Sometime ago – maybe it was a year or two ago – I had a
very strong feeling that it was time for me to take a new path in life. My
journey so far had me devoting 10 years of my life to “author stuff” and
throwing myself into all things involved in being a writer. But then I started
feeling the stirrings of change in the wind. I knew that change was coming and
that soon I would abandon my obsession with writing books and being a writer in
general.
Well, that day came. The day when I knew that, yes, it
was now time for a change.
Unfortunately, I didn’t know what that change was. I knew
I had to be doing something else but … WHAT? Where was I supposed to go now?
What did I plan to do with my life now?
Even as I knew I would continue to write (just not as
obsessively), I also knew that it was time for a new path.
But I couldn’t figure out WHAT that path was!
And it took me a long time to figure it out. The whole
scope of the change finally came to me yesterday in a bolt of inspiration. Up
until then, I had bits and pieces of these ideas and I was trying to figure out
how to make them all work.
Well, I have figured that out now. It was like, BOOM! It
hit me right out of the blue how to put ALL of those ideas together into one
thing and to make it all work. I immediately sat down to put together a plan for it.
Some of these new things I’ll be doing are going to take
me a long time to make a reality, especially since one of them requires years
of schooling, internship and practice to make it an official thing. But I am
willing to put in the time for it. I mean, what the heck else am I going to do
with my life? I'm not going to spend it doing nothing.
I am now more confident about these changes and this new journey
in life now that I have figured out the steps I need to take with them and how
to bring it all together. The things I want to do and the new career paths will
definitely be an exciting challenge for me and I am looking forward to seeing
how it will all work out with each of those things.
And while I am a bit concerned that maybe I am putting
too many irons into the fire at one time, I think it is the best course of
action for me to take to ensure that at least SOMETHING will go right and I
will actually have something viable that allows me to earn a decent living for
my family. Writing books was not exactly helping me to earn a living, but I
stuck with it because it’s my passion. Pretty much why I will continue to stick
with it. (I think it’s important to pursue our passions.) But the mistake I made was
devoting 10 years to Just That One Thing. Being an author. I REALLY do need
something in place that helps me to earn a living and I think one or more of
these new ventures will make that happen. And, you know, I figure, if I can’t
get a job (after years of trying!), then I will give myself one. Hopefully one
of these new things will work out better than my attempts at being a
financially successful author.
I will continue to write books, but I can no longer
devote hours of the week to it. I must use that energy for other things.
Unfortunately, I can’t start these changes now. For the time being,
I need to finish writing the books that I have at present not finished writing.
Once that is done, I will create a more feasible writing schedule for new books
that complements the other things that I will have going on. Also, I will use
the time left to learn everything I can about what I need to do for these new pursuits.
So it looks like I won’t be able to start implementing my
plan for these new pursuits until the new year. And I am fine with that. I have
time to wrap up loose ends now and finish other things now. I will use this
time to get all my ducks in a row and get everything done and ready.
I will also be using a new blog to chart my progress with
these new pursuits. This particular blog is mainly for things going on in the
family. I started this blog shortly after moving from California to Oregon and
for the purpose of keeping family updated on what’s going on with us while
living here, so far away from them. But it would seem that it really does not
serve that purpose anymore. For one thing, there’s Facebook, which I have used
to stay in touch with family. And for another, the things I write about stuff
going on with us are just not that important to family anymore so I will
reserve everything for my own personal journal. Blog posts about my family just
aren’t that big of a deal anymore so that’s why I stopped blogging here.
The new blog will be my own personal journey and about
the new pursuits. I will be blogging about them only for my own reasons. I
really don’t care if nobody gives a crap about what I write on the new blog or not. Don’t care if there’s
no audience for it or whatever. It will just be my own thing.
Which pretty much speaks for everything else in my life.
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