Beyond 30: The Next Chapters

So, you may have read that I am writing a book ( here are the first unedited paragraphs if you were interested ) and so far the process has been a bit..well..intimidating. Over the last couple of weeks, I've taken a half a dozen writing/publishing workshops online and while these have proved very useful, it's evident that I've got a lot of work to do if I want to be a successful and more importantly published writer. It's not as though I was expecting this entire process to be easy because if it were, everyone would publish a book. There is, however, a lot more to it than I originally anticipated. Writers are not merely conveyors of a story; they are, at their heart, marketing gurus (which I am not). Selling a book also means selling your platform, building an audience, and connecting with the core of people that you want to read your story.  So, that's what I'll have to do.  And I kind of hate it.  I am really not much of a social media person. Over the years, ...

It has been almost two weeks since I made the possibly harebrained decision to write a novel instead of going back to work and the results so far are...mixed. Though I've taken a few writing workshops in the pursuit of sharpening up my dusty skills, it's apparent to me that I might be a bit in over my head. The process for publishing a novel is unsurprisingly not as simple as write a book, pitch a book, sell a book and then bang, boom money. Man, I wish it worked that way.  Initially, I gave myself a deadline of finishing up a rough draft by January and as I'm working on this novel, hammering out the rough outline of a story that I think others would want to read, I'm realizing that both my deadline and general plan are starting to look a bit unrealistic. When this idea first came to me, it seemed an obvious path forward: document my journey getting healthy, write the story, find an agent, sell my book. Now, I've taken a handful of writing workshops, penned the firs...

The other night I had a dream so profound that it shaped my entire path forward.  For the last six weeks, I've spent literally all of my downtime job hunting, soul searching to pinpoint what it was that I wanted to do next, what was important to me, and how I was going to be intentional about making my own happiness a priority. And it was then that inspiration struck as it so often does in the middle of the night: I was going to write a book.  I've entertained this notion dozens of times over the years. The first time I tried to earnestly write a book was about ten years ago, some couple hundred pages still sitting idly on my hard drive. Every now and again, I'll pick up where I left off only to lose sight of my goal with that story, trying to figure out what my main character would be doing now. Maybe that book will never be finished.  But this one might.  The story seemed so clear now, so obvious. They say that you should write what you know and what you like and w...

This is just bullshit Why is the system so rigged Fuck all of this shit It is so easy to feel discouraged. Over the last (nearly) six weeks, I have submitted countless resumes and cover letters, reached out to goodness knows how many employers, had multiple interviews that led nowhere. The constant barrage of job listings, hoops I have to jump through...it's just too much. Recently, I'd had two promising interviews with a real estate company that checked all the boxes: good pay, hours, benefits, location. They'd asked me back for a third and final working interview, one where I'd be paid for my time, and they would be making the final decision to see if I was a good fit for their team. And then they just stopped. I called and emailed multiple times and they gave me absolutely no response whatsoever.  I was fucking ghosted by a company.  In the wake of the #GreatResignation, I find myself increasingly at odds with American work culture,  looking back on my previous work ...