What a treat- you get to read part 2 of the blog almost immediately (don’t get used to this!)

So here’s the blog post I wrote just weeks after embarking on my FEAR induced solo trip to the US in 2014. It’s a bit long so I have cut it into two bits…

Writers live two lives.

Or a thousand, depending on how many books they get to write.

The utopia when transported into another universe, country or time zone is quite unexplainable.  And to embody another human experience, the opposite of what you are used to can be a thoroughly additive emotion.

I understand this phenomena, because I breathe it. I crave it.

Writing was and is my dream job.

As a reclusive eleven year old, constructing numerous stories about teenagers engaged in ‘boy meet girl’ scenarios, I transported myself into a world where I made the rules (of course, boy and girl lived happily ever after.) But it wasn’t until after I completed a Degree and Masters that I decided to take writing much more seriously.  For years I’d write whilst holding down a full time job as a counsellor.  I enjoyed the interaction with clients and colleagues and occupying the privileged position of helping others- yet still felt the dull ache of remaining an unpublished writer.  As any author will tell you, writing for money is not the main motivator and working as a counsellor allowed me to indulge in my passion unpaid during evenings and weekends (even if this meant no time to actually get a life!).

Years passed before something amazing occurred.  An agent and publisher believed my work to be saleable.  Years of hard work and rejection had lead to a creation that would be read, enjoyed and scrutinized by others.  Of course, happiness and fear now intermingled, as a whole new life beckoned me from afar- one I had dreamt about for so very long.

So, six years flew by. My new identity- that of a published author, a writer- took a while for me to internalize. Whenever friends, family and acquaintances referred to me as a writer, I’d unconsciously turn my head to the side, just to see who they were referring to.

Who, me? A writer?

The glamorous book launches and spotting my book in stores are some of the main highlights of my life, so far.  My Day Job (which I still enjoyed) shrank down to four days a week and left ample time to increase my writing output.  Yet, the dream of one day giving it all up to write full time still lingered.  To experience the utopia of constructing and writing a novel uninterrupted by the nine to five and develop characters in a way, only writing every day could achieve.

Leave the job, said a voice.

The excuses were plentiful. Most alarming, the fact I had worked in a ‘proper job’ since the age of thirteen and couldn’t begin to imagine the prospect of life without a regular paycheque. Having long since subscribed to the mantra ‘live for the moment,’ I continued to do just that. Participating in a life I knew I was blessed to have, secure in the belief it just ‘wasn’t my time yet.’

You see, everything has its season and occurs, I believe, in God’s time and I remained confident that mine would arrive.

My moment, my time arrived at the beginning of 2014…

To be continued… (see what I did there?)