You all know how excited I was to return to the evil day job. I've been trying for weeks to get in and get my paperwork signed. I got it signed and submitted and was finally allowed to return to work. I started work last Friday.
Now here it is Thursday and I'm making my preparations to quit my day job permanently.
I won't go into the gruesome details. No one needs that. But my health issues have made it abundantly clear in the last week that I can't return to work. My goal of getting back to work so I'd have insurance again is going to have to be put on the back burner as I struggle with my personal health issues. I may or may not go back to work in the future. I don't know. It's a toss up, depending on how my issues resolve themselves over the next few months.
I was so excited. I was ready to go back to work. This staying at home thing wasn't for me. I was looking forward to seeing old friends again and making new ones. I even wanted to see my manager again. She's a tough lady but fair, and I loved working with her. She was glad to see I was feeling well enough to come back to work. We've been making plans to get me onto a new schedule and onto the new contract. Everything was coming together.
And now I have to give it all up.
That hurts a lot. I've been looking forward to this for a while now and now I have to give it up. The question is what else can I do with my life? I can of course go back to writing full time. And I plan on doing that. I have some short stories I'm going to self publish as soon as I get them cleaned up. I haven't touched them for a few years and they're in dire need of polishing, given all that I've learned in the past few years. I'm going to edit Marked and write Cracked World, Burning Dreams, Shifting Sands, and the as yet unnamed last book in that series. I've got other books set in this world that I want to write, as well as other novels waiting to be written. I'm going to push forward with being a full time writer.
But where does that leave me? Abandoning a life I've lived for the past 20 years, and not sure of what my future will bring me. I have no idea if my writing is going to be successful. I have no idea if I'm even going to manage to be published. I know how to work in a call center. I know how to work in an office. Yes, I know how to write. But I'm not sure I know how to write well enough to be published. I'm not sure if anyone will like my stories well enough to see me get published. I just don't know anymore.
But that uncertainty can do one of two things. It can bog me down, drag me into depression, and leave me to splutter and die on the edge of my own life. Or it can drive me to learn, to study, to become better and maybe achieve that elusive dream of being published. I know which path I want to take. Now it's up to me to take it.
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