June 26, 2001
Some people have said to me how fortunate I am to know what my passion is. They say to me that they would follow their calling if only they knew what it was. How lucky, they say, that I don’t have to figure that out.
I agree, but it wasn’t always that way. I had always wanted to be a writer. When I was younger I would do nothing but spend hours writing stories and English was always one of my best subjects. When I was 10, I knew I wanted to use my words to only showcase the wonder of the world around me and use my ability to influence people and empower them.
However, as I got older, I let go of writing. I never entertained the idea of really being a writer. I was raised to get a good job and become responsible – writing didn’t seem to be the way to do that.
Last year, I was going through the phase where I wanted to know what my calling was, as I kept hearing so many people talking about this. I wanted to find something I loved and figure out a way to turn it into a job. I wracked my brain over and over and couldn’t figure out what it was.
It wasn’t until February this year, on the plane back from Europe, that I discovered my want to write. Although I had been doing some small work on the Internet since 1997, I wanted to take it to a new level, because, I realised, writing was my passion.
It took me from then until April to get up the courage to do it.
If you don’t think you know what you’re here for, if you have no idea what moves you or stirs you, if you can’t figure out a job that you’ll love, chances are, you just haven’t removed yourself from your current life enough to see it.
Because I truly believe each of us knows what our passion is, and what life we really want to lead. The trick is just to let the life we want to lead, become the one we do lead.
June 25, 2001
I’ve been living moment to moment lately. Actually, let me rephrase that – I’ve been living hectic moment to hectic moment.
I’m moving in two weeks, in the meantime I’m packing like mad and then going crazy because I can’t find something. My husband has started school in the evenings again after being out for two years, and now I have to make that adjustment. I have overseas guests coming in two weeks. I have deadlines approaching for writing, I have cleaning to take care of, errands to run, household bills to catch up on. I’m writing in what little time I have but it doesn’t seem like I’m writing anything good – my brain seems too fried.
I feel like I’m so overloaded, so busy with “things” that all I want is some quiet, some time to myself, some time to discover art again. I feel like I need one week by myself somewhere on some kind of artist escape. I want to devote nothing but time to reading, to learning, to playing, tow writing. I want to spend a few days with some other artist just to connect so I won’t feel alone. I want some time away from reality, just to get myself grounded.
Wouldn’t that be wonderful.
June 17, 2001
In order to write I have to be busy and involved with life. Sitting silently in a tucked away corner brooding does not give me great material. I am, after all, a writer and not a rock star.
This past month has not let me down. I have been busy with one thing to deal with after another. I’m moving and have two weeks to pack up two years of living in this flat. I have writing to do, articles to submit. I have emails I have to respond to. I have cleaning that needs to be done and organising different things that have to happen. I have to sign up for an art class that I really want to take and then fit that class into my life somehow. And I’ve been trying to do it all at full steam. I am a writer, and I must write. I sometimes want to nap or sleep or take some much needed downtime, but I don’t. I feel like I could be writing or learning instead or wasting time away under the covers.
However, being so busy and trying to write like mad had taken it’s toll on me and last night I had just run out of steam.
It was only ten o’clock at night and I had literally just fallen into bed. The side of my face smooshed against my pillow, my right limbs hanging off the bed. I couldn’t move, my body was dead to the world.
However, my brain kept going. It kept thinking of a new idea, a new story, something new to write and share. It was working in a magical way when it should have been silent for sleep.
I debated if I should get up and turn on the computer and write all my ideas down. I tried to get up, but I couldn’t. I was so exhausted, my limbs were enjoying the sensation of just hanging and my smooshed face wanted nothing more than to remain being smooshed. But the thoughts kept coming.
“I’ll write it down tomorrow,” I thought. But then I thought I’d probably forget and that really, if I were a true writer of writers, I’d get up and write everything down. I argued with myself like this for another 10 minutes and then I declared I was going to get up and just write it all down.
When I got up, I looked at the clock and it was seven thirty in the morning. And of course, I had forgotten every idea that I had last night.
I knew I should have tried to write it down last night, I thought. I felt like I had failed by letting precious ideas fly out of my brain and not record any of them. But then I thought about it. If I’m doing nothing more than exhausting myself, how much quality will I really produce? I needed to re-energize myself, and sleep did that for me. It didn’t take away anything, it fed me.
Which is a good thing too. As soon as I surrendered to the fact that I will have to sleep every day and in fact, do not posses superhero energy, I was granted some more opportunities in writing and was contacted by even more amazing artist friends. I had the energy to respond to everyone, and I even had left over energy for new ideas.
June 13, 2001
A couple of weeks ago, a friend said to me, “So, are you getting a lot of rejection?” And I said, “No. I’m not trying hard enough right now.”
I have been holding back from really trying because I didn’t want anyone to tell me that my work that I might be proud of was nothing more than rubbish. I didn’t want anyone to say to me ‘how dare you quit your secure job just to live out some silly dream.’ I didn’t want to hear that I am not a writer.
Then I decided to not care so much. If doing what you love to do is the goal of finding a job, then I know that writing is the job for me. I can’t imagine anything else I’d rather do than create. And I figure that I have suffered far worse bruising than hearing, “I’m sorry, your article doesn’t fit with what we are currently looking for.”
Once I got over my fear of rejection, things started to open up. I started to do more writing and creating. I wasn’t so concerned with first draft perfection anymore. I began to feel a little freer.
And once that started to happen, I was able to reach out to others without a fear of their reactions. I had begun to contact artists and writers whose work had inspired me. I wanted to tell them thank you or bravo for work well done. And the amazing thing was, they all wrote back. They never wrote back negative things, they never told me to stop writing, and they never asked me who did I think I was stepping into their arena.
In fact, they all gave me encouragement. They all gave me inspiration. And they all gave me a sense of normalcy in that all this confusion, fear, self doubt, sense of being overwhelmed, insecurity, madness is perfectly normal.
I’ve never had any writer or artist friends before, and I’ve never known anyone who has gone down this path before. I was feeling so alone and that I must be some kind of fake because of all my insecurities or non-published works. I would never have imagined that people who have had artistic success could ever feel this way too. I was so naive that thinking that because I held admiration for them, that they must always have artistic success and not the same struggles that I have.
It was such a comfort to get encouragement back from others who are like me. It just seemed to calm any jitters I had or answer any questions I had felt about if this is the right thing to do. Their email, their encouragement, has meant more than anything I could ever put into words.
I think that is why documenting my journey on this website is so important to me. Because I want people to know that even when things are hard and frustrating, it’s ok. That if you can stick to your dream and ride out the rougher waves, you’ll get something wonderful back in return. That if you’re willing to try that perhaps that sometimes is enough.
But I think the most important thing I could share is that success comes in all different forms and not overnight. And the trick is to figure out when you have it, when to wait for it, and when to keep trying.
And when I’ve figured that out, I’ll let you know.
June 08, 2001
When I first started to write on the website, I wrote with enthusiasm and excitement. I felt I was moving forward. However, over the last few days I’ve been dreading having to report anything.
I feel like I just keep writing the same things over and over, or I’m up one day and completely flustered the next. I feel like if I don’t write some amazing accomplishment down, everyone will find out that in fact I should have remained in the office. My insecurities, my fears, and my lack of progress, my worry on how many times I’ve used the word “overwhelmed” have made me feel very small in terms of writing.
I’ve made such an open and honest declaration of living out a dream that I feel so responsible to do that now. Not just for me but for others who are afraid in some small way too. I want to prove that when your heart calls you, you have to listen. But how can I show that when I’m just as scared as anyone else?
I am starting from scratch here. For the past twenty years I have lived so linear and worked so hard to bury any creative feelings. Creativity was always seen as unproductive and selfish and so I shed away from it and have, in some regards, forgotten how to loosen up artistically. I don’t have any author friends, so I’m not sure how they write or what feelings they have and if mine are normal. I don’t know the process of writing, and so I’m unsure if I’m going about it right or wrong, or if there is such a thing.
Also I feel unproductive. At an office I could see the pay off of my work; collated copies, phone messages, emails returned, stacks of paper work completed and a very nice paycheque every two weeks. But with writing, how do you know? Is the only way to know that you’ve done something is to publish something? If it is, I’m in trouble.
When I met SARK the other night, I took that as some kind of sign that I was going in the right direction. After awhile I started to doubt it. I started to think what if she is kind to everyone like that, what if it was just polite talk, what if she was sincere and thinks I have potential, yet I don’t have anything to show. The more I thought about that event, the more I started to sink into negative feelings. I became less productive over the last few days. I think I was paralyzed by fear and self doubt.
I started to want some kind of concrete evidence, some kind of proof, that writing is what I should be doing. Instead of just believing it is, instead of just recognizing the feeling I get when I’m writing from my head to my toes, I wanted some kind of validation that I hadn’t made a mistake by quitting my corporate job. Of course, that’s silly, I thought. You don’t get proof just like that.
So this morning instead of writing, I decided to look at my website statistics page to see how people are finding me. I saw a link that I hadn’t seen before and so I clicked on it and it took me to a website that had nothing to do with my website at all. In fact, it was a horoscope site with a reading for Aquarius’s, which I am. I almost never read horoscopes because they’re just usually a lot of made up talk. Yet for some reason I ended up reading that one and it said:
Talk about a kick in the ass. As silly as it may seem it was the motivation that I needed. It has given me a little hope that all these emotions and fears that I have can be made useful.
I’ll keep working, I’ll keep typing or manually writing. I’ll continue to work on my mock up book and submit things to magazines. I’ll try to remember that right now, I need to go for progress and not perfection. That perhaps I can’t control the outcome or the when and where, but I can control the effort. And I will make one hell of an effort, because I believe in all of this.
June 07, 2001
I think when people hear of others living their dream, something inside them awakens. They start to have the ideas of their dream, and what can they do to achieve that. And that ripple effect is amazing.
However, I’m starting to find people who can some times trivialize the whole process. Some people think that because I’ve chosen to live my dream as a writer, things must be full of glitter and cloud nine moments.
For the most part, I must confess, it is. I am a lot happier now, I’m much more relaxed, my confidence is back, I’m more passionate and alive, and I don’t feel like I have some corporate entity sucking the life out of me. I feel like I am finally on the right track.
However, there have been major changes. For one, I gave up a very nice income which means fewer vacations, less disposable income and less savings. But there are things now that I need to do that are financial; get a small used laptop, do some legal work, get a larger flat so I can have some kind of office (this means more rent.)
Also, there I feel a lot of pressure to prove that what I’m doing is real and worthwhile. I feel pressure to become something amazing. Every day that I’m at home working, I wonder if it’s enough.
There’s a lot of uncertainty that comes along with my choice to be a writer, and that’s a very scary thing at times. I have the days where anything I write doesn’t seem good enough, and I ask myself why have I chosen this again?
At this point, I don’t regret making the choice at all. I feel that this is the right time in my life to do this, and something will come of it. That I’m sure of. But the road to getting there is hard.
At first, the work involved in living my dream scared me away from the attempt. To me, that was just straight pitiful. With the up’s there are the downs. As long as you’re realistic, determined and hard working, there is no reason that whatever you want cannot be achieved.
It just takes a little effort, and one hell of a lot of patience.
June 05, 2001
One of the steps of making my writing real is making it legal.
I have been spending the morning trying to find out how to become a legal writer with regards to taxation, copyright and trademarks. I have been trying to learn my rights and my responsibilities.
This is a little more than I anticipated – having this form to fill out and file and this fee to pay. It’s completely overwhelming with all the paperwork and money involved. I’m not even sure what the right steps to take are, or if I’m looking in the right direction.
All I want to do is write – not file forms all day.
I wish there was a website called “getting published 101″ where it contained all that I needed to know. And when you clicked on a link, a little man would ring you on the phone and declare, “Everything had been taken care of for you. Feel free to just write now!”
I have to do this though, I have to start comprehending things. I remember when I was around 15, I had written a story and submitted it to a magazine. I never heard from them, but 8 months later my story was in their magazine. However, the main characters name was changed, the city was changed and the authors name was changed. Other than that, it was my story word for word. I didn’t know how to protect myself that time, and this time, I want to be prepared.
I have found the following links:
June 04, 2001
The first thing I wrote on the website was a thank you letter. In that letter I wrote, “On Monday, I am going to give notice at my job. I am not going to be a corporate girl. I am going to trust the universe and be a writer.” When I wrote that, I don’t know how much I actually believed that if I followed my heart, my calling, my passion that it would actually work out. I had a lot of doubt about the whole ‘trusting the universe’ thing. I had no way of knowing if it was a gimmick or if it would really work.
It works. I am here to tell you that I am living proof that following your heart works.
On the day that I gave notice to my job, I called SARK’s voicemail line that she has printed in her books. For some reason I felt a huge need to thank her. I had never met her but she had been a huge influence, a role model, a guide, and in some twisted way, a friend. I felt if anyone understood the struggle to listen to your heart, the challenge of living your dream, and the desire to write she would. So I left her a message saying how she had affected me and how I was now on a journey to some day be a writer as well. I told her that I wanted to go from being “Alex the Girl” to “Alex the Woman” and that by becoming a writer, I just might be able to do that. At the end of the message I left her my website address.
A few weeks after leaving the message I found out that SARK was going to be on a book signing tour in my city. Of course I had to go.
Tonight Chris and I went to listen to her speak about her new book. For a little over an hour, she spoke, she laughed, and she shared parts of her book, her ideas and bits of life. What I loved most was when she would giggle at herself.
After she spoke, the book signing process began. I was one of the last people in a very long line and stood in it for around forty-five minutes. The bookstore people would periodically walk down the line and say, “She won’t be here much longer, so you might not get to see her.” My heart sank when I would hear them say that because I felt that I had to see her. Not just to have my book signed, but because of another reason I wasn’t exactly sure of.
To help speed up the line process, an assistant came out and asked us our names that we wanted to have SARK sign in our books. She asked me what my name was, I told her, and on a bright pink post it note she wrote:
The nearer I got to SARK, the more this feeling inside me grew that I had to add “the girl” under my name. Standing in line I couldn’t see a pen anywhere so I thought that was a sign to just leave my name as Alex. I promise that as soon as I said that, I saw a pen right beside me on the counter.
What the hell I thought and under A L EX I scribbled:
A few minutes later I got up to SARK and handed her my book. She opened it up and saw the bright pink post it note and in a loud and excited voice said, “You’re Alex the Girl?”
“Yes,” I said rather stunned.
“I know you!” She exclaimed. “You left a wonderful voicemail for me awhile ago, didn’t you?”
“Yes I did” I smiled back.
“I loved it! I saved it and listened to it a few times. It was wonderful! I wanted to contact you but I’ve been so busy with everything.”
I, the girl that has a witty retort and the oh so amazing conversational skills said nothing. I was stunned. She knew me? She recognised my name? The only thing I could think to say back was “Well I can imagine you’ve been super busy, I understand.” (This is why I think perhaps it is a good thing I want to be a writer and not a people greeter.)
She said, “You should have told me sooner who you were! I’ve been to your website, I love it! What you’re doing is fabulous! Really!”
“Thank you,” I said. “So you got my thank you message, I am really glad.”
“Yes I did. Please contact me again, I want to hear from you.” She said with a smile and sturdy eyes that I’m sure twinkled no less than Santa’s ever could have.
“Thank you,” I said and shook her hand.
In a daze I went to find my husband. “She knew me,” was all I could sputter out to him.
To have someone whose work I admire, who probably has gone through everything I am going through right now, tell me they liked my work, was incomprehensible to me. It made me feel like I was on the right track.
On the drive home, Chris & I were talking and I told him that perhaps the universe would come through after all. When I got home, I had emails from two people who I’ve been waiting to hear back from. I wrote them about some writing opportunities and they had responded. It seems like all this writing is becoming real. You can’t imagine how overwhelming that feeling is.
Tonight I just had complete validation for what I’m doing. I know now that this is real. The encouragement, the meeting with people, the talking, the living it all out, is such an amazing thing. I think that’s why I am so glad to have the website, to show that when you choose to accept your dream, it really does come true. Who would have thought?
June 03, 2001
Since I have been working at home, most people don’t think that I am actually working. Even though I pound away on the keyboard all morning, write down abstract ideas all the time, and submit things for publication, people tend to think that because I am not 9-5′ing in an office, that I just sit around at home all day and sometimes do a little thing called writing.
“Now that you’re not working, we can go on vacation for a week or two!” my husband said to me. Although I wanted to go, I had concerns about taking off for so long. How would I write? How would I continue to make contacts? How would I keep my momentum going?
I thought I would somehow figure it all out and so for one week, we went on holiday. I wrote a couple of times that trip, got some really good ideas for some new writing projects, and felt I had made some progress in my endeavors. However, that all ended by the third day of our travels and for the rest of the trip I didn’t write. “I’m on holiday,” I would think, “I can’t work!”
Upon coming home from our trip, some friends said to me, “Now that you’re not working, you can come and stay with me and help me with some things!” I thought about it and thought that I did have the time now and I thought I could find some time to write while I’m there. So off I went and stayed with my friends for a few days, but was so tired at the end of each day, I didn’t even write in my journal.
When I came home from that trip, my in-laws had arrived from out of town for a few days. “Now that you’re not working,” they said, “We can finally spend some time with you!”
Between shuffling them to and from the hotel and to every tour company known to God, my energy for writing had vanished.
I had all these things popping up, imposing on my time as a writer. It had messed up my pattern, my work habits, and my train of thought.
It’s not that I didn’t want to write – I did. It’s not that I couldn’t write – I could have. But I had “when I get around to it” going through my . I had “when I get the time” going through my . I had, “when things settle down” going through my . But I think the most important thing I had going through my was the same thoughts as everyone else: “Since I’m not working anymore…”
Even though I had declared a month ago that I wanted to write for a living, it has taken me a month to realise that this really is my job. It’s taken me a month to realise that if I don’t work, if I don’t try, if I don’t focus, then nothing happens. This is my job now.
So tonight when my mum in law said, “now that you’re not working, are you going to write?” I was able to reply without hesitation, “I am working, now that I am writing.”
Elsewhere