began rebuilding myself. People who didn’t know me personally reminded me that success isn’t measured by bestseller rankings or publication schedules, but by the lives you touch.

It was an eye-opener. People believed in me even when I stopped believing in myself. That realization changed everything—and it took me nine months to fully realize it.

Today, I still haven’t returned to writing full-time. Because I’ve not been publishing, I’ve had to return to work while I find my footing again.

Through all of this, for the first time in years, I’m learning who I am beyond my work. I’m learning to slow down, to make time for people, to build friendships instead of excuses. I’m working very hard not to feel guilty when I’m not working every waking hour, and to understand that rest isn’t laziness—it’s necessary.

I’m discovering that there’s an entire world outside work and my laptop. A world I ignored for far too long.

Some things haven’t changed. I’m still an introvert. I still enjoy my own company. I still love writing with every part of my soul. That love never disappeared. It simply became buried beneath exhaustion, disappointment, and years of believing my worth depended on how much I produced.

The stories are still there. I promise you, every single one of them. And I believe they’ll be stronger because of everything I’ve experienced. I’ve always written stories where readers connected with emotion more than plot—that’s where my strength lies. The depth of my characters has never come from imagination alone. It comes from life. From heartbreak, hope, and resilience.

I understand emotional pain well enough to write healing. Within every story, my own disappointments, obstacles, and lessons become part of the people I create on the page. Perhaps that’s why my stories have resonated with readers for so many years, because they aren’t simply fictional love stories. They’re pieces of my own heart.

Looking back now, I don’t regret the years I spent building my author career or writing more than 150 books. Those achievements shaped me.

During my corporate career, I had the privilege of working with two remarkable CEOs who taught me lessons that extended far beyond business. For that I’ll be forever grateful—it became the foundation I used to build something from the ground up, and to achieve dreams that once felt impossible.

I am proud of every step. But growth has taught me an equally important lesson. Success means very little if you lose yourself along the way.

If there is one thing I hope anyone reading this takes away from my journey, it is this:
Never build your entire identity around one thing. Whether it’s a career, a relationship, a dream, or another person’s opinion—don’t allow it to become the only foundation holding you up. Because if that foundation cracks, everything else falls with it.

I have learned to protect my passions, my friendships, and my health. But most importantly, protect the person you are outside your achievements. Listen to advice. Learn from criticism. Grow from disappointment. But never allow another person’s opinion to define your worth.

And never… never stop living.

Take the holiday. Make new friends. Laugh. Discover new places. Create memories that have nothing to do with work.

Success is wonderful. Purpose is powerful. But life is meant to be lived, not to be postponed until ‘someday.’

As for me… I’m still finding my way back. I’m rediscovering the woman I lost beneath deadlines, expectations, and endless hours of work.

I know I’ll write again, because it’s part of who I am. When the stories return, they’ll come from a soul that has been broken, rebuilt, and strengthened by this journey. 

I’ve learned that personal growth doesn’t happen while we’re climbing. It happens after we’ve fallen. The bravest decision we can take isn’t refusing to fall, it’s choosing to rise again, with even more passion than before.

That has been my motto since I first started writing. I didn’t always live up to it. But now, I’m working every day to do just that.

Living life with passion.

Linzi Basset