Day six - Is tomorrow a day of rest?

I was riding a wave yesterday, feeling good about blogging and writing and just on top of the world. I don’t have a good surfing metaphor here, but I guess you could say I wiped out today.

I don’t know if it was the restless sleep last night, or having to get up early to send one child away to overnight camp or the melancholy of being without my kids tonight (the other one is staying with her dad), but I am really not feeling it tonight. However, I do have the Tony Crisafulli genes, so that means that if I come up with an extreme, prescriptive behavior that I am the sole enforcer for, I am going to do it. So here I am, on the sixth night of July, writing my sixth blog of this series, damn it.

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Okay, you couldn’t tell, but I went off to read some inspirational blogs to help myself get motivated to write. It didn’t really help, but I’ve killed thirty minutes doing it and now I have about fifteen more until I want to go to bed, so I have a deadline, which is motivating in its own way.

This is the kind of evening that worries me when I fantasize about being a professional writer and living off my writing. I worry that the writing will dry up and I’ll be penniless and homeless. Granted, I probably wouldn’t run out of money right away – I’ve got an okay balance in the checking account and some socked away in the savings account, plus the little retirement account – but what if I tap all that and still the writing doesn’t come? Note to self: go find this section in The Courage to Write. I’m sure he’s got a chapter on this.

And I’ve been self-employed before, so I know the drill. Have a plan. Write it down. Follow it. Have back up plans. Keep going. Remember the country music quote, “If you’re going through hell, keep on going.” Consider other sources of income. Reduce expenses. Marry a millionaire. Marry a multi-millionaire because with your crappy writing habits, you are going to blow through all his money pretty fast. Okay, I feel a little better now. Nothing like some hyperbole and exaggeration to take the edge off.

And it’s not like I don’t have skills to fall back on. Bookkeeping and payroll gigs are going to be around until we flick the IRS off our shoulders like the unwanted governmental dandruff it is, so I have that. Plus, the two decades of business and life experience, etc., etc., etc. I believe that what I fear is the lack of a steady paycheck. What a wimp. What a chance for me to break out of the constraints I’m in and find something that really gives me – and I hesitate to say it because it sounds so New Age and silly – joy.

I thought I wasn’t feeling it, but sometimes I just have to push through the requirement and, lo, I think I can come back and fight on. I put the 500 words down here, as required by me and now I’m feeling pretty good about me. *Pats self on back.*

Okay, one more day down. Let’s go again tomorrow.

~Noelle 07/06/08