Don't Quit Your Day Job

Creating and Falling Off the Wagon

Well, I had a good stretch. I managed to meet my personal goal of posting to this blog every Sunday for two months. Then…nothing. What happened? I’ve been away from blogging for several weeks; writing has been the last thing I’ve had time to do. Despite that, however, it has been at the forefront of my thoughts.
I hate that I haven’t been able to write. Life really got in the way. You name it, it was on the table. Work, finances, health issues, kid stress and at one point, the dog started limping (he was okay later that day, but after paying $164 to the plumber, a vet bill seemed inevitable)! While I dealt with all of the issues in front of me, I had a new one to add to the pile: the guilt of not writing. Before, it was easy to put my writing aside for long periods of time. At first I would make excuses and then soon, I would go for days without even thinking about my writing.

The feelings I’ve had over the last few weeks have awakened me in the middle of the night and have stopped me short during my normal daily activities.

“What are the right decisions?”
“Where will this path lead?”
“What if I take this one instead?”

My head has been filled with so much decision making, creating seems like a luxury. Can I suspend all of these real life issues and write with abandon? I haven’t been able to. This is when hobby and job come to a direct head. No matter how seriously I want to take my writing, if no one is paying me to do it, it will have to take a backseat when paying the bills comes to the forefront. I want be a writer and feel like I’m a writer, but when you have kids, a mortgage, a car, then it’s going to be put aside when other responsibilities rear their ugly head. This is when I begin to doubt my abilities. How do you continue to make something so important in your life when, for the most part, no one even knows you’re doing it?

That being said, I have reached a point in my writing where it feels serious and real to me. I’ve been depressed that I’ve gone weeks without posting to this blog or my other blog. I feel more physically tired doing less then when I worked all day and came home and wrote in the evenings. Lately, I’ve been pulled in so many directions that when I do have free time to write, I just want to empty my mind and relax. But I don’t relax. That’s the lesson to be learned here. If I don’t have an outlet for my creative endeavors, they will plague me just as much unpaid bills and leaking pipes.

So another challenge is to keep writing during stressful times. Keep writing when you have no audience. Keep writing when no one is paying you. Keep writing even if it seems frivolous.

Keep writing.