"I am at a loss to conceive how a man should permit himself to write anything that would be truly disgraceful to a woman, or why a woman should be censured for writing anything that would be proper and becoming for a man."

29 August 2014

A Change is Gonna Come...

OK, yesterday's pity party over. I just needed to get that out of my system. 
A short while ago, I was directed to this short post regarding committing the first 90 minutes of your 'work day' to your passion project, for 90 days (allowing time for it to become habit, rather than a challenge to be met).
I started earlier this week doing what I need to get more 'real job' ducks in their proverbial row. I made it two days before I wanted to give up and cry. Because as necessary as this process is, it's incredibly tiresome to repeat day in and day out. However, the alternative (having my soul die bit by bit every day I'm in this dead-end job) is worse. So while it may not be my passion project, I'm not going to have passion for anything if I don't change the manner in which I spend a 'work day.' And yet...
After three days of reassessing and editing resumes and cover letters, submitting to new sites, applying for 30+ positions, I need a day off to actually live up to the challenge and work on my passion project: writing. As disorganized as my job search efforts had become, my writing is in an even worse state. The chaos of life and other distractions has left me with more unfinished projects and rough idea outlines of projects-to-be than ever before. The act of just writing escapes me. Planning and scheduling have become a joke, not for lack of desire or commitment, but due to the overwhelming fear that to finish something may only tick off that work as 'done' on a checklist and never go any farther.
I've become afraid of the force of my own imagination. I've had my inner puppy kicked so many times it hides in the corner now any time I call its name. The true point of the 'challenge' is to work on your passions first, and the rest of the work later, and the truth is I've been afraid to do so. There has to be a balance for me, in making job searches a passion project of sorts to improve every aspect of my life, not just the creative ones. However, spending too much time focusing on everything that isn't writing is what put me in this depressed slump in the first place. Thus, writing needs to be given priority in this scenario. Now that my resumes are more in order and I've joined more job sites, I'm relegating the job searches to two days/week. The other days are for writing. Period.
It's been a tough week, but a productive one. If it's done anything, it's exposed how easily I can focus on projects if given the freedom and allowance to do it -- and how sometimes you have to give permission for that freedom to yourself because you're the one holding you back.

28 August 2014

What Do You Mean No One Cares About My Problems?

Seriously. I'm awesome. At least I try to be. I work hard, especially doing the things I love. I even work hard doing things I don't love if they're necessary and/or I'm getting something useful from it. I may not work as hard, but my "getting by" with work is most people's excelling. That's not hyperbole, it's fact. If you look at my employment history, it's a clear cut distinction -- I work for you, I excel.
Except I can't seem to parlay that excellence into the fields that actually drive me. I keep excelling at doing stuff to just get by instead of excelling at what I know I'm meant to pursue.
But I forgot. No one cares. I'm one tiny speck of human dust among billions of other specks on this planet. Throwing pity parties for myself doesn't help me any more than it helps anyone else.
The issue is, as little as anyone else cares about my problems, they care the exact same amount about my abilities, talents, experience, knowledge, drive, passion, etc. How do you make your voice louder than others when no one cares what's being said? How do you stand out from the crowd when your number in the queue prevents you from being seen even when squinting into the distance? How do you go from excelling in a career that makes you hate yourself to excelling in a life calling?
Seriously, how?

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