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I've been kinda flaily the last few days. I found a new author on teh intarwebs, and read a bunch of his articles, and came across one about how NaNoWriMo is terrible. Because most people fail, and then those people think they can't be writers.
Holy crap, I thought. That happened to me. That goddamn happened to me.
And I'd already been a bit flaily about work for... oh... a few years (ha! no, but really, the last two months have been kinda trying). What am I DOING? Do I want to keep doing lame lab tech benchwork for the rest of my life? I mean, sure, it's relatively easy, and I'm relatively good at it, but it's also pretty boring and not very meaningful. It's... honestly, it's not even paying very well. I want to be doing something more interesting, and more challenging, and something less... irrelevant?
I don't know what that "something" is. It's probably NOT writing. It did take me a while to realize that one can "be a writer" without writing novels, and I still don't think I want to write novels (though maybe I'm wrong. I do want to revisit that last failed NaNo story and see if I can fix it now that I'm not trying to slavishly produce 1667 words every day. it had time travel AND pirates). But trying to create a blog or a large base of short stories or some other written body of work that would produce income also sounds pretty horrifying. And like a really good way to kill my passion for writing altogether.
So, I'm still pretty flaily about what I want to do with my career, but after a couple of days of intense thought, and several really good conversations with my spouse and my incredibly intelligent friends, I think I am going to start a blog. And write about non-traditional life choices - everything from sexuality to diet to childlessness. I set up a wordpress and I'll link over to it once I've got a few articles up. I have ideas for a bunch already, and I guess I'm sitting here writing this instead of over there writing those because I still kinda needed to give myself a pep talk telling me it's okay to do it. Even if it won't make money (I expect not to). Even if I don't keep up with it for five or ten or fifteen or two years (I... expect not to). At least I will be doing something creative, something I enjoy, something that will stretch my brain a little - and maybe something that will help other people think about the way they live their lives.
Holy crap, I thought. That happened to me. That goddamn happened to me.
And I'd already been a bit flaily about work for... oh... a few years (ha! no, but really, the last two months have been kinda trying). What am I DOING? Do I want to keep doing lame lab tech benchwork for the rest of my life? I mean, sure, it's relatively easy, and I'm relatively good at it, but it's also pretty boring and not very meaningful. It's... honestly, it's not even paying very well. I want to be doing something more interesting, and more challenging, and something less... irrelevant?
I don't know what that "something" is. It's probably NOT writing. It did take me a while to realize that one can "be a writer" without writing novels, and I still don't think I want to write novels (though maybe I'm wrong. I do want to revisit that last failed NaNo story and see if I can fix it now that I'm not trying to slavishly produce 1667 words every day. it had time travel AND pirates). But trying to create a blog or a large base of short stories or some other written body of work that would produce income also sounds pretty horrifying. And like a really good way to kill my passion for writing altogether.
So, I'm still pretty flaily about what I want to do with my career, but after a couple of days of intense thought, and several really good conversations with my spouse and my incredibly intelligent friends, I think I am going to start a blog. And write about non-traditional life choices - everything from sexuality to diet to childlessness. I set up a wordpress and I'll link over to it once I've got a few articles up. I have ideas for a bunch already, and I guess I'm sitting here writing this instead of over there writing those because I still kinda needed to give myself a pep talk telling me it's okay to do it. Even if it won't make money (I expect not to). Even if I don't keep up with it for five or ten or fifteen or two years (I... expect not to). At least I will be doing something creative, something I enjoy, something that will stretch my brain a little - and maybe something that will help other people think about the way they live their lives.
