On Hard Days…

I don’t make money right now.

That happens to lots of people, and for most of them it happens longer than it has for me.  It’s not exactly a unique situation, yet it bears mentioning.

I don’t make money right now, and it hovers over everything I do.

Writing is hard.  Sitting at the keys, day in day out, slaving over a career that ninety nine times out of a hundred feels like it’s going nowhere really slowly is hard.  Making yourself do it despite knowing that there is virtually zero chance of actual payout is also hard.  It’s not even that my writing is bad: On the contrary, my writing has done nothing but improve as I’ve put time and effort into it.

When you do hard things, it requires a lot of mental focus and willpower.  You only have so much concentration available to you every day.  That’s not some mumbo-jumbo I’m making up as justification for my situation, that’s just science.

When you’re forced to make a series of hard choices for extended periods of time, your reasoning and judgement suffer as a result.  Often times, especially when you’re doing something like writing where you can corner yourself in an instant, trying to push through your mental fugue to continue working costs more than you gain. 

“Well sure, that’s obvious” you say.  And while that may be true, I don’t make money right now.  When someone steps away from something hard to take a breather, they are usually able to do things which hep them relax.  I don’t have that right now.  Even taking a walk is semi-impossible, as it is currently 20 degrees outside and even my pudge can’t keep up with cold of that magnitude. 

So when I try to take a break from writing to calm down, all I’m left with is the nagging feeling that I’m not making money.  That I’m bringing nothing home for my wife, who is working out of her mind to make up for my failures.  I can’t clear my thoughts of doubt or anxiety at all, and it’s starting to drive me mad.

It also means I write a lot less than I need to be.  I can’t help it.  I sit down to write, and I realize that I’m not making any money, and probably won’t make any money.  It’s another few years before that happens for me, assuming it ever does.  Yet I have to put the time in.  Writing is simply a function of time and effort, and if you aren’t willing to do that then you need to quit.

The time I spend writing is time where I’m not looking for jobs.  Or cleaning the house.  Or even getting sleep, which is something of an enormous issue right now.  I try to sleep at night, but the fact that I am not making money right now means that any disturbance to my attempts to sleep mean I’m up for good.  I can lay in bed for a few hours staring at the wall, even with the medicine my friends helped me procure, if I get interrupted while trying to fall asleep.

I have a toddler.  Last night he was having a horrible time of it.  He felt awful, and was up frequently.  Which means I was up frequently.  Which means I barely got any sleep, and what I did get was absolutely atrocious.  So add on to all the worries and stresses I have the fact that I can’t get a good nights sleep. 

If I sleep during the day, I’m wasting the time when I could be looking for jobs.  Places that will hire you are only open during business hours, shocker.   So if I sleep during the day, I waste a lot of opportunities for potentially getting hired.  Yet sleeping during the day is often the only time when I could get any sleep of any meaning.  No one is home to bother me.  I spent 28 years of my life in my own room, sleeping with no one but myself.  I’ll probably never adjust to sharing a bed.  I’ll probably never adjust to having other humans with me at night. 

So every day when I sit down to write, I’m fighting against my lack of money.  I’m fighting against my lack of sleep.  I’m fighting against the sheer magnitude of the task at hand.  I lose a lot of these fights, and much as it shames me I will probably continue to lose more.  I won’t quit, because at this stage I’m just too invested to back out now.  Yet every day feels like I’m being washed out to sea by a merciless tide I can’t fight.  I swim with all I have, yet safe harbor seems further and further away.  I wish I had answers, but I wish a lot of things, so having one more to add to it isn’t new.  I just wish they didn’t weigh on me so.

Justin