Starting Monday, I’m off from work for two weeks. So it’s understandable that when I complained about how much I have to get done before my husband and I leave for vacation on Thursday, his response was, “Relax, you’re on vacation.”
To which I replied, “Are you kidding?”
Because while I might be off from Job #1, the job that pays the bills and the health insurance and the mortgage, there’s still Job #2 to think about. That’s the job that doesn’t earn me any money – yet. It’s the job I wake up at 6 am every morning for. The one I do at nights, and on weekends. The one I am hoping to make into a full-time, paid position.
No, I don’t intern. I’m a writer.
Writing doesn’t mean I sit down at the computer and type for a few hours and have something magical to share with the rest of the world. It’s not something I do in my spare time, like knitting or baking. It is emphatically not a “jobby.” It is a profession. A career. A job.
It hasn’t always been. For years I fiddled. Dabbled. Wrote a few lines here and there. Did NaNo for a year, then didn’t write anything else for the next twelve months. It’s different now. For me, the key is this:
I sit down and write even when I don’t want to. I sit down and write when I’ve been up late the night before and want to sleep in an extra hour. I sit down and write when I’ve worked an 80 hour week and want to do nothing more than veg on the couch and watch Gossip Girl.
I’ll leave you with this.
painted my toenails light green, in honor of springtime
There are only two other groups here: a family of about eight doctors from Chicago, and two older ladies – one of whom has been coming here for about the last twenty years.