Week 9 - Kismet

I have been busily and desperately searching for work.  Again.

I have been out of work since February of 2011.  After my divorce, I was losing my house.  In a reckless and scandalous move, I quit my job in an effort to save it.  I had another job lined up in the longer term but the only way I could access my retirement fund was to leave my job. So I did.  I ended up not only losing my retirement, but the house as well.

Some lessons are very hard-learned.

I've been going back to school. Partly to achieve the degree, but also partly to narrow my focus.  There are so many things I enjoy doing that it's been hard to 'choose' a path.  I fell into IT a long time ago and I've always hated it.  I have an opportunity now to choose something I really want to do every day, but it's an awful lot of pressure!

I thought it was culinary (I really love cooking and I'm good at it), but after a year I discovered that a) Culinary school will kill your love of cooking within 2 months; and b) cooks in Maine don't make squat for money. 

Scratch Culinary.

I moved on to business.  I had started a small business cooking a couple of years ago.  Just a part time business - the kind many moms and grandmothers do in their spare time 'in the County'.  I learned another valuable lesson - I despise accounting.  So, Business as a major is kaput too.

There have been aspects of each (and other subjects) that I thoroughly enjoy.  I love cooking - on my own terms, and in  my own way.  I don't always adhere to a recipe, and sometimes - <gasp> - I don't measure. In business, I love helping people, but not the tediousness of bookkeeping and accounting. I'm a creative personality, an artist of sorts, and if I don't have that outlet...if my hands are tied (literally or figuratively)...I choke in the realest sense of the word.

One arena I have always become lost in for hours has been my reading and writing. This past month, in a single week - three different people suggested I find a way to write for a living. I hadn't really considered it before now.  After all, writing, as a profession, is not a 'serious' career.  Writing is akin to starving actors - it's what you do while you're waiting tables, waiting for the dream to take it's last breaths.

Then I thought, what do I have to lose? I figure it's kismet, right? 

I thought more and more about it, in spite of myself. What would happen if I took a shot at it? I've always had this secret dream tucked away in the back of my heart and head.  You know the one - that dusty, leather-bound 'Great American Novelist' dream shared by anyone who's read Kerouac or Fitzgerald. Could I afford to try, to possibly learn that I'm not adept or skilled enough to earn a living at writing?  Not in the financial sense, but in the most elemental and core facet of my being.

In most aspects of my life, I'm a seemingly moderate risk-taker.  But truth be told - I'm a closet over-analyzer.  I research and investigate, take notes, interview and interpret, take notes, evaluate and scrutinize before making any kind of final determination. My significant other makes jokes about how he wishes I would hurry up and write my novel already - we could use the money, and we both want to move out of the city. Which, he reminds me, I could easily do with a writing job.

Subtlety is not his forte.

So, I set about researching (my standard M.O.) on the internet.  How would I even begin? What are my chances of success?  Is it worth it? 

What if I spent the next year writing, submitting, getting rejected and submitting some more?  I would be no worse off than I am now financially.  I'd be dejected and morose probably.  I'm pretty stubborn, for an Irishwoman even, so I probably wouldn't give up easily.  Maybe I'd turn into one of those prolific writers who's not recognized for their genius until long after they've left this Earth.

Maybe I'd just fade into the dust and my writing would blanch into obscurity on the Net, hopefully to be found in some graphically embarassing way for my grandchildren.

I worry that I'm not good enough.  Another lesson hard-learned at this point could potentially be catastrophic. Writing is personal. Rejection is business.  How do the two enmesh comfortably?  I'm guessing this is why so many writers are melancholy and pessimistic. I anguish at the thought of being forced to tell my family I have failed.

And then I think - but...perhaps.....I won't fail.  I have just as good a chance as anyone out there.  In fact, I lament the writing of others daily - like the South Portland-Cape Elizabeth Sentry's article on the next generation of students, captioned (front page) "Future collegions".

 Surely I can do better.

So I've done my diligence and signed up for multiple freelance sites initially. I'll catch up on my writing class.  I'll write daily - or at least try. I'll submit proposals often.  Maybe someone will even take me up on one of them.  Perhaps I'll even make a little money and buy that farm we looked at earlier today.

I wonder if Jack Kerouac wondered about kismet?