Exchanging Money for a Pen

Given my druthers, I’d probably be doing something else. Definitely.

I grew up with a single mom who worked herself tirelessly up a crazy corporate ladder to become an international business consultant for IBM. Yeah, I hold myself up against that. Staying at home and writing for zero money while my kid goes to preschool isn’t cutting it. I feel bad about that, but then there’s the dull fact that to be a writer, to get anyone interested in your writing, you have to first sit down, ignore everything else including your kid, and write something. Anything!

I’ve applied for tens of jobs, of all kinds (teaching, writing, unpaid internships with publications…), and no one is interested. That by itself is okay; the economy is bad, the school year is very close at hand, I’m old for an intern. What to do after it is the problem. Apply for more jobs? I will. Yank Ellie out of preschool after she just started? We won’t. Work at Starbucks? I hate standing, and after having Ellie, I can’t do that for very long anyway.

At some point, you look at the scales, and at your own strengths, and say that they tipped in favor of this. It is better for me to make no money writing and wait for fruit to bear later, than to work an odd job that I don’t really care about, just to say that I’m working to justify Ellie’s being in preschool or to supplement, however modestly, my husband’s dwarfing salary.

I’m lucky (and always have been, really) to have friends, family, and now a husband who think that my writing is worthwhile, outside of any stabs at moneymaking. What a crazy gift. For a long time, I didn’t consider a waste of anything not to write, especially because my circumstances were so different from what they are now. Now, however, if I’m going to justify the way we are living, and what I’m doing with my life and the life of my family, I have to do something I’m good at.