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| Bird House Catherine Al-Meten Meyers |
Probably the last time I made a concerted effort to organize paper files, I was living in a home in the old Ft. Ord officer's housing. Built originally for families of military service members, the space and arrangements were well suited for good views and ample closet and wall space. I recall setting up my glass-topped desk, and coming up with a color code and system for files. My goal that day just after new years a long time ago was to set my priorities for writing in order as well as my financial business dealings.
At the same time I was being mentored on starting my own business and setting goals for myself. What my wise mentor Robert Kramer taught me was to project money goals forward just like I would writing and research assignments. I was very experienced by that point in setting goals for myself related to assignments and writing, but to do the same thing with my financial plans and goals was new. My way of handling finances was to deal with what I had on hand. Pay checks came at regular intervals, depending on the job. Running my own business, however, was a horse of a different sort.
The very idea of projecting income, that is imagining how much I wanted to earn in the future was shocking to me. My way would have been, to consider how much I could get together or how many hours I needed to get paid work to bring in money. My attempts at using credit were short-lived and unsuccessful. I preferred working with what I had. It felt safer. What it did, however, was block possibilities and opportunities, energetically. When we do not conceive of an idea, it seldom manifests into our reality. It might do so occasionally as if it's a stroke of luck or a fluke, but when we put our minds to something, when we imagine a possibility, it becomes much stronger.
And if we want to see our desires expressed in quantifiable terms, in some form, we need to get a clearer idea of what that looks like. As you want to experience love through actions not just words, so too do we need to see our ideas manifest in some form--art, literature, drama, music, service, program development, a good or a utility. What I learned through the Small Business Administration mentorship program was to learn to quantify not just my services (counseling, editing, writing) or goods (books, articles, retreat/workshops) but also my time, energy, and resources (human and otherwise).
I remember Robert asking me what I saw myself doing 5 or 10 years down the road. As I was determined to be a full time writer, my goal was to write and publish a book successfully. He then asked me how I would define success. My vague answer of hoping people would buy the book, read it, and like it, led to his next question. "How many books would you have to sell to be successful?" I had no idea, at the time. He showed me how to estimate and quantify my goals into something measurable. For creatives such as myself, quantifying is sometimes difficult. However, the more successful I am as a writer, the more important being able to get comfortable with this aspect of a career in writing becomes.
Part of my dream was to write a book. I felt like I had the capacity to do that, but was more concerned with how to support myself outside the academic or business world's systems/institutions. The transition between being partly connected to an institution/business has not been straight forward. At times I took temporary jobs to meet my needs. Finally, when that option disappeared due to the strain it was taking on my health and resources, I left the part time connections. My temporary part time teaching job seemed ideal, however the energy, time, and resources I needed for the work drew from the same well that writing needed. It took it's toll on my health, and created a minor crisis that opened one door and closed another.
While spending an ample amount of time pursuing my new career as a full time writer and photographer, I kept taking part time gigs, wrote for online news organizations, and helped out raising my Granddaughter before she was ready for school. All of this took its toll and didn't provide me with much of an income. In January at the start of a new term teaching, I felt really ill and went to a new doctor. At the same time, I had contacted our local social assistance counselor to ask some questions about medical insurance. My contact with these two people, helped turn my life around, in the right direction.
The first person I met was a doctor who has the skills we would all love in a healer. She listened. She observed. And she is a brilliant diagnostician, so she correctly diagnosed a disorder that had been afflicting me for years. I had no idea because the symptoms weren't extreme, at least not on the outside. Internally though, my immune system and certain mineral levels in my body were dangerously affected. The reason I had even sought out a doctor was because I'd fallen over the Christmas holidays. My ankle, which had been broken, was sprained. Stephanie Potts, my doctor, nurse practitioner, told me I needed to stay off my feet for a couple of weeks. She took my blood and I left her office, wondering how I was going to follow her suggestions and still work? Within a few days, she called me to let me know I needed to begin a course of medication, change my lifestyle and diet, and to remove as much stress from my life as possible as soon as possible. Not only did I need to keep my feet up, I needed to address a serious health issue immediately.
So now not only did I need to keep my feet up, I had to take time off to get better. Not knowing what to do, I went ahead and met with
the woman from the social services organization--Sue Perkins. She came to meet me near my home and asked me to tell her about my life. What was I doing and what was my typical day or week? I told her about my job, the long commute, my current health issues.
When I told her, she asked me a simple question. "How much is your time and energy worth to you?" I was stunned. I started to tell her how I had to work and couldn't survive without the job. She said, "That's not what I asked. How much is your time and energy worth to you." I had no idea what she meant. She then proceeded to ask me to take stock of how much time I spent in all the different aspects of this part time job that I was doing a 2-hour commute each way two or three days a week. Then she said to add the time preparing (as a teacher there were hours of prep before and after each class), and then she added, how much time I spent recovering from the job. She had me add all the hours up, and then any additional costs (gas, parking, travel expenses, meals, clothing).
When I'd done this, she said to me, "Frankly, you cannot afford that job. Your health or someone else's safety depends on you getting healthy again." When what you get for a job you do is not worth the time, energy, and resources you put into it, it's time to rethink the assignment. And when your own health is affected negatively by the work or conditions around the work, that's the bottom line or the straw that breaks the camel's back. Decision time. Looking back, it was not an easy decision, but it was the only right decision for me.
All the things I worried about walking away from that job and focusing on getting well and writing, have vanished. Since that time I have written and published at least 7 books and countless articles and essays. My life as a writer is established, and I'm now at another crucial turning point in my career.
My writing projects require most of my time and attention. That leaves not much time for other areas I've been focused on in the recent past. I've given up all outside teaching, and realize I need more help than I can get or afford right now. The help I need is in marketing and publicity. I have friends who have volunteered to help, and that has been a miracle to me. To get my books written, ready for publication, and then on the market, I need assistance. How that is going to happen, remains to be seen, but I now have people wanting to carry my books in their shops. Even though it's not my favorite part of being a writer, I do need to spend more time getting the books out and marketed. I'm at one of those steep precipices again...looking out on a vast, broad landscape trying to figure out how to get to where I'm going next. While today, I have no answers and not much of a plan, I am beginning to ask the questions and listen for answers and seek signs that indicate to me how to start quantifying my goals and dreams into action.
Opportunities, offers, and events on the calendar call for me to ask some pointed questions and make some decisions that will enable me to move my writing career into the next stage. This year I am finishing the second book in my mystery series, editing and publishing my fourth book of poetry, and going ahead on a new series, one I've been researching and dreaming up for the past year or so. Waiting for an order of books for a local shop, and getting ready to launch the new book with a couple of events.
It's a lazy Sunday morning when I've been anything but lazy or at ease. Instead ideas are popping up and like a pot of boiling water, things are getting ready to take off. It's a feeling I have, that stirred from within. Where it will lead, I am uncertain. But I recognize the movement, questions, and push of times in the transitions stages of my life. Writing is all about expressing and communicating, and writing about writing as I do here on Coasting Along, is one of the ways a writer, this writer, unravels the mysteries and unpacks the questions that help point me in the direction I'm traveling.
Happy New Year to all of you who are heading out on new journeys, longing for new directions, or unwinding from the last big adventure. Take time to breathe and smell the pine, moss, or cactus, whatever is near you and in bloom or growing. Take time too to look at what is growing within you, and prepare yourself to make the best of the gifts of life and freedom that we have.
By the way, my answer to Robert's question about how I saw myself down the road is actually the life I am living and have been living since that time. What we imagine possible becomes so when we put ourselves to work on making it happen.
