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Is really it worth it to follow your dreams?
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message 1:
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Dana
(new)
Mar 08, 2012 07:57AM
I'm a single mom and a college student, right now I'm studying to become an R.N. but in my heart of hearts i want to be an author, but i know choosing to go down that path is uncertain. there's no guarantee that i will make it as an author. i need the stability, that comes with being an RN, but i want to have my name written across a book that I've written. how does one chose between following your heart and doing the right thing?
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You don't have to choose. Most authors have day jobs or another source of income. Don't quit your day job, so to speak.
Until you "hit it big," my advice is to continue with your studies, and do the creative writing on the side.
I have raised 4 kids, helping support them with various minimum wage jobs for years. Now that they are young adults, I thought to get rehired at a full-time job, but during the middle of a job crisis! So now I work 2 p/t jobs, sometimes doing 15 hour days, packing a lunch and dinner in the morning, and for less money than I ever thought I would be making at my age, with a college degree and a teaching certification! Oh, and I have 10 books e-published.Follow your dreams of writing, but fit it in when you can. You need a steady source of income. When I have to go for weeks, or even months without any time to write, the characters in my head alternately yell at me, or sulk. But the reality is that mouths need to be fed, bills need to be paid. And no one knows the secret of how to go from being homeless and on the dole, then having such fame (whether deserved or not), that you could make a mint publishing your grocery list! So write, by all means, but get that nursing degree also! The stories won't go away, and the characters in your head have no choice but to wait until you have the time to tell their stories.
I have a day job, and over the years I've sat here and watched plenty of people quit their jobs for a career like music, writing, art, and so on and now, they're all back working. Some writers have been fortunate enough to make a living at it on their own, or have a partner who pays the bills while they do their thing.I'm the breadwinner of my family, so following dreams means sharing them with a full time job. That means, I have to write at every little instance I get: daily, I get maybe an hour or two before bedtime to write. I have two kids so on the weekends, I'm doing the mom thing or the wife thing, and I have a band, and I have my own business and I'm selling at Renaissance Faires. There is no such thing as free time with me. But I love my life. I've forgotten how to do nothing. It means that my work will get released slower than everyone else's and I can't write as fast as most people, but the point is, it will get released when it gets released. Dreams aren't horse races; they happen when it's time. I'm 48 years old and it's taken me a long time to get my life going, but I'm proud of it nonetheless.
So, I don't see why you can't do it all. Of course, I've had three nervous breakdowns from pushing myself too hard, but hey, I'm back and still in the game. Hopefully, you won't let that happen to you. ;o)
Chaeya
Hey Chaeya, what do you sell at Renaissance Faires? And do you get to the Bristol Faire in Wisconsin? We go to that one at least once every summer...usually in costume! We've been attending it since it was King Richard's Faire, many years ago. I was thinking I could stop by and say "Hey!"
I wish I could hit some back East, but right now, the only ones I do are the smaller faires here in Southern California. I make my own lotions, body butters and perfume oils. If I had an RV, I'd travel around more and do some faires. When I'm not doing the smaller faires, I'm hanging with my pirate reenactment group at the bigger Southern Faire. This year, I want to hit the Las Vegas Faire, that one is huge and a lot of fun.Chaeya
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message 8:
by
The FountainPenDiva, Old school geek chick and lover of teddy bears
(last edited Mar 08, 2012 06:37PM)
(new)
Chaeya wrote: "I wish I could hit some back East, but right now, the only ones I do are the smaller faires here in Southern California. I make my own lotions, body butters and perfume oils. If I had an RV, I'd ..."Are you doing Southern Faire this year? If so, we seriously need to meet up. And Vegas Faire is fun, so is Arizona.
Definitely! I think this year I will be the crazy purple faerie, last year I was green. PM me your e-mail or phone and I'll give you mine. I'm doing Escondido the first week of May and with the RT and all that, I probably won't be able to make it till May. That reminds me, I need to sign up for Friends of Faire!
thanks everyone! you guys have just confirmed what I've been feeling.
Dana,I started writing when my last child was in high school. I'm still working my day job. In six years I hope to retire and devote my full attention to writing.
My advise to you is stay in school, get your degree, so you can provide a better future for your kids. However that does not mean you have to stop writing either.
I get up every morning at four a.m. just to write, I also keep a notebook with me to jot done notes and story ideas.
A.M.
I just want to add on to this. If a person wants a career in writing, you have to think long and hard about how much money you need to survive on because self-employment taxes are higher than working a job. Many people don't figure this in---just paying into social security is expensive. Also, you have to think about having medical insurance, and some sort of retirement plan. I've come across many artists who didn't bother with this. Some have gotten away with not paying taxes, but that means when it comes time to draw from social security, there's very little money to be had. In the past two years, I've had several musician friends turn up ill with serious diseases and they have no health coverage. People try to hold fundraisers to help them out and frankly, all their friends are broke too, so raising a couple of thousand dollars isn't going to make a difference when you're fighting cancer, or you turn up with diabetes that has to be maintenanced.Also, there's life insurance, which no one seems to think about. You can get a fairly decent plan for under $10 a month, enough to throw you in the ground or burn you up when you go. It saddens me when you hear about someone who has worked with a bunch of famous people, and they made a lot of money during their time, and have a great reputation in the music industry and the family is left trying to scrounge up enough money to bury them.
Just some things to think about. It's fine to go out on a limb and think God will take care of everything because you're believing in yourself and all, but that doesn't always work.
Chaeya
It sure is, Andrea, because of my day job, I have the money to support my dreams:http://www.electricgentlemen.com/srae...
And I stay positive that perhaps I can one day support myself from this.
Chaeya
message 15:
by
The FountainPenDiva, Old school geek chick and lover of teddy bears
(new)
Chaeya wrote: "It sure is, Andrea, because of my day job, I have the money to support my dreams:http://www.electricgentlemen.com/srae...
And I stay positive that perhaps I can one day support myself from..."
Chaeya, you do realize you are the Queen of Hotness? Of course you do, LOL!
Awwwww, thanks, Vixenne. (Blushing).Naw, seriously, I respect everybody who works doing soomething they love. It's hard work and sometimes, through circumstance, we're forced to go out on a limb and it's do or die. Hats off to those who are doing it the best way they can!
Chaeya
There's no guarantee of anything in this life. Every path we take is uncertain until we see where it leads. Having a regular job is uncertain because you might not have it tomorrow. Going to college is uncertain because you might end up not being able to go or you might drop out, flunk out, whatever. Waking up in the morning is uncertain because you might die in your sleep. Living another day is uncertain, everything in life is uncertain. That's life. Nothing is anymore guaranteed or safer than anything else.I think it's worth it to follow dreams if you can but everyone is not able. Some people have the means to be free and follow their dreams more than others. But I am one who believes that it never hurts to try and follow your dream. It might happen and it might not but if you never try you will end up that old lady on the porch regretting that you didn't at least try.
The only failure is not trying.
I am one of those that are driven by the negativity of others. If someone tells me I couldn't do something, it makes me try harder just to prove I can do it. Does it always work out, no. I believe in fate and I believe that how things work out is the way they are supposed to work out.
I never gave up my dream of being a published writer and it happened. It wasn't overnight and it was hard, but it happened. It could've not happened as well but I still would be a writer because that's who I am, published or not. For me the tragedy would've been not even trying.
So if you want it stay determined and don't ever give up. It'll take sacrifices, hard work and tears but just trying makes it worth it.
You might be the next world famous writer of the future. You might be and you might not be but how would you know if you don't try? We never know where anything leads us and how big it might get so trying is worth it to me.
Mod
The best thing is to have balance in your life. If you have a dream, do seek it out. Be logical about it, but don't shove your dreams in the closet in the hopes that you will get to them in the future. The future may not come.
When my father died of cancer several years ago, it helped me to evaluate things. I do think that life is too important to just focus on the daily grind and shelve your dreams away. If you can, get some of that dreaming in everyday. I can't give any other person advice on how to live their life, because I am not that person. But I can say based on myself and being so focused on planning everything out and not leaving room for possibilities, that you do need to keep your options open.
There is room to change your paths in life. If you aren't happy, then don't stay in a rut, because that rut does get deeper.
Of course, meet your responsibilities. Don't let your kids go starving, and not think about tomorrow at all, but don't put all your focus on tomorrow at the expense for today. Money in the bank is great, but you can't take money with you. And happiness is not money. So, yes, be logical about your finances, but not miserly and utterly focused on the almighty dollar.
I don't know if that's the answer to your question, but it's a bit of perspective from someone who was very goal oriented and type A about her life plan and is learning to let go of some of that stuff.
I truly appreciate this thread. It is lovely and inspiring. I very much agree with what others have said about keeping your day job and pursuing your dreams. It doesn't have to be either or. I was once unemployed for 8 weeks. I thought I'd get all sorts of work done on my side hustle, but I really didn't know what to do with all that time and I was too anxious about finding another job to really focus on writing a book. Keep in mind that there are shockingly few debut novelists who quit their jobs to write their first novels. Most of them are like us, squeezing them into the day-to-day. And from what I can see, most writers do something else, either a dayjob or they're raising kids. (Seriously every time I read something really off-the-chain in a romance/erotica, I'm like, "This author is probably a mother of multiple children based in the Midwest or the South" -- and when I look them up, they almost always are!)
I actually love my dayjob and wouldn't want to quit it. I find it helps to have limited amounts of time to write, because then I actually write as opposed to fretting away the hours as I did when I was unemployed. I hope that makes sense.
My main point is that people think dreams have to be all or nothing, when in reality it's totally okay to make your dreams your side hustle.
Personally, I don't think it would be a good idea for my sanity if all my dollars and career-worth were linked to my novels. It's good to have other things going on to keep you balanced. I think this is why so many writers are also moms.
In my path we often have the survival job--the one you have to do to earn a living--and the soul job--the one you can't stop doing regardless. Sometimes they are the same. In the long run if I never made a dime on my writing, I'd still write. It's a primary tool in the way I organize my consciousness. I need to write. Would I push to hone the mastery of it the way I do? No, without question. It would take the role of a personal discipline or fondness.
We write for the same reason we follow our dreams--because we have to.
