Today I was promoted, yay me!
Well, yes and no.
Roughly eighteen months ago, I gave up my job and took a volunteer job for six months, I treated myself after a significant birthday that I would do what I wanted for a while. It was the most liberating and life changing time in my life so far. Mostly because I started to write, it wasn’t something I ever thought I would do and didn’t crave it, until I started.
Once I was coaxed into writing, it flowed and I fell in love instantly with weaving stories. It was overnight that everyone I met had a back story made up in my head within minutes of meeting them or even observing them. Having the spare time to write these stories was heaven and I wish I had made more use of that time.
I volunteered for six months and then went back to a paid job. It was deliberately chosen to give me a reasonably normal routine so I could write in the evenings and weekends and work 9 to 5.
The thing is, I started to write when I had all the time in the world and now that I am working and writing, time is very precious and I get frustrated that I can’t write when I want to. I can no longer stay up til 4am til my eyes sting. I miss those months when I could do that.
I may sound ungrateful, and I probably am.
The problem is that I have finally found what I want to do when I grow up and that is to write stories. Heart warming ones, heart breaking ones, and everything else my mind conjures up. The trouble is, in order to write I need silence and that is hard to come by now that my life has become a whole lot busier. Now that I have been promoted, more responsibility, it will get busier and mind will be less clear.
It will be a matter of a new routine, I need to strike a balance between paying the bills and doing what I love to do. Life is a one time gig after all. I could say no to the promotion, I didn’t apply for it. I will accept it because that’s me. This isn’t a bad problem to have in the grand scheme of things and again I want to point out that I am aware I sound ungrateful. This is great problem, I’ve been promoted.
I am an incredibly disciplined, determined and focussed person, but sometimes, sometimes I am just too bloody tired to write. No matter how much the characters in my head are shouting at me.
How do you strike your work/life time v writing time, do you find it tricky? Have you found the right formula?
Thanks for reading.
Grace
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Harper’s Motto: You will not be everybody’s favourite flavour, but that’s ok, because they will not always be your favourite flavour. Be who you want to be and you will attract the people who will support you no matter what.
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Grace Harper Books 