Acceptance
Oct. 24th, 2023 05:13 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
spryngI asked for a raise at work yesterday. A small thing, but also a large thing, because it meant asking for a promotion that I never bothered to strive for before. Work usually gets the shaft after kids/wife/household/writing, but now that I've accepted that writing is going nowhere, I have a little more time/attention for work.
I mean, it's a good job. And, unlike writing, it pays the bills. So maybe I should stop half-assing it and actually be good at it. I don't have much else to show for in my life, and I'm already having something akin to my mid-20s crisis when I felt adrift and listless, with nothing to show for all the hours I'd stolen to write. Here I am again, adrift and listless, on and off depressed, but at least I have my family and I at least I have my job. And, if the economy doesn't explode and the world doesn't end, I can legit retire in 7 years.
I just have to make it that long.
It sucks to have had the chance to have a career in writing and missed it. A lot of it wasn't my fault: the publisher dropping the ball so many times, a global pandemic, moving cross-country with a small tot. Whatever momentum I'd had clawed for myself was thoroughly staked through the heart by the pandemic, every chance and opportunity vanishing on the wind. And now I just don't have the time or energy to claw my way back into it, and I'm so incredibly exhausted from trying anyway.
I don't even want to, anymore. None of what I've written is anything close to the level it needs to be at, and I feel that gap so keenly it hurts. And worse, I know that if I just had the time and space to properly think, not just an unreliable hour stolen every few mornings, I could do better. I don't and I won't anytime soon, so continuing to push at it is just demoralizing me further.
I couldn't accept that before, but the back-to-back illnesses of September and October have kinda forced me to. I haven't written since August and that's... not okay, but also it is?
I need... something though. Some kind of outlet. That I can do quietly in the morning before the kids wake up. Lately it's been journaling (you might have noticed). But I want to try something I haven't before, something new.
I just don't know what.
I mean, it's a good job. And, unlike writing, it pays the bills. So maybe I should stop half-assing it and actually be good at it. I don't have much else to show for in my life, and I'm already having something akin to my mid-20s crisis when I felt adrift and listless, with nothing to show for all the hours I'd stolen to write. Here I am again, adrift and listless, on and off depressed, but at least I have my family and I at least I have my job. And, if the economy doesn't explode and the world doesn't end, I can legit retire in 7 years.
I just have to make it that long.
It sucks to have had the chance to have a career in writing and missed it. A lot of it wasn't my fault: the publisher dropping the ball so many times, a global pandemic, moving cross-country with a small tot. Whatever momentum I'd had clawed for myself was thoroughly staked through the heart by the pandemic, every chance and opportunity vanishing on the wind. And now I just don't have the time or energy to claw my way back into it, and I'm so incredibly exhausted from trying anyway.
I don't even want to, anymore. None of what I've written is anything close to the level it needs to be at, and I feel that gap so keenly it hurts. And worse, I know that if I just had the time and space to properly think, not just an unreliable hour stolen every few mornings, I could do better. I don't and I won't anytime soon, so continuing to push at it is just demoralizing me further.
I couldn't accept that before, but the back-to-back illnesses of September and October have kinda forced me to. I haven't written since August and that's... not okay, but also it is?
I need... something though. Some kind of outlet. That I can do quietly in the morning before the kids wake up. Lately it's been journaling (you might have noticed). But I want to try something I haven't before, something new.
I just don't know what.
