Today, when I finished work, it was my 7th day in a row, 19th out of 23 days this month. Don’t get me wrong, I love what I do but at some point, I would love to have the energy to write and edit too. I hate writing when I’m tired. When I’m tired, it feels like the words are hard to grasp onto. I force myself to wrestle the words down, pinning them onto the page. It feels like, to me, that my mind if thinking through mud.
There is no easy fix. I want to write everyday, if I could, as a professional. I feel that slogging through the mud muddled mind of exhaustion is worth it. Writing is not a job, it’s a passion, a love, a longing to tell the story that has been floating around in my head for years. So what if worked my butt off. For me, it’s a means to an end. It is the voyage of life that I must travel to finally achieve my goal of sustaining myself through my writing.
I use to be a chef. I cooked in restaurants for over 20 years. Anyone who has ever worked in the restaurant industry, or just “the industry”, knows that it is tiring, back braking work. Imagine working in a place where everything around you will burn you, cut you, cause you massive amounts to stress and your chef is demanding more of you when you think there is nothing more to give. Welcome to the restaurant industry.
The job I have now is tiring but noting compared to the stress boiler that is a kitchen on a Friday night at 6pm with 150 on the books and your g**^%mn waitress just took the wrong plate, again!
So I write, and I work, I get tired but I still write.
The future is mine to decide what I make of it.
This is my life, for now.
Author of Tazeric: Sword of Light and Dark series. 