As a writer who also works full time at a non-writing job, I’m always bemoaning to friends, family, co-workers, and my writer’s group, I need more free time to write. I get 21 vacation days a years from work and people are always trying to be helpful and tell me to take a vacation day off and use it to write. If only life was that easy.
Life is not that easy because 1.) I save my vacation days for actual things with family. I can’t not be available for a family event because I spent my leave days on myself. Well, I could technically but I wouldn’t….because of guilt. Which brings me to … 2.) guilt. When I take too much for myself, I feel guilty. I actually feel guilty about a lot of things and taking time for myself is one of them.
But then I got sick. Suddenly and unexpectedly, I got sick at work. I went home at 4:30 pm on a Friday (which is early for me), crawled into bed with an Advil, and hoped I’d feel better in the morning. I didn’t. So far, I’ve been home sick for a week and it looks like I will be out sick next week too. So, after five days off of work, how much writing did I get done?
The answer is none. Not counting this blog, I’ve not written out more than a bunch of bills. Why? Well, first and foremost, because I’m in pain and, since my current work in progress is a romantic comedy, pain doesn’t put me in the right mindset for the characters, unless I wanted them to all start killing each other. For the record, I don’t.
So I’m sitting here faced with the conundrum of my existence as a writer: I never have time to write, but when I do have time, it’s just not the write time. I know I’m supposed to suck it in push through the pain. My characters would. However, I just want to roll over and watch re-runs of L&O:SVU because <insert whiny voice> I’m sick, darn it.
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