So, as I said before, I don't want to waste my life or the time given to me. I want to utilize my ability to write both so I can engage in fun, entertaining creative endeavors. I would also like to use my writing in a practical way to help provide for my family and put away a little at a time for my daughter's college fund. To that end, I need to start "producing more product" so-to-speak. I need to get more basic writing jobs and I need to work more on the creative projects that I love. However, I have a huge stumbling block to this as I mentioned before, which is the knick-knack-paddy-whack-junk-and-stuff that is around my home. So now that I'm over a year out from my last day at my retail job and have the opportunity to work from home, I find myself doing more work ON the home than in it, in a manner of speaking. Why not just ignore it? Why not get some work done that I want to get done?
Well, this is the work I want to get done, because if I don't then I can't get work done. Do you get what I mean? It's not just a general lack of focus or drive, it's that I can't get from point A to point B without actually travelling over that distance. For me, that distance involves my share, and what seems like several other people's share, of cleaning and de-cluttering. I want to know that when I look up from my writing the only things that will be really vying for my attention will be my daughter's baby photos and a small (VERY small) collection of oddities that I have long used for inspiration while writing. Personally, I feel like in the end whatever writing I get done won't feel nearly as fulfilling as it could if I know that I can't unwind at the end of the day because I have cleaning to do. For the record, I know that with a little one in the house, there will always be cleaning to do. But there are things that should have been dealt with a while ago that I could never get to thanks to the former job. Now it may sound like I am laying a large amount of blame on that job for a messy home, and yeah, oh heck yeah I am. This will be something I talk about in my Junk Journal book. The truth is it agrevates me both at the old retail job and at myself for letting it get to me. I allowed the old job to make me chase after countless doo-dads and thing-a-ma-bobs as a distraction. Although I had a freelance writing job with a tee shirt company (an opportunity that I am still ever-grateful for), I never got in writing of any other sort. I wasn't putting nearly as much as I wanted to into the career that I really wanted to follow.
So now that I have this opportunity to keep moving forward in my writing career, why choose to slow down for stuff that built the basis for holding me back? Why occupy my time with this junk around me rather than writing? Well, in one of life's ironic twists, I have something to write about as I come out of the experience. I want to de-clutter and clean up, but I need the catharsis and closure that will also come with writing about the junk that I am donating and disposing of. If I just toss it out whole sale in attempt to be done with it, I feel like that will be the old way, the old, terrible job winning in the end. Not only would it have robbed me of time with my family, time building my career, but it will have given me nothing to show for it. So I guess that is my writing lesson to be shared for the day. All those cliches' about writing from your pain and frustration have some truth to them.
I could probably write a whole book about the daily struggles that my past health issues gave me. I could do a mini-series on what it was like those final months leading up to the liver transplant that saved my life. Maybe some day I will write more about that. What I need to write about now is the long road that I am I taking. Ah, the post title, now I finally get to it, right? I am taking the long road of frustration and annoyance and heartache that will come from going through all this junk. But I choose it because it is the only way it can be done. In the end I will end up with shorter trips to the ol' writing table or whatever metaphor best fits here. It may sound silly to keep thinking about how the former retail job pushed itself into my life, but it ate away at me just as much as my liver disease and declining health did. In a way, that retail job took much more and gave far less then my sickness did. But whatever little good that it did, I am going to squeeze what I can from it and write about it as best I can.
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