I’ve seen a lot on time management and jealousy on the blogs lately. Odd combination to put together, you think? Probably, but it got me to thinking about what we sacrifice to succeed as writers. In my case that’s time, money, and friends.
Time is easily explained. We’re all busy. Between kids, house stuff, and writing I need about 10 more hours in a day. There’s just not enough time. The sacrifice to time that pains me the most is reading. My tbr pile is growing much faster than I can keep up. My rl friendships have suffered from this time constraint too. We haven’t seen each in months and yet we live about 5 miles apart.
Money. I don’t know about y’all, but I dream of the day when I can make a living writing. I don’t have a day job. Partly because the daycare expense compared to what is available locally is prohibitive. But mostly because it would seriously cut into the time I can use to write. I’m lucky to have a supportive husband who prefers that I give the writing my best shot than having a little extra money if I got a job. Still, we sometimes keenly feel that lack of income.
And finally friends. I already touched on the time/friendship connection, but there’s another issue with friends that’s hard to miss with the recent proliferation of jealousy posts on the blogs. I’ve been lucky in this regard. My non writer friends are happy that I’m doing well and so are my writer friends. After reading a few stories of losing friends over jealousy, I realize how lucky I am.
So what do you sacrifce to follow this dream? Time? Money? Friends? Or something else?
November 9th, 2006 at 5:44 pm
I don’t have a lot of RL friends, mostly because I’ve made connections all over the world through the ‘net. (And yes, I’ve met some of them, and some are closer than others.) With my current crunch, I have less contact with them than I’d like, but they’re still there.
Money, I guess, is the big one. Well, and house chores, which I know drives the Engineer crazy, but he’s good about letting them slide.
November 9th, 2006 at 5:49 pm
I give up being a good, artsy, do everything with my kid stay at home mom. I’m there, but I’m on the computer a lot. I feel like i should be doing art projects, teaching emma the piano, or just a lot more stuff since I’m home.
I haven’t been blog hopping lately. That’s sad people would lose friends over jealousy.
November 9th, 2006 at 11:51 pm
I gave up having a clean house. Seriously. I used to clean every week, but now it just goes and goes and goes until I can’t stand it any more. Then I have a two hour cleaning frenzy to get it out of my system. It drives me crazy, but a writer’s gotta do what a writer’s gotta do.
November 10th, 2006 at 5:01 pm
I’m in the same boat as you Lori. Working would be self defeative because of the cost of daycare.
My RL friends have probably paid the most, but the only/closest friend I have is almost 2 hours away, so it’s not like I can just hop in the car and see her for lunch. It takes planning, on both ends.
I had made my sacrifices already to be a stay at home mom. The lack of the income cushion. The freedom to not be attached at the hip with another body. It’s a dynamic juggle just to go see a movie if we don’t want to take the kiddo.
So what have I have given up to write? Maybe at worst, a clean house, but that was not my forte to begin with. *GRIN*. Not Martha Stewart, and he knew that when he married me. Probably, the largest is time with hubby, but he’s a TV nut, and I’m not, so this still balances out pretty well. And he supports what I do, so it works out.
November 10th, 2006 at 5:09 pm
I’m with Diana on the clean house. My mom and I fought even when I was a child about my dirty bedroom–and I’m sure she rolls over in her grave at the condition my house is in. As long as it’s not gross, we’re good. Honestly, I make the kids do a lot of it but then they don’t cook and they don’t (usually) do laundry, and they never buy the groceries so I figure we’re square if I make them do the dishes, mop, vaccume and clean their rooms and bathroom.
I don’t have a lot of friends IRL anyway nad most of them are writers so we’re cool.
November 11th, 2006 at 3:23 pm
I’m in a similar boat regarding work. I don’t have kids, but I have fibromyalgia and other health issues that limit the kind of work I can do. We’ve looked at it inside and out, and while I would be willing to get a job, he doesn’t think the extra $8-10/hr is worth me screwing over my health. That and once you factor in transportation and food costs, the amount I would make lowers drastically.
So I’m a stay-at-home something-or-other. LOL.
The funny thing is, he considers my writing to be equivalent to a full time job. I don’t think I write nearly enough for that to hold true, but I could settle on part time.
I’m very grateful to have a man who truly wants the best for me.
As for jealousy… well, I have on occasion been *envious* (subtle difference, but important) of other writers’ success. That being said, I recognise and accept the feeling, but I don’t act on it. Emotions in and of themselves aren’t “wrong”; it’s what you do with them that matters.
So, sure, I may be envious of someone’s contracts, releases, writing skill ;), or word counts … but if I want that for myself, whatever it is, it’s up to me to work for it. Not be a snarky little bitch to the other person just because they’ve achieved the success they’ve worked so hard for.
November 11th, 2006 at 6:02 pm
I think my sacrifice is a clean house too. But I hated to clean before I started writing sooo…whatever. LOL But I too go on cleaning frenzies when I can’t take it anymore. I’d hate to lose a friend over any kind of jealousy.