So I decided that when you panic over Christmas, panic over starting a new portfolio, are stressed out over looking for a new full-time job and your best friend tells you she’s getting a divorce and moving out of state, it’s not a great time to make any major changes.
For me, a major change included the brilliant idea that I was not going to write at Happily Ticked Off anymore. I wasn’t going to write about Tourettes and certainly wasn’t going to write about anything personal too personal anymore.
This was a particularly stupid idea, given that I have an entire book completed on the subject of tics. My brain? “No agent is interested… it likely isn’t as good as I thought… I over shared… oh well.” The reality: Three really big agents responded. They loved the concept, but it’s too niche. Here’s a new concept: KEEP GOING.
Here’s the other brilliant idea. I decided to hire someone to build a fancy new portfolio to show off my work. I mean, how can I get a decent writing job that doesn’t involve me commuting hours per day for a crap company that doesn’t know it’s head from its butt (not that I’ve done that recently) if no one even knows I exist? I figured this website would also house my blog. It would be kind of this “Check out my samples/hire me/take writing classes/check out my latest interviews and resume” smorgasbord.
And then I got super sad. Like an all-you-can eat buffet, I felt sick. I felt uncomfortable. And here’s why. It’s not because I am afraid of change. (Though of course I am.) And it’s not because I don’t want a fabulous new job. (Of course I do.)
It’s because, deep inside, it felt like just one more aspect my life I was “doing” rather than “creating.” Aren’t there enough things we have to do each day? Between the cooking and cleaning and teeth brushing and the dog… oh, man, the dog… shouldn’t there be an aspect of my life that is just what I want? A place for me to connect to others who are hurting? A palce for me to go to when I’m hurting? I place to laugh and be myself?
This whole works-based activity deal has to stop. I’m ready to be a human being, not a human doer.
How many more nights am I going to sit side by side at my ugly Ikea desk with my husband – him checking work servers and me searching Facebook for people with more exciting lives than me – and wonder why I don’t feel full? It’s dawning on me that this whole “striving striving striving” thing to get work and to be efficient and to be busy is for the birds. Yes, you can check stuff off the list. Yes, it might mean getting one new reader for me, a new client for him, but in the end, it’s life killing. It’s soul sucking.
Is there a time and place to work? Yes, absolutely. But sometimes one needs an escape hatch just to be themselves. For me, this is here.
I spoke to Stink about my decision to come. His jaw dropped. He couldn’t believe I had left in the first place. “But Mama, what about all my fans???” he balked.
To all six of you, my narcissist gives you his love.
I’ll see you next time. But this time, I bring homework. For now, if you would like to read more from me, please check me out on my new website, http://www.andreafrazerwrites.com.
