Blog - The World Needs Your Passion

Spirituality, Monica Grace
The Immaculate Conception of Something New
- May 15, 2025
- 0 comments
- by Monica Leonelle
You may know of the first American Pope, Pope Leo XIV, but when he lived in my neighborhood in 1977-78 (years before I was born or lived here myself) at Immaculate Conception, likely in the rectory, he had not yet decided to become a priest or dedicate his life to the church.

Back then, Robert “Bob” Provost entered the novitiate of the Order of Saint Augustine in St. Louis and certainly walked my street, if he didn’t walk through my own home, which once housed monks, then an alcoholism prevention center.

You may also know that Pope Leo XIV is outspoken about keeping women from leadership of the Catholic Church.

When I was growing up under this religion, I can’t remember wondering when there would be a female president, but I can remember asking why women couldn’t be priests.

I never got a good answer—and I asked. My precocious 8-year old self who played Mother Mary with the blue veil at Christmas, who took reconciliation and communion dead seriously, asked my priest, and then my Sunday school teachers, and then my parents. Bright-eyed and hopeful, I dreamed of a day that women would be allowed to lead—surely by the time I was an adult, I thought.

Of course, I now know how that story ends, and that day gets further and further away with the election of Pope Leo.

At 41 years old, I care very little what the Catholic church does anymore. I have long left the faith behind, taken what I could from it, having found more flaws than fruitfulness in its teachings—so many places where it gets God wrong.

You cannot expect much from a patriarchal system that was ultimately built to consolidate tremendous power across Europe and the world, that has brought the world more war than righteousness, and that continues to work to bring forth policy in the US from an increasingly dangerous religious right.

Pope Leo may disapprove of Trump and Vance, but did he vote for them? Because these are the dissonances that the Catholic Church continues to hold, while wondering why their parishioner numbers continue to dwindle.

But that church that he first came to in 1977—it no longer belongs to the Catholic Church, having been sold off 25 years ago or so. It has been through multiple owners since I moved in next to it, but it’s never been developed as it should be for various reasons.

I have always wondered…Could it be mine to develop?

At 1.8 million dollars, probably not—or at least not right now.

But as I start building the next iteration of my company—which has a strong spiritual component—my dreams of turning it into a bookstore or a training center have given way to something else. I have wondered anyway, with the work that’s coming out of me—am I starting a new movement? A new way of thinking about and operating in the world?

And is that really any different from…A new religion?

Wouldn’t it be funny…

If the church in which Pope Leo found the words for his first vows, fell into the hands of a woman he would never allow to be a leader of his faith?

Wouldn’t it be funny…

If the precocious 8-year old ordained herself a priestess without the Catholic Church’s permission, and started spreading their teachings, but healed and from the feminine perspective?

Wouldn’t it be funny…

If every moment—the speaking on stages, the spiritual awakening, the passing ownerships, the failed companies, the century home that we almost didn’t get, sitting next to a neighborhood community cathedral—all led to this?

Unlikely to happen

But if the universe wants it

Impossible to stop.

There are dozens of visions for this special property, and I have zero expectation of mine being one that takes root. But I wish this energy on the place all the same. Imagine something healing rising from the ashes of the church’s abandoned properties? We are building a new world.
Lifestyle, Spirituality
“You Created This Reality.”
- February 27, 2025
- 0 comments
- by Monica Leonelle
“I voted for Trump, but I didn’t vote for this.”
I am so tired of reading this sentence everywhere on the internet right now.
Actually, they voted for this and they need to own that. They need to think harder about what their vote has done to minorities, women, and other disenfranchised communities.
They can’t learn a lesson without taking accountability for their part and recognizing how to change their part.
That means taking accountability for voting the way they did and changing that vote in the future.
Right now, people want to be rescued without the natural consequences of their actions.
They want the things they lost back without having to face the people that they happily harmed, that they still view as interior to them.
They want to keep voting Republican even though the party and almost all Republican politicians have endlessly lied to them and emboldened their hatred.
It’s still childish, weak behavior and I refuse to indulge what basically amounts to a tantrum rather than a thoughtful response to what the MAGA Republican party is doing to gut the government right now.
This is not, “I told you so.” (Though about 80 million of us have told you so.)
This is, “You created this reality and now you need to be part of the solution.”
I would like to move forward, but responsibility has to be taken, and reparations have to be made.
Until then, my response to all complaints from MAGAs is four words: “You created this reality.”
It is not my job to smooth over MAGA regret feelings.
You created this reality, and it’s your work to undo it now.
Lifestyle, Entertainment
Why the Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni Drama is So Appealing in 2025
- February 15, 2025
- 0 comments
- by Monica Leonelle
Let’s talk about Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni.
While it seems frivolous to discuss some celebrity drama over a movie with everything else happening in the world, there are reasons that this case has so fully captured the world’s attention.
Lively is a woman who is the epitome of privilege. Powerful, beautiful (with specific traits—tall, blonde, blue eyes), rich (and born rich), famous, extremely well connected in Hollywood and outside of it.
Baldoni is a man who self-proclaimed as a feminist, a good guy, a nice guy. He’s very good looking and though not anywhere near as famous as Lively, he still has access to endless money.
Lively has accused Baldoni of sexual harassment in the workplace under California definition, which seems to be defined as either a single egregious incident or a lower-key persistent pattern of lesser infractions of harassment. These accusations were addressed during filming, but Lively claims that Baldoni then preemptively hired a team of people to smear or bury her during the film’s promotion as retaliation.
Baldoni denies that he harassed her, and claims that she took over his movie. He claims that people hated on her through her own actions.
All, of course, can be true. He can have harassed her and others on set by acting inappropriately, and she could have used that extra power to take over the movie, and he could have aided in the smearing, and she could have aided in her own smearing.
Also, Baldoni’s team could just be right. The world loves to hate a woman that they perceive as even a tiny bit “difficult.” And TikTok is working overtime to find every possible clip where Lively is even the slightest bit unlikable.
Some of what’s really being litigated in the Court of Public Opinion now is:
– What is sexual harassment? Where’s the line?
– Are the accusations false or overblown? Should Baldoni lose his career over them?
– Was Lively wrong for using her power and asserting her vision over the movie…And basically winning? With the studio, with the cast, with the box office audience?
I have my own strong opinions over what likely happened between these two humans, and I hope both get their day in court. But I was thinking about why those opinions are so strong in the first place:
— Because watching a woman with the most privilege and protection and resources being eviscerated in the public for every tiny thing she did wrong is trauma-inducing for so many of us.
— Because watching a video where Lively is clearly deeply uncomfortable with acting choreography that’s not even a little bit in the script—and trying to brush off Baldoni’s unwanted advances under the guise of “creative differences”—is also way too familiar. Listening to people say that his behavior is fine when what I’m watching is soooo…Not fine, is also trauma-inducing. Why did he keep pressing her to act in ways that she stated she didn’t want to? Why did he belittle her views of romance and falling in love? Why didn’t he stop and ask if she was comfortable with the scene?
— Because watching Baldoni’s lawyer Bryan Freedman turn to extremist right wing pundits like Megyn Kelly (who is a client of Freedman’s) and Candice Owens as well as gossip King Perez Hilton (also a client of his) for support in driving their “narrative” is deeply disturbing and disappointing. Seeing more (mostly white) women being funneled into these misinformation pipelines over celebrity gossip is the opposite of what women or this country needs right now. (No matter what happens with Baldoni, this is his unforgivable sin in my book. It shows me that he’s neither a feminist nor “man enough” and he was always just another male grifter trying to monetize and manipulate women out of their money without actually contributing to their liberation.)
— Because other “good men” like Neil Gaiman also have had their actions come to light…And the magnitude of what women are up against is exhausting.
— Because in the midst of dealing with a tranche of misinformation and hostility and damage from the government, I’m seeing how deeply entrenched supremacy and misogyny are STILL rooted in so many people, including people I thought were safe. Including people who are concerned about the White House activity and even voted against this administration, but are ready to throw Lively under the bus completely because they are uncomfortable with her using the power she had to do what she thought was right for the film.
— Because the Lively pile on is so frustrating and so full of its own misinformation and so fully DARVO, AND you literally can’t convince someone that they have been manipulated even when you show them DARVO, and that’s pretty much the summation of trying to talk to people who voted for Trump too. It’s another situation where facts don’t seem to matter more than hatred, and it’s so exhausting to think about.
There are no solutions, and I imagine that people will continue to hate on Lively until she disappears or wins her case, and Baldoni will reemerge as a right-wing media figure because he actually has no other choice since his career as a feminist at least is over.
But I know I’ll continue following all of this with dismay at how so many people in the US think about the issues at hand.
If you want to read a fairly neutral lawyer’s breakdown of the actual motions on the case, I found this woman who is doing them over on Threads and Substack: https://morewithmj.substack.com/.
Lifestyle, Business, Finances, Monica Grace, Monica Leonelle, Production, Solo Storm
Stepping Out of a Freeze Spiral (And Addressing Everything You’ve Been Avoiding)
- August 28, 2024
- 1 Comment
- by Monica Leonelle
No one is lazy. Humans have a propensity to do things.
No one is even a procrastinator. Procrastination is either knowing that the energy is not right for potency (in this way, you gather your energy for the task) or knowing that the task is not right (and then you simplify, delete, automate, or delegate).
So when we aren’t doing things we’re supposed to be doing, there is data there in that behavior.
Lately I’ve been trying to figure out why I won’t take action on some really basic stuff that has already been decided. One of those things is to put together a proper email list from all my sources of people. I’ve been using a combination of Writer MBA, Substack, and BackerKit to reach my people. It works fine, but I’m intent on building my list more aggressively in the near future.
Another is fixing my website store. It’s technically functional but I need to install a few plugins, add new listings, and you know, actually tell people about new things happening and give them the link.
These things have been decided. But my emotional being wakes up every day and says, “No no no no no no no no not today.”
For a while I assumed that I was too busy. I then fell back on my usual approach to making myself move…The inner work. Inner work involves using healing tools to change my energy…But I couldn’t put my finger on what the thing I needed to heal was!
Yesterday I was journaling about this (again!) and I wrote down, “I don’t want to be visible because then people will see all my mistakes.”
- Books that aren’t out yet
- Missed deadlines
- Things formatted improperly
- Broken website links
To be honest, that list is probably a stretch. The first two are real things that I owe people and feel a ton of shame and guilt about. The other two are…I mean, most entrepreneurs are struggling with formatting and broken website links.
Since 2024 started, I’ve been getting regular panic attacks and heightened anxiety that keeps me up at night. I haven’t had to deal with either since 2018 or so. I attributed some of it to having a newborn (I gave birth to my second child in late 2023), but more recently I had to admit that the anxiety at least was work-related.
I realized I had been avoiding selling (which is a necessary part of a business) to avoid the questions and judgement around what I was working on and why I wasn’t working on the overdue things in my business fast enough.
We are hitting conference season which means I need extra cash for travel expenses and all sorts of other stuff…But my cash reserves are the lowest they’ve been in years.
At the same time, I have overdue content and books to send. And I’m doing them! But not posting about them to the people I owe them to. Because I don’t want to be asked about the things that are not done yet. Because I don’t have a clear timeline that I’m confident I can hit.
And this cycle makes me less visible, which makes me less revenue, which makes me more anxious, which makes me less able to do my work, which makes more people frustrated with me…
It’s been a terrible cycle of avoidance that has ramped up all summer. The life stage I’m at + political season doesn’t help, I’m sure, nor do summer slumps in sales, but those external factors are not the thing. The thing is a freeze response.
Because I don’t know how to fight the very reasonable and true things people are saying about me. My books are unbearably and unreasonably past their deadlines.
And I’m not going to flight from my customers. I want to stay in this industry, so that’s part of it, but also I am going to get those books done and I am going to send them out. The decision is made, the work is in progress.
And I don’t want to fawn anymore. When I first realized I was pregnant, I tried to give the timelines and deadlines that people wanted, even knowing that my health issues were scary and unpredictable and I wasn’t going to push myself. That went…Poorly. But also, saying that I didn’t know but I’d get to it was creating open loops in people’s minds that the people pleaser in me wanted to appease.
All that was left of the trauma responses was freeze.
I’ve been sitting on a ton of stuff the last month that I just need to upload. It’s stuff that I’m afraid to deliver, even though people obviously want me to deliver.
Because it’s easier to freeze.
Because it feels like my progress is not enough.
Because I don’t know how to say, “I need more time. I don’t know how much.”
And I feel vulnerable already, as I think many of us do. I don’t have as much energy to take care of myself as I normal would…Much less hear and hold very valid critique of who I am as a person and how it’s destroying my business and ruining my relationships with people and breaking trust and making people feel bad.
My mental health feels a little more fragile than it has in past years. And it’s an uncomfortable place for me to be, because I’m frequently the calm, steady, chill one. My baseline vibe is usually one of peace, not panic.
But I think I know how to step out of the freeze spiral I’m in.
- Accept where I’m at and be in integrity. For me, that means writing it down and making it public, hence this post! But your version of this could be completely different.
- Know my priorities. If I had known I would be pregnant for all of 2023 and be exhausted with being the primary caregiver for my children in 2024, I would not have done two way over promised Kickstarter campaigns back to back in 2022 when it was still a bit more of the Wild West. That was stupid either way, really. And while Kickstarter is for that purpose, the environment has become one where readers want the books to be done first. The truth is that I was trying to use the campaigns to force myself to get more done, and it failed spectacularly. This strategy has worked reasonably for me in the past, but now I’m older and have pregnancy-related health issues I have to deal with and have very little control of my time, seemingly. I can’t be working crazy twenty-something hustle culture hours anymore.
- Find the truth. I can’t give hard deadlines right now. The way I’m working doesn’t work with my former phoenix energy strategies. I understood how to set timelines under these strategies because I had years of data, but I’m currently forging a new productivity path for myself and have very little data. That said, I can give tentative timelines, which are more like intentions.
- Communicate. I can also keep people really up-to-date and possibly even over-communicate. I don’t currently have a great system of communication with my audience anywhere. I find myself ghosting accidentally, even though I actually desire to be present with the group. I’m trying something new where I can post to my website where I can over-communicate without people being bothered by me, and setting up a dedicated email account where I can run more proper announcements, promotions, and sales.
At the end of the day, my priority is my health, then my family, then my career. And that normally works out pretty well, but over the last two years, my health and my children have taken up almost all of my time and energy compared to previously.
So much of this post is surprisingly difficult for me to write, and even harder to change my patterns on. I keep reminding myself:

My past mistakes don’t disqualify me from having a thriving business.
A business is a chance to work on yourself, and all I want to do is get through this hard time in my life and put better systems into place so I can make my business more sustainable and grow it over time.
Lifestyle, Business, Spirituality
The Best Way To Get Someone’s Attention
- September 4, 2023
- 0 comments
- by Monica Leonelle
This should go without saying, but the best way to get someone’s attention in a professional setting is truly just to do good and interesting work that excites that person.
Another way is to be supportive of the person. If you can do both, then you probably have their attention already.
Notice that nothing said above is: argue with them, snark about them, attempt to discredit them, beg for their validation, trauma-dump on them or to everyone about them, feel entitled to their reciprocation, or otherwise cross their boundaries.
Also, if you are doing these things, at least have the self-awareness that you actually want their attention, you just don’t want to pay the price (which is either doing good work or being supportive).
Finally, sometimes being supportive is actually just hiring someone. A lot of people don’t want to hear that, but it’s so obvious.
You can then ask all your questions about why they have what they have, and do what they do, without it feeling so energetically thirsty and draining for everyone.
Anyway, this is a bit of a vent but it’s also a PSA, I hope. It’s actually very easy for people to get the things they want, but so many go about it the wrong way.
I have empathy because I used to be so thirsty too, but when I discovered that I could just choose to shift my energy, I also shifted my world.
Monica Leonelle, Marketing, Nonfiction, Production, Strategy, Turning Passion Into Money
One Path To Succeed at Nonfiction in Any Topic Quickly
- July 14, 2023
- 0 comments
- by Monica Leonelle
I rarely talk about my nonfiction process, but I’ve noticed that I approach nonfiction so differently than other people I see. And I think it is the reason I have had sustained success at it. I have two fiction pen names (Monica Leonelle and Monica Grace) and they reach two very different audiences. (Though I hope to weave them together in the future!) I find it interesting to watch how each has grown over the years and how my strategy greatly differs from what some others in the same industry seem to do.
Build the Body of Work, Then Bring it to the Audience
What I notice about myself is that I build the body of work, usually recruit a few initial people to offer feedback (by a few I mean 500 people or less), then I let more people know about it and build the audience for it.
I do this by launching a book on Kickstarter or my own website, and I’ve also done it by running a beta for a course or program. I’m lucky that my co-author and business partner Russell Nohelty is very much of the same mind and approach.
By the time the bigger audience gets there, the content is so solid and works so well for them. It grows quickly, and I just spend my time nurturing the body of work rather than trying to create it.
Why Working For Free Takes Longer
I see others follow a different pattern—help others for free for a long time, hear and answer the basic questions over and over again, and then try to transition to paid offerings, but get burned out or overwhelmed on creating things like courses or books.
Others make free the center of their business and hope to be fed on the 3% that may convert to paid, which is the opposite of what I do. Instead, I make paid the center of my business, try to get a few thousand people to pay for my expertise (usually through a course), and let everyone else self-select into the book, the free resources, or even out of my peripheral.
The problem with free is, it’s tiring, it’s thankless, and it’s shallow.
For the first two, it’s hard to even sustain yourself through that period of building your audience without completely burning out your health or energy.
For the third one, even when someone does get around to making paid content, that content does not go deep enough to attract the full spectrum of the audience (beginner to advanced). A free audience is by its nature a shallow one. And often, what a free audience wants is a gold star and pat on the head, while what a paid audience wants is faster results.
If you make paid the center of your business, you get paid a sustainable amount to create the content, then you get paid a ton to market it. You get to the tipping point on it so much faster, and you keep growing.
That is my experience, at least!
Now Fiction Authors Can Get In on the Fun Too
Fiction authors don’t tend to have the same challenges as nonfiction authors around free content. But I do think this is instructional for those who are excited about direct sales—selling through crowdfunding, websites, and at live events and signings.
With direct sales, it’s becoming common for fiction authors to get paid to create the book—usually through a Kickstarter launch or an ongoing subscription on Ream, Patreon, or Substack. I think it’s important, because authors do need to get paid to build the content, and then also get paid to find new audiences for it.
It’s definitely an approach that is familiar and comfortable to me, and one that I plan to take!
Monica Grace, Bricks, Drawing, Illustrating, Monica Leonelle, Nurturing Your Passion, Passion, Production, Reigniting Your Passion
Making Time For a Hobby That Takes a Lot of Energy
- July 10, 2023
- 0 comments
- by Monica Leonelle
Years ago, before I had my first child, I took numerous art classes. I mostly worked with pencil and practiced sketching and drawing. Right after I had my first child, the pandemic hit, so just as my kiddo was hitting 4-5 months and I was feeling ready to emerge from our cocoon, everything in-person was cancelled.
I stopped drawing. It wasn’t a good excuse, because let’s face it—there are thousands of online classes and drawing is a solitary affair that can be done from anywhere. The in-person classes were very motivating to me though. Being told what to draw, and really, being given the time (by myself) to meditate on my drawing, was so fulfilling to me.
This was a project from my very first class. It is probably one of my best ones that I ever produced, but the reality of why it is so strong is that we spent four weeks on our capstone instead of two, as we did in future classes. Putting double the hours into something while make genuine efforts to be better at it simply produces a better result. This was a huge creative lesson for me that I still think about on a regular basis.
Trying to draw while surrounded by the mess of my life—physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually—just overwhelmed me.
A year or two ago I tried to get back into drawing and was taking online classes that truly excited me. But I kept running into the issue that drawing was challenging for me. It was hard to level up my drawings without significant energy expenditure. And it was energy I did not seem to have or be able to maintain.
I longed to be one of those people who sketched everything around them, from pictures they had taken, to inspiring landscapes. But I simply wasn’t. I was too tired. And I already had a job—writing and running multiple businesses—that took up a lot of my creative energy. So even when something was fun to sketch, I didn’t feel like I should be spending my energy sketching. (Whether that is true or not, I still don’t know.)
One night after nursing I sat in bed and sketched this from a picture. It only took about 30 minutes, if that. It was fun, and I thought, “If I could do this every day, imagine where I’ll be in five years!” But I could not do it every day. Eventually, I had to accept that.
I learned a few things about my efforts to restart my hobby:
1. You can usually make an amazing piece of art with time, once you have the foundations. I learned how to draw very quickly. My main struggle was and is to this day having the patience to sit down and draw. Drawing to produce anything of commercial quality simply requires putting in a ton of hours, which I don’t feel like I have right now.
2. I could not maintain my writing schedule and practice drawing even 20-30 minutes a day. I tried several times. It was exhausting me. I ended up switching my hobby to LEGOs because it was also meditative without having to be creative. (Don’t get me wrong, you can be creative with LEGO, but you can also just follow the instructions. It feels a lot more like reading a book versus writing one, energetically.)
3. It was okay that I failed. I had started lessons to become a commercial artist and incorporate more art into my work. I just…Couldn’t. I couldn’t do it all at once. But I know my skill is still there, and I know my progress is beautiful and incredible, and I know I will return someday…Just not while raising small children. In the meantime, I’m working more on my writing and building upon my already fairly extensive catalog of books.
So much of my illustrating efforts have actually been a huge failure. I’m not the artist I want to be. I’m not doing what I want with my art yet. And I have no idea when I will be doing so.
I drew this in 20-30 minutes on Procreate and still love it to this day. I made a special laser-cutter pin edition with my husband’s help. (He’s a maker and engineer so we have everything—3D printer, laser-cutter, electronics, woodworking shop, etc.)
Since we were running our first Kickstarter campaign, I also drew this one so that there was something unique that we could hand out at 20Books. Russell Nohelty (my business partner) ended up giving away all of these to people he met.
But it’s okay. My journey in becoming a visual artist has brought me back to a childhood love of building, and I am much happier having LEGOs as my hobby right now. I can see a future where I have the book catalog I want and can slow down a bit with my writing, where I have more time throughout the day and can spend time drawing and illustrating things, and where I also have time to build LEGOs and play with my LEGO city too.
I think this is such a part of being an adult…Figuring out how to handle all of your responsibility while also carving out the smallest bit of time for yourself. One of my biggest fears is dying too young, and my second biggest fear is reaching retirement age and not being able to retire. But my third biggest fear is reaching retirement age and having nothing I’m excited about. I feel like that third fear is handled, at least. I have so much I’m excited to occupy my time with, and I’m able to do quite a bit of it now, while also feeling so excited to have more time to do more of it later.
Some live for travel and adventure, but for me? My dream is a wraparound porch, enough sunlight for a garden, and lazy mornings sipping tea, reading, and creating. And I’m planting the seeds of that dream today.
FicBrick, Bricks, LEGO Investing, LEGO Organization
What Does It Mean To Be a LEGO Fan?
- July 6, 2023
- 0 comments
- by Monica Leonelle
I’m fairly confident that normal people don’t fully understand what it means when someone says, “I’m really into LEGOs.”
So here are some things it means in my circles:
#1 – You Join LEGO VIP and Stalk the LEGO Store to Get New Builds (and Exclusive Gifts With Purchase) Immediately
Sometimes I buy it early just for to get the exclusive Gift With Purchase (GWP), or sometimes I do so because the fervor is too high within the LEGO community and I’m really excited. Sometimes I do so because I’m worried it’s going to sell out and go on backorder!
I might build it right away (like Rivendell) or it might sit in my backlog for months or years in its box. Either way, it’s fun to grab it on the first day!
#2 – You Have IKEA Shelves To Display Your LEGO Sets
I’ve taken over part of our family room with some shelving for LEGO—three Billy Bookcases in white! This is mostly temporary, though. I actually plan to start a LEGO city and will be incorporating a lot of my sets into a landscaped display using MILS (modular integrated landscaping system). My city is mostly going to be minidolls and their sets (rather than minifigs, which is the standard in the community), and I’ll also put together a Hogwarts display at some point.
When these city sections come out, I’ll be using square tables, so it’s actually quite involved! I would like to document some of that process here. That said, I am a mom to young children and I run several businesses, so I sometimes feel stretched thin to work on my hobbies. I have no timeline at the moment.
Still, you can see Rivendell in the center! And several of the other bigger modular sets on the shelves. They are surprisingly heavy, but several are already built on MILS plates.
#3 – You Have Sets That You Mean To Sell
I have an entire shelf of sets that need to go on the resell market! For some reason, as you collect LEGO, you start to collect sets that you don’t have a plan for. Maybe they just looked cool at the time? Maybe someone gave them to you. There are so many reasons, and I have 30-40 sets that I just…Need to move out of my house ASAP.
(The left shelf is the resell shelf. The right shelf in this picture has my Star Wars and Avatar backlog… Which are most likely to go on display on my bookshelves, when I get the rest of my space organized and start laying out my LEGO city!)
Here are the five reasons I get rid of a set:
- It doesn’t fit into my long-term collection – The Friends and Office sets are amazing, but unless I can think of a way to use them in my city, I may pass them along! I originally bought them because I loved those shows and wanted to build them. However, I have a huge backlog and try not to build things until I’m ready to put them somewhere.
- It’s an accidental duplicate – It’s embarrassing for me to say that I don’t always remember what I have in my collection. Sometimes I think I don’t have it, and then I find out I have two! It’s horrifying to me, but it’s happened sooooo many times at this point and I’ve learned to roll with those punches. I also get a lot of sets for birthdays and Christmases, so I get duplicates from that too.
- I got it for free – When you order from LEGO’s store (online or in-store), you get a lot of GWPs. I don’t always want them though! Sometimes I get duplicates of them (I have 7 Blacktron Cruisers right now) and sometimes I time my orders because I know that the GWP is going to be harder to come by, and thus a good collector’s item for the resell marketplace.
- I bought extras before it retired – I’m not a regular reseller, nor a LEGO investor, but as an MBA I will always find different market forces fascinating. The resell value on LEGO is very interesting to me, and I’ve dabbled in building a (very small) extra inventory.
- I started collecting the LEGO theme and realized I can’t – I don’t care who you are or how much disposable income you have—you cannot collect everything, even as a LEGO die-hard fan and enthusiast. I’m a completionist collector and there are several lines (many of the Marvel and DC ones, Mario Brothers, Sonic the Hedgehog, Indiana Jones, Ninjago, many of the cars and technic lines) that I want to build but do not have the time and space (and money) to build. As time goes on, I’m sure there will be even more sets that I have to let go of. I also realize that at some point, I may want to sell all of my sets. Life is so complicated, right? Having a hobby can be complex.
If you are wondering what else is in my backlog besides that shelf…Well, maybe someday I’ll share a picture of it. It’s…A lot, though. I don’t think most people would even believe me without seeing it, but I’ll admit that I have several years of backlog to keep me busy. This might even be my retirement plan!
Given that it’s a part-time hobby and I have had to cut back on build time over nights and weekends this year, I probably have enough to keep me occupied for a while. That doesn’t necessarily mean I won’t grab more though, as LEGO is a very cyclical business that must be timed well! You can’t sleep on the sets you want.
That is my introduction to my LEGO collection. I will be posting more over time, because I haven’t really shared all that much here, but let me know what you want to hear about and I’m happy to share more!
Monica Leonelle, Lifestyle, Monica Grace, Pursuing Your Passion, Spirituality
How To Set Emotional Boundaries
- June 14, 2023
- 2 Comments
- by Monica Leonelle
What does it mean to not take responsibility for other people’s feelings?
Especially when they are pointing the finger at you, because you made them feel a certain way based on something you said or did?
It really just means a few things:
- That you believe in them and their ability to handle you bringing your full self to the conversation—you don’t need to censor yourself, you don’t need to treat them with kiddie gloves
- That you trust them to emotionally regulate themselves without getting involved or falling into a parent-child relationship with them
- That you put them in charge of their own feelings—they get to process them and they get to take responsibility for their actions while processing them
It also means that you set emotional boundaries within yourself:
- That you know your intentions—Were they to harm another? Were they to convince or persuade or cajole? Were you trying to get something from this person? (These are all for your to work through, regardless of the person’s reaction)
- That you know your source of truth—not this other person, but yourself and (if relevant) your Higher Power (God, the universe, source, whomever)
- That you let go of any responsibility for this person’s feelings (their feelings are their responsibility) which usually means working through any of your own trauma around shame (which also comes up as blame and guilt) or, if it’s not shame, looking at the five other core wounds: betrayal, rejection, control, abandonment, or injustice to see which fits
If you get into a situation where you need emotional boundaries, there is absolutely work for you to do—but many of us fall into the wrong work and instead believe that our trauma response—fight, flight, freeze, or fawn—is the work we need to be doing. But the real work is setting the emotional boundary, which usually means:
- Checking in with ourselves about why we said what we said to make sure that our intentions are sound (and if not, that’s okay—just something to work through)
- Figuring out why we feel any responsibility for the other person’s emotions, which is usually due to trauma/wounding that again, we are able to work through
- Fighting the urge to react from a place of trauma; instead, choosing to go within and heal the trauma/wounding that is coming up, then respond
A few more important notes about this process:
- It’s okay to mess it up—and you’re absolutely going to…The good news is you get to be human! You don’t have to be perfect or do it well, and your efforts to do this will look messy for a while
- This is absolutely not a license to say anything you want or make personal attacks against others with no consequences—that is a completely separate thing that I do not condone at all, and it’s definitely something you want to check in with yourself about regularly
- While I’m a believer that you should always at least do the work of setting emotional boundaries, it doesn’t necessarily mean you need to communicate those back or continue to have a relationship with the person—relationships are earned through trust and desire of both parties to make repairs in the case of a break
- A lot of people claim to have emotional boundaries when all they really have is a trauma response (usually flight or fawn); the value of doing this work is that emotional boundaries give you actual peace, while trauma responses merely give you numbness to your emotions
This process have been incredibly valuable to me over the years, and I get better at it with practice.
It’s not easy being a human, but I am so glad that I have these incredible tools with which to not only be a better human, but be better to other humans, too!
Business, Fiction, Marketing, Monica Leonelle, Passion, Solo Storm, Turning Passion Into Money, Writing
How Mission Statements Can Impact Your Effort To Express Your Passions
- March 24, 2023
- 0 comments
- by Monica Leonelle
A few of my friends have been using mission statements for years to tell people exactly what they get from a brand. After hearing about a mission statement several times from them, and seeing how they have built strong fandoms for their fiction, I decided to try my hand at it as well for my Solo Storm brand.
What is a Mission Statement For?
Your mission statement helps in:
- Understanding your audience for product design
- Attracting your ideal audience for visibility
- Selling a creation to an audience for $$$ and business growth
Your mission statement needs to include the Ws:
- What you do
- Why you do it
- How you do it
- Who you do it for
- Where and when you do it (if applicable to that specific project)
The mission statement I wrote for Solo Storm is likely a little too long, but it came to me overnight and I had to capture it on my phone.
A Solo Storm Book Is…
Solo Storm writes luxe romantic fantasy (romantasy) and sci-fi (romansci-fi).
In a Solo Storm book, you’ll find daring and feisty princesses of all ethnicities who are trying to do the next right thing while stuck in impossible circumstances.
These books are for the daydreamers, the magicians, the enchanters. Those who grew up on both Disney Princesses and pop princesses. Those who imagined being charmed and swept away, those who wanted to see a whole new world, those who wished for so much more than their provincial lives. These books are for those who have longed to express themselves, who want to go deep, who desire to belong to the group, who know the love they seek is out there, and who want to do it all with both style and savvy.
These books are for those who have a rebellious heart and an adventurous spirit. Those who channel their inner witchy priestess and plan their weeks by the cycles of the moon and tarot decks. Those who are trying to break their habits of people-pleasing and overachieving. Those who have entered their villain era and are up to some vigilante shit. Those who can’t stop expressing, emoting, questioning, seeking, wanting. Those who have felt like too much, too feeling, too bursting with passion…And at the same time, not enough, not enough, not enough.
These books are for the misunderstood, the stuck, the bored. Those who have been told to settle, stay small, and stop dreaming bigger. Those who are strong, everyday warriors without shooting a bow or wielding a sword. Those who long for luxury instead of laundry. (Why is there always more laundry?) Those who have been told they’re too smart, too assertive, too pretty. Those who have always wanted it all–the romance, the friendships, the lavender haze, the crowns and ball gowns, the palace intrigue, the art, the music, the beauty, the adventure, the dreaminess, the happy endings, and the dancing. Oh, the dancing!
These books are for those who believe it’s possible to have it all—the attention, the spark, the love, the devotion, and eventually, the peace of the happy ending.
Pick up a Solo Storm book today!
Your Turn: What is the Mission Statement For Your Passion Project?
While you certainly don’t have to take the same approach as I did, I think this approach can work well for passions that don’t address a clear problem they are solving. At Writer MBA, we use a selling framework: Excitement, Objections, Psychological Triggers. Some people teach selling on fear or agitation—anxiety is a type of excitement and falls under that bucket! Excitement is essentially just a disruption to the nervous system, a disturbance of peace—and you could go positive or negative with your messaging to create that.
Coming from books and the entertainment industry, we usually sell on “look how awesome this thing is!” which is what I’ll always recommend for all passions. I don’t personally like the negative disruption to the nervous system for myself, and I don’t enjoy purposely doing it to others, either.
To write your mission statement, here are some questions you can ask yourself:
- Who is your ideal audience? Not your audience. Your ideal audience. Picture an actual person and what appeals to them about your offer. If you are in your ideal audience, even better!
- How can you tie things your ideal audience likes to the value of your product? In my case, I write royalty books and princess problems. So I immediately tied that to Disney princesses and pop princesses. If you enjoy Disney princesses (royalty + happy endings in love) and/or enjoy pop princesses (happy beats + fame/attention/visibility/gowns/etc.) then you’ll probably like my books, too.
- How can you use language that your audience will associate with emotions? I make references to many Disney movies of a certain era that people in their thirties would have grown up on. I refer to laundry which especially targets moms. I refer to “vigilante shit” and “lavender haze” which are both songs on the newest Taylor Swift album. I refer to cycles of the moon and tarot decks to pull in New Age, witchy, and woo-woo people…And also to push away people who will hate these books. My books are fantasy with witches and angels and more, and those can turn off some people who are at the further ends of religious or atheist.
- How can you tap into universal needs that your audience will resonate with? Universal needs (according to the Enneagram) would be things like, being good, being loved, being valued, being individual/special/unique, knowing everything/being smart, belonging to a community, being rebellious, being fun, being strong, being connected. These are things that a lot of people will resonate with and I usually use them to expand my audience a bit more and connect to the core.
- How can you mirror your audience? Your audience wants to see themselves in either you, your clients/customers (case studies), your community, or in the case of fiction, your characters. It’s better if they see themselves in all of the above and everything is aligned, but even one would be enough.
I found writing this mission statement to flow naturally, but I think some of that is because I already understand my audience from previous work/efforts I’ve done to break down my fiction style. I also think that since I am a part of my audience and my work comes from me, this tends to fit a lot of my more personal work, even under my other pen name Monica Grace (which writes about spirituality).
Don’t be surprised if it comes easily, and don’t be surprised if it comes hard. A mission statement is just a way to get to know your company or project better than you currently do. But once you get it right, it becomes one of your best magnets for connecting to the right people and pulling them in to what you do.
Good luck!

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