Contemplating

 I actually wrote a draft of this post last fall and never finished it. It seems to be a good place to begin the new year. :-)

We are Big Bang Theory fans at our house – so much so that we can repeat many of the lines on cue. We came to the show only once it was already established, but have more than made up for missing the initial episodes by the number of times that we’ve watched it in syndication and on streaming services.

Recently there was an episode where Penny was questioning whether or not to continue pursuing her acting career. When a perceived big break turned out to be a big disappointment she began to wonder if she'd come to the end of the road.

Though I've seen the episode numerous times, it resonated a bit differently this time as lately I've found myself in Penny‘s position. I’ve long had a dream about what I thought a career as a writer would look like, and, like Penny, I’ve come face to face with the irrefutable truth that for every perceived break big break there are any number of heartrending, small, medium, and large-sized disappointments.

This is not a pity party. This is me finding myself at a similar fork in the road. It isn’t even so much a career reckoning as it is a moment to accept or reject the rules of the journey itself.

As anyone who engages in creative pursuits knows, there are all sorts of opportunities to exercise and embrace that passion, ranging from private to amateur to professional pursuits. This is definitely true with writers. We have to ask ourselves why we write. Do we write to become rich and famous? Very few of us will be. Do we write simply to exercise the muscle or for the joy of putting words on the page? If that’s the case, journaling and little poems we doodle in margins should be sufficient. 

La Petite Femme via Pixabay

Do we write to try to reach people with our stories and/or have that desire to put our work out into the world? That’s a bit of a murky swamp. There are myriad ways we can put our work out into the world, especially in this age of social media and, for each writer, what that looks like is perhaps a little bit different.

But, like Penny, even if we find it a bit impossible to embrace the rules of the game, if we want to play, we have to accept them. Major publishers won’t accept work submitted by anyone but literary agents and, increasingly it’s become as hard to find literary representation as it is to find a publishing house that wants your book.

Years ago, when blogging first became a thing, many writers moaned about it being a pursuit that took them away from their writing. It took me a long time for my blogging to become more than a sporadic pursuit but, during the year that I was retired, I chose to put blogging on the front burner and I developed an actual schedule that I stuck to for quite some time. For me, blogging is a model I continue to choose, not only because I enjoy it, but also because it keeps my writing muscles toned and helps me sharpen my ability to put words on the page in a relatively short time. In addition, it helps me to be less perfectionistic about what that final product looks like, which is a skill every writer needs. 

There have certainly been times when the posts were few and far between, especially when I first started blogging and had an young child at home. Recently, doing a show replaced blogging because it ate into the time I would have normally used for blogging and, since it flexed my creative muscles, it fell through the cracks. 

But even before that, I was going through the same struggle I faced early on and it only dawned on me as I was writing this that it’s for the same reasons. When I really hit my writing my blogging stride, I was either not working – the one blissful year when I was retired and figuring out what I wanted to be when I grew up – or I was working part-time. The part-time job I took on when I retired has now come to occupy full-time job mental space and, once again I find myself in the familiar space of trying to decide where my writing fits into my professional life.

Again, this is not a pity party. For any endeavor that we pursue, we need to decide whether or not it’s worth the time that it involves and the personal costs that we incur. I’m not planning on walking away from this blog (or writing) anytime soon, but, as my increasingly infrequent posts indicate, I seem to once again be in a season of life where making time for “all the things” is a bigger challenge than it once was.

I’m also in the season of life where I find myself wondering if the price I pay for the game I play is worth it, and whether or not the rules are something I buy into. Specifically, I’m beginning to wonder about the cost of admission for traditional publishing. Sure, it’s free to get in, much in the same way as volunteering for an organization costs nothing but time and energy. But these are valuable things – perhaps among the most valuable we possess — and I’m now at an age where I’m becoming a little bit stingy about the way I spend those things.

This I know: holding myself to a blogging schedule is sucking the joy out of blogging for me and so, I’m going to recognize this – the schedule – as the red activity (one that subtracts joy and/or energy) that it is. In so doing, I can savor the writing -- the one that adds joy and/or energy -- that’s at the heart of it. 

Similarly, I’m wondering about how I want to get my work out into the world. When I first started, self-publishing wasn't a thing and now, many writers are making that explicit choice; this is, in fact, how I've chosen to put some of my novels out into the world. Just as a professional athlete needs to know when it’s time to retire from the game they’ve loved, I have to decide what level I want to play on here and now. Specifically, I need to decide how whether or not the rules of what I've always considered to be the professional game are the rules I choose to follow in the life I'm living now.

Walking away from the game doesn’t mean that you stop playing. It just means, in many cases, that you play at your own pace and according to your own rules. And with age, I hope I’ve developed the wisdom to decide which pace and rules work best for me.

Mohamed hasan via Pixabay

So what does that mean for this blog? I’ll still be here. But forcing the posts to appear according to a particular schedule has created a schedule that is so full it has turned the joyful, green activity of writing into an often frustrating red activity of production. So, while my posts are likely to be a little more unpredictable, especially during the school year, I still want to meet you here. I just hope you’ll be patient with my flexible schedule, as I grapple with the rules of the game and decide which ones align with the game I want to play here and now.

As for the rest of it, I have some thinking to do. But here, the rules haven't changed, only the schedule, and I hope you'll continue to meet me here.