Skip to content

Posts tagged ‘Day Jobs’

Oct 14

All Work, No Play

The new day job has been a time suck. I went from staying home all day long with occasional errands, to twelve hour long days ( two of those hours are commuting to and from the office). In some ways it’s nice to be busy again, but, wow, I’m tired at the end of the day. The job itself is great. I’m getting better at it and feeling more confident in the work. Hopefully, in a few months I will be able to work from home a few days a week.

Honestly, I don’t know how some of these super commuters do it. People who have longer commutes than me, or travel all the time. I know someone who lives in LA, but works in AZ! My hats off to you all.

But… the writing hasn’t stopped! If anything I’ve started writing on my lunch break, like I used to do years ago. Now that I have limited time and energy, I find myself scribbling a few pages everyday. So like my affirmation card says, “I’m putting words on the page everyday.” The novel may be slow, but it is progress. I never was one for sprinting. I prefer the long endurance races.

I still have some writing goals to meet, but for now (and probably the rest of October) it’s going to be on writing this novel (and getting my 100K words written goal) done. Currently, no word count because I have a crap ton of handwritten pages, but it’s hefty. Plus, I’m not too worried about word count right now. I”m just going for it and writing everything down. I’ll edit  and shape it later. Right now, I just want words on the page, a beginning, a middle, and an end.

This past weekend I attended a great writing workshop. As many have said before, you should never stop learning. This particular workshop was taught by Donald Maass on “The Emotional Craft of Writing.” It was a good size group and I got a lot out of it. If you have the opportunity to go — do it. It’s always good to learn new things in your craft, or remind yourself of the lessons you already know. I realize now, after twenty-years out of undergrad, that I’m never going to be done learning. There is always another part of me where I can grow.

Also, you don’t need to pay for a workshop. Trust me, I know what it is like to be strapped for cash. Reading books, watching youtube videos on craft (by people who you think are successful), and talking with other writers are great ways to grow too. Just never think you know it all. I think that is detrimental thinking.

So, I’m pushing forward, working hard (both the writing and new day job), and trying not to burn out. It has been a crazy, crazy, year so far. I’m a little scared about what these last three months are going to bring, but I am hopeful. Things seem to be settling down. I want a quiet fall and holidays filled with love, laughter, and lots of writing.

 

Sep 6

New Season, New Beginning

It’s not quite officially fall yet, but I’m starting to feel it in the air. Kids are going back to school. The lazy, hot days of summer are fading into busy, crisp days of autumn. The days of relaxing are gone and replaced by days of activity.

In other words, I got a new job.

I’m excited for the new experience. In a way this is new territory for me. I’m entering the world of government contracting (I had to get security clearance.) and I’m now working for a large company. I haven’t done that since 2000. My very first job out of undergrad was with a large company. Since then, I have only worked for small businesses. I also have a commute again. Back into the fray of traffic. I hope this is a good match. I think I made a good choice accepting this offer. No job is perfect, but I think this place is a good fit and I’ll be there for a while.

As for writing, my novel is still chugging along. I had hoped to have most of it done by September 1, but that didn’t happen. Truth is — It’s been a while since I’ve written anything over 5K. Once I passed that mark, I lost steam. My friend Jennifer Ryan suggested that I set a timer for 30 minutes and just work for that amount of time everyday. So far, that has worked, but the progress is slow. I get bored, insecure, or just plain lazy and don’t want to work. It’s strange, but when my time was limited, I was able to focus and get stuff done. Having lazy days where I don’t have much to do took the wind out of my sails.

I have an affirmation card on my bedroom wall that says, “Put words on the page everyday.” It’s a reminder to myself that I don’t need to have the perfect words, I just need to write something. I need to move forward. Maybe by October 1 I’ll have a very rough draft of the book. For now, I’m just putting words on the page. One foot in front of the other. I’ll get there… eventually.

Also there are some other great literary things that are happening and I’ll talk about those later, as I get further into the fall. I may have been lazy at times, but I still got some stuff done. I’m still submitting and going to literary events.

So it is a new season for me. A new start and, in a way, a new adventure into the next phase of my life. This summer was challenging and difficult at times. Change never really feels good as you’re going through it, but after the dust has settled and I started to move on, I have a better attitude. In some ways, my life needed an upheaval. A reminder that nothing is certain and the the winds of change will blow your way one day. After my surgery, I started practicing more gratitude and never have I been more grateful for getting all my medical issues taken care of before I lost my job. I really lucked out there. I’m also grateful for all the family and friends that supported me through this time. They made the time much more bearable.

Here I go. Onward.

Jun 5

Continuing On…

It’s a new month and a new reality for me. The dust is starting to settle around my unemployment. I still feel like I should be working everyday and often I find notes written to myself about a work thing I needed to get done or a goal I wanted to hit. I forgot to stop the alerts on my calendar, so stuff pops up every now and then.

But I’ve also waded through the paper work for unemployment benefits, healthcare,  updating my resume, and job searching. I have to say – It’s nuts the way almost every employer wants you to create an account on their site just to submit a resume. I have so many passwords now… LOL.

Hey you gotta laugh, otherwise you’ll cry.

One thing I do want to address is my fiction writing career. For the first time in a long time, I have the time to really write, everyday, without feeling guilty. I apply to jobs in the morning and then in the afternoon, I pull out the stories. I don’t have to worry about taking time away from anything else, because I’m not doing anything else. It’s freeing.

Even when I was working full-time and I would take vacation days, I still didn’t write with total freedom. Days off meant doing things I would have the chance to do like travel and do house projects. Now I really have the time. I have to keep myself busy and active. The last thing I want is to start waking up at 10am and not get dressed until the afternoon.

Nope. Not a good idea.

So, I’m up at my usual time of 6am. I do my usual morning routine: lemon water, vitamins, scripting, and exercise. Then it’s make tea, get dressed, plan my day, and see what’s going on the world (usually an hour or so of morning talk shows). Then at 8am or so my (new) workday starts. So far so good.

As a reminder, I had 4 writing goals this year:

-Finish my novel

-Write 6 new short stories (1 down, 5 more to go.)

-Write 100K words

-Gain more followers on the blog (Got a nice little bump in April.)

That should be plenty to keep me busy. Let’s do this!

May 29

2 Comments

A Turning Point

About a month ago, I mentioned that I got some bad news. Last week, the news got worse. After almost eleven years, I have been laid off from my job. The company closed its doors and is no longer doing business. All of my co-workers and I are sad about the end. It’s a new reality for us.

In some ways I feel like I am going through the five stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. If I’m being honest, I’m probably in between the depression and acceptance phase. I have all these reminders around me of work left unfinished. There is a lingering voice in the back of my mind, which chime at two o’clock in the afternoon telling me I should be working. I realize now that I can leave it unfinished. I can pack it up, or throw it away. No one needs it anymore.

I do feel lucky. Lucky that I got myself out of debt, so my bills (for now) are manageable (emergency fund, unemployment, etc.).

Lucky that I had all of my surgery and other medical procedures done early this year. I’m healthy and have never felt better.

Lucky that I have friends and family who I can lean on for support.

And I’m lucky I got to work as long as I did at my former company. It’s rare to find a place with great people and work that allowed me to pursue my dreams too. At eleven years, I was one of the newer employees. There were folks who had been there twenty plus years.

So for now, I’m job hunting and focusing on my fiction writing (and sticking to the plan I thought about last month). I’m sad about the end, but, if I’m being honest, I’m excited by the future. This is a new opportunity for me. A new path, I didn’t see coming. I don’t expect it to be easy, just different. I thought my life was going one way, but the universe had a different plan.

Let’s see where it goes.

Apr 18

About Burnout

Ah! It’s Beautiful Spring Again!

Spring is always a great time to renew oneself. Something about the new flowers, the fresh greenery, and the mild weather makes us all feel refreshed. Awake. It’s also a time when I tend to want to write more. I sometimes have these big, scary goals for the summer and think to myself, “I can do this!”

But this year, I’m trying a different approach. As I stated in an earlier post, I’m working on balance this year. I read lots of articles about people not getting enough sleep, not eating well, not taking vacations, and neglecting their mental health. Everybody is grinding, working on their hustle, and trying to make ends meet by working a bunch of jobs back to back. While I do think there is a time and a place to burn the midnight oil, I don’t want that to be my everyday life.

I believe that sleep is the most important thing you can do for your health. As someone who has gone through bouts of insomnia, not getting enough sleep causes me all kinds of other problems. I don’t sleep, so I’m tired in the morning (and all day long), so I reach for caffeine to get me through the day. I make poor choices on food (opting for things with a quick energy) and find myself tired but not sleepy at night. So the cycle repeats.

Now that I have a better handle on my health, I find myself getting a good 7-9 hours of sleep a day. I’m rested, more focused, and ready to tackle the day. I also find myself making better choices with my diet and I’m more productive. I honestly don’t think I could’ve done a blog post a day for a month challenge a year ago, when I felt so bad. Now look, we’re eighteen days in and I haven’t skipped a day yet!

Working like a crazy person may seem great and might even be fun for a little while, but I don’t think it is sustainable. After 20 years of working a full-time job and writing fiction, I know how important it is to find a balance. Your body only has so much give as you age. And mentally, it can take a toll to wake up and realize that all you’ve done is work and not built a real life.

Same is true for the other side. If you’ve partied a decade of your life away and not gotten serious about the kind of life you want to build, you may be shocked at how much time you’ve wasted not going after your dreams. Burnout from an immature life can be just as damaging as being on the grind all day, everyday.

Maybe that’s why NanoWrimo hasn’t really appealed to me. I’m more slow and steady, with my writing. Other aspects of my life, like getting out of debt, I could go crazy on for a short period of time, but not writing. A few pages, or paragraphs, a day is my speed. The story gets written and I get my sleep. Maybe this is why I am still writing after all these years. I haven’t suffered burnout from it. I write at a steady pace (although not much) and don’t get sick of it.

Balance, that’s where the magic is for me. With it, I can do the impossible.

Sep 30

End Point – Short Story September 2014

It’s the end of September and the last day of my personal challenge to finish four stories this month. Technically I did, although one story was a creative piece for class. I am also ¾ of the way from finishing one more story, but since I wanted to post today, as of now, it is not finished. Still the day is not over and I will probably knock it out tonight in between watching NCIS and Person of Interest.

You may have also noticed a more consistent posting schedule. I’ve decided to try to post every 5th day and see how well I stay consistent. So far, it is not too hard and more importantly, easy to remember. In the past, I honestly forgot about this blog and when I did remember to post months had gone by. Not good.

Speaking of not good, right now I am on a furlough from my job. It happened at the last-minute and caught me off guard. For the next two weeks, I’ll have no day job to work on. In a way it is an unexpected gift. What would you do, if someone said, “Here you go. Have a couple of weeks off to just live your life.” Me, I think I’ll work on more writing. For once, I’ll be able to see what a full-time devotion to writing will look like.

Still, I don’t want this to be permanent. I kinda need my day job for stuff like rent and food.

Finally, you may have noticed a few changes in some other pages on this blog. Earlier this month, I got my first acceptance letter. My story “The Blind Woman and Her Spiders” was accepted for publication in the anthology Magical: An Anthology of Fantasy, Fairy Tales, and Other Fiction For Adults. I will now be a published writer by the end of the year.

I have a lot of thoughts (and emotions) about this moment in my writing career. Last winter, I got a really harsh rejection letter that bothered me for months. I think I will post in the future about that experience, but for now I want to focus on the enjoyment of having that moment when the conversation changes. Most writers know what I’m talking about. The conversation usually goes went like this:

Other person: So you are a writer? Can I read some of your work?

Me: Well, I’m not published yet.

Now the conversation goes like this:

Other person: So you are a writer? Can I read some of your work?

Me: Yes, I have a story out (insert name of publication here).

And that, folks, feels pretty damn good.