Is it me?

I had a little what the fuck am I doing with my life? moment, this week, while hooked up to my bi-monthly infusion.

Nothing new there, of course. We all get that, when we reach a certain age and we realise there are things we wanted to have achieved by this time in our lives: having the babies, the happy marriage, that great career, fantastic friends, supportive family etc etc, and we realise that we haven’t quite hit the mark in certain areas that were sooo important in our life plan.

Well, turns out this little moment of mine must have been a good one because it set off the alarm on the machine that dispenses the medication that dampens down my overactive immune system, the BP shot up as did the pulse…the works.

It hasn’t been the greatest of months. I had received a very polite, very nice rejection letter from a publisher for the job I really thought I was in with a shot at. They didn’t want to employ me, ‘this time’ but they were very interested in reading my writing. I suppose I should have been comforted, but I was too busy being pissed off about the job I had wanted so badly. And there was the usual what is wrong with me? reaction.

So, there I was, sitting in the ward while the medication dripped into my battered veins. I realised I’ve spent the past ten years trying to kick open doors that simply won’t be opened. I have been trying to find a job that allows me to utilise my writing/editorial skills while paying a decent salary, while I’ve been putting my novel on the back burner. So I don’t yet have a full manuscript to show to the very polite publisher, and a looooong time has passed. Too long.

I’ve applied for all kinds of jobs, and most recently I had hoped that the post-Covid remote working revolution might open one of the doors that had previously been closed to me. So I carried on trying to kick a few more of those doors down. They remained closed. Locked down.

By the end of my hour-long infusion, I walked out of the hospital building with a plan. I’m going to stop. Stop kicking doors that don’t want to open. I’m exhausted by it all. From now on, it’s me (with no money), a computer, a pile of notebooks full of dialogue, scenes and ideas, and the one thing I haven’t really had until now – the space and determination to complete my novel before doing anything else.

I’ll let you know how it goes…