Last night Greg and I went to hear Karen Abbott read from her book Sin in the Second City at the Book Cellar in Lincoln Square (you can read about it on She Wrote, He Wrote) and, as usual when I go to a reading, I got to thinking about my writing and my book.
I was envious of Karen Abbott standing up there in her hip outfit, a dog-eared copy of the book she wrote held deftly in one hand as she spoke. Where's my book? My reading? I couldn't help but think. Am I being lazy? Am I not talented enough? What am I doing wrong? It's embarrassing to write these things but they are the thoughts I have every time I see another young author reading from a book they wrote and published.
It's really all I've ever wanted to do. Write and publish a book and become a bonafide author. Ever since I could hold a crayon I've been penning stories and making little books, dreaming of my name on the spine of a book on a bookshelf in a bookshop.
And I haven't given up by any means. I have no doubt that I'll publish a book in my lifetime but I'm just getting impatient for it to happen. I've already written a book -- something I wanted to do before I turned thirty -- but now that book sits quietly in a folder on my desktop and every time I open it up I sigh and feel immediately weighed down by the thought of reworking it.
In the meantime, I'm writing just as much, if not more than I ever have. I realized that it's probably not quite that apparent here on the blog but I'm writing ALL the time these days. Just this week I had four articles on deadline and I've written at least 5 blog entries between this blog and SWHW, not to mention that I have a job I go to every day.
I've been really feeling like I'm straddling two careers these days. While work continues to increase at my hospice job, my freelance career is getting busier than ever. They're two such different career paths too. On an average day I go from a nursing home in Uptown where I just sat with a dying man to an upscale furniture design studio in Lincoln Park to interview the owner about their greening efforts. The strange thing is that, for the most part, I'm still loving both and I'm getting better and better at switching between the two.
One strange aspect is that no one at my hospice job knows I'm a writer. I'm just the tall girl with the calming voice who comes to work every day in her skirts and high heels and makes calls to all the bereaved families. I'm the girl who recruits volunteers to work with our dying patients and who gets community associations to make brightly-colored blankets for our patients. I'm the girl who helps facilitate grief support groups and gives a report every Thursday at team meeting on how the bereaved are faring.
None of them know about this blog or about my travel writing or the restaurant openings Greg and I go to on the weekends. They have no idea that I leave work every afternoon to spend the rest of the day meeting deadlines for magazines and websites and that I write about my personal life in incredible detail online. I've never been inclined to tell any of them and I don't think they've ever wondered.
So, while I'm constantly writing and thinking about books and deadlines I'm also working towards my Illinois State counseling license in the hopes that in a couple of years I can open my own private practice as a therapist. I'm reluctant to give up either career. I can't imagine not being a writer and I can't imagine not working in a helping profession either.
All this to say that I think it's all leading somewhere and that at the end of it, or the middle of it, is probably a book. And just writing about all of this makes me realize that for now I'm happy doing what I'm doing.
List of Articles Soon to be Published (that I've been hard at work on):
- Sustainable Travel in Negril, Travel Age West (June 2008)
- Chicago Farmers Market Chef Series, Ideal Bite (appearing monthly through September 2008)
- Yoga Diary, Yoga Journal (September 2008)
- Green Travel in Chicago, Road & Travel Magazine (September 2008)
- Wine Tasting Etiquette Guide, Mobil Travel Guide Wineries Edition (Winter 2008)
- Bike Like a Chef (Jason Rogers of St. Julien), Mountain Biking Magazine (October 2008)
