Hello friends! I’ve been absent these last two weeks thanks first to being absolutely slammed at my day job, and second to a planned and much needed vacation. The fall and winter seasons always tend to be the busiest for me both at work and in writing, so a break from both was just the respite I needed to get my mind right for the blitz.
But I’m back now and thinking about that shampoo commercial with Troy Polamalu and Patrick Mahomes. You know the one. More specifically, I’m ruminating on its signature phrase: never not working.
I had a lot of downtime this last month, the most I’ve had since (still miraculously, to me) landing my freelancing gig in April. And while I definitely needed a bit of a breather, I still found myself feeling… restless. Itchy. Like I needed to be doing something. Writing, preferably. Drafting, even more specifically.
As someone who has struggled a lot as an adult with anxiety and depression, who slips all too easily in time wasting but oh so comfortable activities and bad habits, the desire to use my limited free time to work came as something of a surprise to me, but a welcome one at that. It has long been a goal of mine, impossible it though had seemed at times, to turn that itchy part in my brain that makes me write into a career, yet my worst nature to deprioritize that which is not strictly necessary in my day to day life has forestalled meaningful progress toward that goal for as far back as I can remember.
Yet, the distinctly unsettled experience I have been — ahem — enjoying this last month tells me that maybe I am ready to take that step. To think of writing not as a hobby or a passion project, but as a job that deserves to be taken every bit as seriously as my 9 to 5. And if that is the case I need to prepare myself for the hustle. Because if I’ve learned anything about professional writers, freelancers, self-published, and agented a like, it’s that they are Never Not Working.
So today, that’s my motivation.
Speaking of which, time to get back to it. Until next time!
Kerry Share
Just Another Struggling Writer 
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