For many years I made my living as a Physical Therapist and I loved doing it everyday. Helping people at one of the worst times of their lives and making a difference to improve that life was an amazing way to enhance my life. But doing that work, no matter how satisfying, was not what I really wanted to do with my life. When I look back I can see that I chose Physical Therapy for all the wrong reasons. I treated it as a career but in my heart I chose it because it would provide me with a good life. And for many years it did just that; a good and easy life was mine.
Good and easy became less satisfying and even getting up to go to work was becoming a mental burden. When I hit that crossroad, and just after my divorce, I decided to try and do what I really wanted to do. See, I was raised to believe that taking care of your family is what you are supposed to do. Even if you suffered doing it as long as the family was in good shape you continued on until your time was up. I was born in an era that you were considered to have led a good life if you got your children to college, got them married, you became a grand parent and you limped off into the sunset happily ever after.
What, I thought, I was supposed to do with my life is to provide for my family and work myself into an early grave like my father. Don't get me wrong; my father was a fantastic man and an amazing provider but I swear he never did what he really wanted to do with his life because he always put the family first. He led a good life and a very successful one but was gone from us at age 49. His loss impacted the rest of my life.
At that crossroad, and having lost everything through divorce, I chose to try and do what 'I' always felt was what I was meant to do. "WRITE"!! I love it and I am at my best when I an in front of my computer hamering out a story or this blog.
I have been providing for myself by doing research for other writers and it has been a decent living. Recently my sources of employment have dried up and I find myself at yet another crossroad.
Give up full time writing and get a job to fill the ecomnomic void or continue on as I am and have a fairly uncertain future. It is a tough decision; balancing what I feel is my calling with my desire to eat regularly and have a decent place to live.
I know I can hear your minds working!! Why can't he do both? I have asked that question, of myself, many times. If I am working, at whatever job it might be, I find that I write less and lose some enthusiasm. I need to do this full time or not at all. I have never been one for halfway measures.
So this morning I have chosen to struggle on after examining my financial condition. I can stretch out my full time writing time to two years before I reach a critical point. Longer if I can supplement with some writing income.
I have watched Second Life singers for years struggle with their craft while balancing what, I believe they really want to do, with what they have to do to survive. Frankly they may only be happy when they are on that stage providing us with the joys of their talants.
My stage is sitting in front of my computer and developing a story. It is where I find happiness and fullfillment. I want people to read what I write but more importantly I write so that people have a chance to read it. I write because I feel whole when I am being productive. I am not giving up that feeling so I can have a little more meat on the table.
Another crossroad navigated. I am sure there will be many more in the time I have left on God's good Earth.
Love ya,
Randy
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