Friday, September 2, 2011

"What a difference five weeks makes…"

Today I heard from Mary Beth, my colleague at my former job. She had a question, which I was able to help her out with some, but the phone call made me think. It's been exactly five weeks today since my last day of paid employment.

So what do I have to show for those five weeks? Well, I'm much better rested, happier, and better able to focus on my writing for long periods of time. I've established a routine for the tasks of my life, and I now have one fifth of a novel-length work completed!

Granted, that novel-length work is fan fiction, but it is set in an original universe and using original characters along with the fan fiction characters of the Dangerverse. I consider it a stepping stone into full originality, and hope the readers who are following it with every sign of interest will do the same.

Mary Beth is a good bit older than I am, and had mentioned once or twice in my last couple of weeks that she'd once had big dreams like mine, but had chosen a steady paycheck instead. Today she reiterated how much she admires my courage in going after what I want.

Although it's nice to be seen as courageous by people I respect and admire, like Mary Beth, my own parents, and you, my loving readers, the truth is far more prosaic. I am simply not persistent enough to sit in a cubicle for the next thirty or forty years. Five years was quite long enough, thank you very much.

Besides, don't we always hear the same things from older people, people who've had cancer or other life-threatening diseases, even people having a midlife crisis? "Follow your dreams. Give it a try. You regret what you didn't do more than what you did."

So, in that vein, I will forge ahead with my writing of "He Nearly Killed the Cat." After I nearly kill my cats by scaring them half to death with the floor-cleaning devices, that is. Can anyone explain to me why they're just as scared of the squeaky mechanical carpet sweeper as they are of the roaring vacuum?

1 comment:

  1. i certainly wouldnt be brave enough to quit a job like you did... mind you im much better at reading stories than writing them... as for the cats i think it's more the fact that something weird is moving and making a weird noise rather than the volume of the noise...

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