I get to work from home!
EXCELLENT! You’ve decided to stay for tea.
My first ever blog post. Oh, the pressure………
So many expectations. Writing and rewriting. And don’t get me started on the inventive curse words that have just flown out of my mouth!
Before I forget, here is your tea.
I’ve spent the majority of my working career stuck in traffic. Yes, sitting in a line of commuters wondering why I couldn’t get paid for my time. Before I was laid off, I’d spend a total of four hours a day commuting to and from work. It didn’t help my sanity.
Getting laid off should have been a shock. I should have felt something akin to loss or disappointment. Fear, maybe? But no, all I felt was a great sense of relief. And not because of my wasting time sitting in traffic.
You see, I’ve always wanted to stay home and write. I dreamed about the day when I could just wake up in the morning and sit down at my computer and write. But the need for a steady income always got in the way. Things like, a roof over my head, clothes on my back, and food in my belly were important. A starving artist I was not!
Don’t get me wrong, I still wrote. But I could never spend the time I wanted to on it. And usually by the time I got home in the evening, I was mentally drained.
After my husband reassured me we’d be okay financially. I tell you, I rejoiced!
But now, I was faced with a new challenge; working from home and being productive. It sounds easy when you say it. Having come from a structured work environment where my schedule was given to me, I now had to make my own schedule and hold myself accountable for following it. I went out and immediately stocked up on pens, (I didn’t need them), notebooks, (didn’t need those either) and set up my desk. I was all set! Or, so I thought.
NOT!!!
Any excuse I could come up with, I used. I’ll start work after this show goes off. Never happened. I’ll start working after my nap. Yeah, right. My creative juices will start flowing once I finish reading this book. No, still wrong. I can start fresh in the morning. You can guess how the next day went.
After many days, weeks, months of this, I got depressed. I kept trying to figure out why, now that I had the freedom to do so, I didn’t spend my day writing. Why I refused to follow my own schedule. I didn’t have an answer. Don’t get me wrong, the desire was always there. I just couldn’t focus enough to get anything done. So, I started taking classes with Writers Digest. I figured, the more I learned about writing, the more I’d want to write.
Can you say procrastination?
Yeah, that’s exactly what I was doing. Using an excuse to not do what I really needed and wanted to do. I was staying home for a reason. And so far, I was failing. I didn’t like that one bit. Yet, there was a silver lining in all of this.
The thing is, I had finished the first draft of my novel. I just needed to polish it. Along came Writer’s Bootcamp. It was, of course, yet another distraction. Or, maybe not. I knew my novel needed work and now I was going to get the opportunity to get some feedback! Well, I did get that feedback but I also got something that was much more valuable.
MY WRITING TRIBE.
One of the few things I missed about work were the relationships I’d built and the people I came to enjoy spending time with. And once I found my tribe of three (Brandy, Jena, and Nick) I became productive and excited and passionate once again. While my husband paved the way for me and supported me, I still needed to find my kindred spirits. And as corny as it sounds, they completed me.
