I’ve been hearing from so many people who have come to this site and after reading have said to me, that they felt the exact same way I did when I was in corporate america and wanted to get out and also from artists who share the same struggles I’ve had on my creative path.

This has been a huge comfort. The stories I used to read of people were how they left their small home town with $20 in their pocket and the next thing you know, they had acheived their dream in a big way. You never heard about the inbetween, and that inbetween is so critical.

The first few months of all of this I questioned myself. I questioned my talent. I questioned my abilities. I questioned if the want was more than the substance. I wasn’t sure if I was kidding myself, that the blocks I was having were really blocks and not just lack of talent. I was overwhelmed, confused. I felt stupid. And I would have sworn that I was the only person that felt that way.

But I wasn’t, and I’m not.

Last night, Chris and I were talking. Just a little over a month ago he started his life long dream of learning the guitar. He’s got such a passion for music and creating and that’s all he wanted to do. Not for a job, but just because he loved it. So every week he’s been going to class and although he’s getting better, he’s not making the huge leaps he wants to.

He thinks maybe he’s too old, or that he just doesn’t have talent. He can hear what he wants to play but his fingers don’t know how to move the right way. He’s frustrated. “It’s only been a short time,” I said. “Maybe I’m kidding myself,” he said. “Maybe I’m blinding myself because I want it so bad I don’t stop to think that maybe there’s nothing there.”

“It’s there,” I said. “If it wasn’t, it wouldn’t mean so much to you and the frustration wouldn’t be so great.”

He looked at me and said, “I’d guess you’d know. You’ve already gone through this, haven’t you?”

I nodded. I think when you do something non-linear, or something that you’re passionate about that doesn’t have a set of rules to follow, you can get overwhelmed and frustrated so easily and quickly. But I think the thing to remember is that if it means so much to you, it will work out. Maybe not exactly as planned when you’re sitting in a cubicle or in a perfect dream-like way that you once read about in a book.

But it will happen to you because life happens and you can choose the path to follow and the dream to make real.

If I wait for things to calm down a bit so that I can catch my breath, I realise that I will be waiting quite some time. Life doesn’t stop for anyone, especially for me and especially right now.

That’s not a negative thing however. I’m currently riding an energy and creative high and I feel like I’ve got to just go with it for fear of losing all the momentum. After all the months of the ups and downs I have realised that a creative life is just that. One minute you’ll be creating like a mad man and the next you’ll be wallowing in self pity, complaining how you have not even one brilliant or creative idea at all. It’s a cycle, it’s life.

So now I am working on a million different ideas and trying hard to focus in on just a couple. I think that’s a problem with creativity is that when you’re on such a high, your mind works overtime and brain begins to create so many ideas. So many that it is almost impossible to do them all. That can lead to a bad situation if you’re not careful because you don’t want to start to think that you’re not doing all that you could do, or that every idea is on the same level of importance. For me, I’ve had to learn how to weed through them all and to learn how to decide what I can do now, what I can do later, and what I won’t be able to do at all.

I think that kind of thinking is vital especially when there are so many options and ideas floating around in your brain. Focus and attention are critical and unfortunately, they are also my weak areas. Aren’t free sprits meant to be free and not contemplating using a palm pilot?

But I realise for my sanity, for the work, for actually getting paid, that I have to organise, focus and create.

Therefor, I’ve decided I need to write my goals for the next couple of months. I’m debating at this point if I should have a deadline or daily goals or word count. Maybe that will feel like pressure so perhaps I’ll wade into this slowly and just write them down first.

So, my goals over the next month are as follows:

1. Really make some headway on my portfolio – including showcasing my published works, unpublished works, photography, and art.
2. To rework my travel writings and get the travel site up and running.
3. Start my other site which will be a component of girlatplay.com which will feature other women like myself and spread the word that living a dream really is possible.
4. And last but not least, continue to work on my magazine articles and hopefully make my first sale.

That’s not a small plate I realise. And perhaps I’m being overly ambitious. Time will tell. The strange thing about this, is that for the first time I’m not afraid to begin. I actually feel ready.

From April to September I had enjoyed perfect health. I was wide eyed and bushy tailed. I giggled, I smiled, I contemplated, I was quiet, I was content, I was happy – all this despite small bouts of worry, confusion and frustration. Living as I wanted, as a writer, made me feel true to who I was and somehow, this kept me well.

But the last few I had begun to feel quite ill – almost like I had back in April before I realised I needed to quit my job. I was tired, rundown, and my throat was sore. I coughed, I sneezed, I ached. I was mentally fogged in. I was slow. I was doing less than I had as a full time writer yet I had less energy.

What had changed was that a couple of weeks ago, I had taken on a job two days a week at a local spa. I had done this because it was a place I went to and they asked me if I’d like to work the front. I thought this might be a good idea to get me out of the house as I was going a bit stir crazy and also a good way to get a massage. Yet, it turned out for me to be a bad decision; I didn’t enjoy it, the atmosphere was bitchy, the work wasn’t anything remotely interesting and the free massages necer came.

The days I’d go to that job people would tell me that I didn’t look well – my eyes showed it. My heart, felt it. Maybe I was coming down with something, I thought. The problem is I never got full blown sick, I just had these small symptoms everywhere.

So only after a couple of weeks, I quit. Since then, something quite amazing has happened.

I’ve been feeling fantastic. This despite nothing but cold weather, hard rain, and terribly foggy nights. I’ve felt alive and energetic. I’ve been on a whirlwind of creative work, bundling ideas, reading, playing, learning, and basically just doing things that pertain to my passion of writing and art.

My diet hadn’t changed, I hadn’t taken any medicine, the weather certainly wasn’t in my favour, but I was no longer sick. I was no longer in the mode of coming down with something.

I didn’t really make the connection until I read a passage in the book, If you want to Write from 1938. In it, the author Brenda Ueland wrote this about her friend:

I know of a very great woman who makes her living by teaching violin lessons in the daytime… Then from midnight until five o’clock in the morning, she is happy because she can work on her book… The book is her life work….

…”One day she came to me and had a very bad cold. “Oh, lie down quick! I exclaimed, “and I will get you some hot lemonade and put a shawl over yourself.”

She opened her eyes wide at me, and said almost with horror in her voice.

“Oh, that is no way to treat a cold!… No, I slumped a little yesterday and so I caught it. But I worked all night and it is much, much better now.”

The point of that passage is that when you put your energy into what you love to do, your body reacts, sort of a mind over matter type of thing. You are happy, you are content, the energy feeds your body, you heal. When you do something you don’t like to do, you have those aches and pains that have no name and are only cured by stopping the work that you hate.

Although I have been frustrated and almost angry with myself for taking up temporary office job work (despite the fact I had good intentions. 1. To keep me around others and keep me social 2. To help me save for an ibook for my writing) it really taught me a lesson. That is, that I am nothing more than a writer and I can’t pretend to be anything else, no matter how small the scale of pretending might seem. And that if I do what I love to do, I am alive and there is no exception whatsoever.

Writing might bring me confusion, fear, a sense of being overwhelmed, perhaps disappointment but it never makes me ill, it never makes me sad and it never makes me feel less than. It just makes me feel real.

Being a writer, being in control and doing what I love to do, I have weathered far less failures than life in the Corporate World.

Before I used to have jobs I failed at, job relationships I failed at, daily tasks I failed at. I wasn’t going up the ladder fast enough, I wasn’t getting something done fast enough, I wasn’t building my career fast enough. I felt like everyday I was drowning and failing.

However, now I don’t have that. Now what I have instead are things that “just didn’t work out.”

If I write an article that wasn’t the best or didn’t get accepted, I don’t see that as failure – it just didn’t work out. If I tried to do a painting and it came out really horrible, I don’t consider it a failure – it just didn’t work out. If I thought I’d do A,B,C today but instead I did X,Y, & Z I didn’t fail – my original plan just didn’t work out.

Now, I don’t have timelines with regards to where I need to be in my career. If I just wanted to write magazine articles for 10 years, there is no failure there. If I were in the Corporate World and in the same position for that long without title changes and promotions, I’d be seen as a failure. If at some point I don’t want to write full time, but instead teach art and do public speaking on living your dream, it didn’t mean that I failed at writing, but now I’m just doing something else. If at some point I feel that art isn’t where I need to be and I drop it, it doesn’t mean that I failed at it and my time learning about it was a waste, it just meant that I’m going to try a new direction.

If I skipped around that much in the Corporate World I’d be seen as a flighty failure and someone you shouldn’t hire because I would be unstable. I see it as being creative and trying so many things – some of which I love and some of which just didn’t work out.

I think that transformation of thinking has been one of the most subtly wonderful things that’s happened so far. It’s been extremely empowering. I have a power now that I didn’t have when I was in the Corporate World.

Even when I first started this, I didn’t have that power because I was very afraid of failing. The fear of failing hung very heavy on me because it had been so ingrained into my head that if you didn’t do things a certain way, for certain people and at certain times, you were, in fact, a failure. And instead of remembering and being proud of the 17 things I had accomplished in a day, it would always be the one failure I would remember. And that one failure would have more power than anything else.

But now I realise what failure really is and that you can only fail in one of two ways. One is by either not trying. And two is by comparing yourself to others.

I’m trying my arse off here and I’m not comparing. There is no comparing. All I can do is what I need to do. How can one ever fail at that?

October 09th was my deadline to rewrite and submit an article I had written over two months ago to my editor. I sat up late that night trying to combine two different articles into one, and rewrite it to make it better. Somewhere around midnight I lost enthusiasm and clarity and just ended up giving up.

I didn’t want to. I wanted to keep going and I thought about submitting the article late, but I thought that might be worse, especially since I had a couple of weeks to do it. Instead I turned in an article that I felt wasn’t the best I could do and waited to hear back from my editor.

I waited to hear the criticism, the “you should do this,” or “I liked this version better” or “I thought you were a writer” or “On second thought, we can’t use this.” But I didn’t hear anything from her; there was nothing but silence.

The silence started to make me uneasy and got me to thinking that she was probably thinking the same thing that I was – that I could have done better. The past couple of days I actually thought about writing her to tell her that I was sorry and if she wants I’ll rewrite it again. Actually, what I wanted to tell her was that I was embarrassed.

However tonight she emailed me and said: “Great job! I’m impressed at your story-combining capabilities. Seamless! I don’t have any further changes to request. Thanks for such a thoughtful rewrite!”

I wasn’t sure what to make of that. Was it sincere? Was it true? Did I write something wonderful or did she just have deadlines to meet too?

I went to Chris and told him that I felt odd for receiving a compliment on something I wasn’t entirely sure was good. He said that sometimes we are too self-critical, especially if we’re criticising something we’re passionate about. He also told me because I’ve never taken a writing course or went to college to study writing that maybe that I don’t know how to judge things very well. He said that perhaps I was just good at writing and others recognised that and that maybe I should too.

His comforting should have made me feel better but it didn’t. I knew what he was saying wasn’t the reason I was feeling odd about what I’d written

I handed the article to Chris and asked him to read it and give me honest feedback.

“It’s good,” he said rather nonchalantly.

“I think I’ve written better journal entries than that,” I said.

“Yeah maybe.”

“I think it lacks passion or inspiration. It doesn’t seem to speak to me, it’s just kind of there, kind of just written for the sake of it. It doesn’t ring true for me.” As soon as I said that, I realised that that was what was really bothering me – the fact it didn’t ring true.

It had rung true a couple of months ago, but the rewrite just sort of sucked out any realness and passion I had in it. The article became rewritten because someone told me to and not because I had something more to add. I realise that I had taken the point of view that the rewrite was now “work” and “effort” instead of “here is a chance to make it all work and make it wonderful.”

Since that was my first experience with an editor and with rewriting, I didn’t really have any idea on how to do it or react to it. I just went about it in the only way I thought of at the time which was to just work at it from an intellectual, cold kind of way. I know now that for me that’s the wrong way to go about it.

Now when I have to do rewrites what I really have to do is try to maintain the truth and intention that I wrote with in the beginning. I have to keep it real to me and keep it alive. Even if the editor wants it all changed from here to kindgdomcome and has one million corrections, I have to somehow try to maintain some of the passion that inspired the article in the first place, or else I just won’t be satisfied and the article will show it.

That’s going to be really hard but important to do. One thing I’ve read over is that is has to ring true for the writer. If it doesn’t, the reader will know.

I’m still not sure what to make of having the article that I just rewrote potentially going out into published land without me being really satisfied with it. Perhaps I just have to chalk it up to learning and move onto the next writing piece.

Maybe that’s all I can do at this point.

The first few months of all of this were the most amazing. Creativity was at a high point, I felt free, I felt giddy, and there was such a sense of awe and excitement to everything I did – even if it just meant laying down by the lake having strange ideas fill my head.

I had a routine that wasn’t structured and harsh – Up early in the morning, did some yoga, sipped tea while sitting on the couch just thinking, went into the office and sat in front of the computer and typed if something was there. If not, I’d either go for a walk, paint, create, take care of other bits, play with the cat or nap.

At this time, I was the most productive. That is when the articles that were accepted by the two magazines were written. That’s when I wrote a lot in this site. That’s when I worked on my travel writing/portfolio. Despite the fact I gave myself lots of freedom and time to just spend dreaming or sipping latte’s at the local cafe with a pen and paper, I was extremely busy with both writing and creating.

Lately, I’ve been coming up dry.

I’ll become unblocked for a moment or two and then I try to cram every thought with some sort of writing frenzy. Only to realise what I’ve written is bad and not “true.” That will send me into a pattern of feeling like I’m not good enough or creative enough and the block will start all over again.

It’s been such a vicious cycle, and I wasn’t aware of how to make it stop.

I suppose I didn’t know how to make it stop because I wasn’t sure exactly where in that cycle the problem started.

I do now. I made the connection in of all places – the bathtub.

The bathtub had been empty for months. Once an almost nightly ritual, it has become a once a month indulgence. I would often find myself saying, “I don’t have time for the tub” or “I can’t be lazy right now” or “It’s just stupid.”

But tonight I felt I needed it for some reason. So I poured the last of my bubble bath, lit some candles, cranked up the heat of the water and then dipped myself in. I shut my eyes, blocked out noise and just laid there.

And then something began to happen. My brain started to daydream and my mind came alive.

I almost spoiled it by saying, “Why does this happen NOW? I hope this doesn’t lead to another cycle? I should write this all down and get out of the tub” But I didn’t. I just remained emersed in the tub and let my brain drift as it needed to.

Later I realised that the way I had been working the past few months was that of regiment and practicality – almost as if I was in the office.

I thought I had to work so many hours, I had to do so many pages, and I had to be inspiring or creative. If I did anything other than write I was being lazy or selfish or not practical. I had put so many conditions on my writing that I think I just became afraid to write. My creative brain felt too much pressure – the same kind of pressure I had in the Corporate World. And I remember how much writing I did then – none.

When I relax, when I let myself do as I need to do, when I am at peace with myself, that is when my brain takes off.

Creativity and ideas come on their own time. I can’t force them, and after the experience of the last couple of months, I don’t think I want to.

I suppose on some level I’ve been trying to measure my work, to make me feel like I’m doing something. But I felt before that I was doing something so I guess what I was really doing was trying to prove to others that I was doing something. But by doing that, I really ended up doing nothing at all. Which is kind of funny if you think about it.

I was reading about some creative people like Van Gogh, who didn’t create for money, fame or materialistic pleasure. They created because that’s what they loved and needed to do. But they didn’t spend every minute painting or writing and in fact, by some standards, quite a few of this artistic genuius would be seen as lazy. I understand now they were just giving time to their dream.

I also read how a lot of their best works were created because they just had the urge to create – not because they were trying to make a deadline or impress someone with the 9 hours they’d put in that day. And without that kind of pressure, with just the pure simple beauty of allowing themselves the freedom to create or just be, they could not fail.

Whereas I think the past few months I’ve been setting myself up for failure because I’ve been trying to be what I thought a writer should be.

Now I realise that with writing there are no rules or structure to creativity. There isn’t a right way or a wrong way. There isn’t a time card to punch at the end of the day or anything to prove. Creativity isn’t about that. Creativity is simply about creating and expressing something – not trying to prove something.

I’ve been groggy all day. Sleepy, tired eyes, lazy hands and a foggy brain. Perhaps it’s the rain or the fact that I stayed up far too late last night working. Whatever it is, my schedule that I had been so proud of keeping is thrown off. I just don’t feel like doing anything. The only problem is, the thought portion of my brain doesn’t get that. It’s working still, trying to get me to work it out, and I won’t.

When I can’t release what’s in my brain, instead of letting it swarm around driving me mad I try to get some kind of physical release. Dancing, singing, skipping, walking, whatever. Meditation doesn’t cut it for me because when I sit and try to still myself, my thoughts just get louder and I become too restless for downward facing dog.

So today I thought I’d go for a walk. Despite the fact that it was raining as only Seattle can rain, despite the fact it was far too cold and despite the fact that I hadn’t completely woken up yet even though it was eleven am, I had to do something. I walked. And I walked. And I walked some more.

Usually an hour into walking I start to form sound ideas and structure from my thoughts, but not today, my tricks just weren’t working. I went home with my body feeling refreshed but my mind still far too foggy to begin any real work. It was now nearing one o’clock and still no work. No creativity, no great accomplishment. I started to feel antsy and irritable and thought if I gave myself some tea and sat and read, maybe that would be the trick. So I drank, and I read. And I sipped and I read. And then I guzzled and read some more. Nothing. I wasn’t any further along than I had been previously except now I was feeling the jolt of caffeine and sugar in my body. All this energy, I thought, and nothing to do with it!

It’s now around three o’clock and I’m sitting here typing this. While it’s not productive I keep trying to lull myself into a feeling of some kind of accomplishment – at least I’m writing something. This day, however lost, has actually been a good learning experience for me. Even if no great articles were typed up and that 3000 word essay I have to write for a book before January hasn’t even started yet, I got some kind of understanding today that I didn’t really have before – writing isn’t linear.

I’ve said that before and perhaps I almost believed it, but I really understand it now. I can make schedules, I can do the walking and tea tricks, I can scare myself with deadlines. But the fact remains that creativity isn’t a pill you pop or a quote you read to inspire. Writing is pure from the heart creativity.

Some days it’s more than easy and some days, well, not so much. I’m now learning that rather than beat myself up for all that I don’t do, to at least feel some kind of satisfaction with all that I do do. The failure would be if I didn’t write when I can. And judging from all my scribbles, notes, articles, web bits, letters, essays etc., I haven’t failed that much. In fact, I’d say I’ve had even a little success.

I just have to remember that on days like today.

It’s 10:43PM. I have an article due by midnight and of course, I’m pushing it to the last minute. My mind is fried and one finger is broken and bandaged up. My inspiration on rewriting an article I wrote over two months ago is so far gone that it’s not even funny. The pressure to get this done and get it done well suck out any excitement I had about writing. It’s now work. My mood is rather blah like and I’m irked by every noise because, I tell myself, that’s really the reason the paragraph has not changed. I contemplate submitting a half ass piece of work, but know that that just won’t do – for them or myself.

The only thing I could think that would make me more of a writer at this moment would be if I had a cup of cold black coffee sitting on my desk.

I remember when I first told my family that I had given notice at my corporate job and that I was going to be a writer – it was the same weekend I had made the decision. I had met my mum and my sister at a restaurant as they were in town visiting. They both sat across from me and it took me about half an hour to get up the courage to tell them.

Once I did I was met with a very strange look from my half-sister who is 8 years older than I. “Writing?” she said, “Seriously?” “Yes,” I said, “writing.” “Huh, I didn’t know you did that. What kind of writing?”

I tried to explain what I did to her but she just didn’t get it at that point. She couldn’t comprehend it and that was OK, because I didn’t expect her to. However, over the next few months when I would talk to her, she would make certain comments that were supposed to be taken as sisterly teasing but they made me nervous. I felt like I had to prove something but I had nothing.

This made me very quiet around her and the rest of the family about all that I was doing. I was labled “sneaky” for this, but I was used to that title so it didn’t bother me. Sneaky was what a person was when they had to hide something personal so they wouldn’t be teased. And I didn’t want to be teased about this.

Yet last week my sister sent me an email (which is a rare, rare thing) and it said: “Congratulations on your article our fingers are crossed for your up and coming column “Ann Landers”!!! Seriously we are all very proud and happy for you!! Please send us a copy of your article when you receive it.”

This really touched me. This was a big moment for us; it was an acceptance of my writing. It didn’t come in April when I frist told her, but it came nonetheless when she was ready.

I wrote her a reply back that said: Thanks a lot for saying this – it really meant a lot. Sometimes I feel like the crazy black sheep of the family because I’ve been all over the place and I guess when I decided to do my writing I was really afraid that it’d be seen as “just another crazy phase” kind of thing.

But this is the most serious, most important thing I’ve ever done in my life, and it was really really scary to just declare myself a writer and have a job that is kind of unorthodox. Also, I was afraid that with writing, people wouldn’t see me as working hard or being successful because it’s harder to measure when your job is to write. With an office job, you can measure the success with promotions and raises, but with writing, there’s nothing to measure against – especially in the beginning.

And that’s why I was quiet about all of this at first because I was just really scared of people’s reactions once they’d heard I’d decided to write for a living. I didn’t want them to think I was escaping from “the real world” or that I was crazy or lazy or not ambitious or that I just didn’t want to work hard.

I was really sensitive at first to people’s reactions because a lot of people teased me or made comments – comments that should have just washed off my back but because I was insecure in the beginning, they made me just hide instead. But I’ve become more comfortable over the past few months with who I am and with what I do, and I know now that I’m a writer regardless if some people don’t understand or agree with it. I have to write, there’s just no other way about it. When I write I feel complete, I feel happy, useful, passion, excited and most importantly, proud.

Over the years I’ve always wanted to find a job I loved and for the first time, I’ve found it. And not only that, I’m good at it too. I know this because I have received so much positive feedback from people from 13 to 72. And my first article that came out really hit home with people and made them remember their own dream and their own passion and that was the most amazing feeling I’ve ever had.

Typing an 800 word article felt more powerful to me than any fancy title I ever had at the office. Some days I get frustrated, especially when my brain just won’t cooperate and I have a deadline to make. Or I get frustrated with the fact that I’m not actually making a living at this yet. But I just have to remind myself that I’ve only been doing this since April, and I’ve only really been listening to myself since then too. All this is still so new and there is still so much I have to learn that it’s OK if I’m not perfect at it yet, and that’s nothing to be embarrassed or ashamed of.

I will try to share more and be more brave with talking about it, and hearing that you support me in a real way will help me do that. Because for the first time in my life, I feel so proud of who I am and what I’m doing. I feel for the first time a sense of accomplishment – probably because not only is this the most personal thing I’ve ever done, but because it was on of the hardest too.”