It seems to me as if this year has flown by and I suppose in many ways it has. 2014 has seen some pretty significant changes in my life with moving out into my own place, getting a promotion at work and being placed on a career progression program. All of that has meant that I’ve had little or no time to even begin contemplating where the year has gone. I barely have enough time to breathe, let alone anything else. I haven’t even begun covering the fact that I have also been trying to maintain a blog and my writing aspirations and when you add those into the mix…well, it’s a recipe for a very hectic lifestyle!
Don’t get me wrong, I love living in my own place and enjoy the challenges that more responsibility at work brings, it’s just that after a while it becomes quite draining, both physically and mentally. I’ve gone from working a shift pattern (which saw me work evenings, weekends and nights, as well as day shifts) to a more regular 9-5 position which is based primarily in an office. How can it be that having more regular hours actually leaves me with less time than I had before?
One of the biggest reasons is that my commute to work got MUCH longer when I took the promotion. It’s a 100 mile round trip for me each day, which may not sound all that much to my American readers, but England is a relatively small country in comparison. If I’m lucky I’ll spend no more than three hours in my car for the commute, but on a bad day that number can easily be doubled. That means that I get up early each morning, leave at the crack of dawn to get to the office on time and then battle the rush hour traffic on the way home. That’s not even taking into account the times when the urgency and importance of the work we do dictates that I have to stay late into the evenings (we support vulnerable adults and so sometimes we HAVE to stay late.)
By the time I get home in the evenings, I have just about enough time to eat some dinner, perhaps answer an email or two, then read for a short while before getting my head down for the night and starting the whole process over again the next day. I’ve gone from writing every day to squeezing it in on the weekends when I can grab a spare couple of hours, and on top of that I also need to run all the errands that I didn’t get a chance to do during the working week. Living on your own means that you have to do all your own grocery shopping, washing, hoovering, ironing etc. and I don’t think I really appreciated just how much my mother did for me when I lived at home.
Not only that, I also need to squeeze in time to meet up and spend time with family during the weekends. My Saturdays and Sundays end up being just as hectic, if not more so, than my working week! I try my best to get at least two posts published on my blog per week, but sometimes this is not always possible. What I don’t want to do is fall into the pattern of publishing a post just for the sake of keeping my ‘numbers’ up. There are times when I have great spurts of energy and creativity and others when I just can’t be bothered, quite frankly.
I’ve gone from being someone who writes every day to someone who writes primarily on the weekends, and at first that made me worry that perhaps I wasn’t fully committed to being a writer. I’ve come to realize that attempting to create an output similar to what I had been producing earlier this year is unreasonable. Writing when exhausted probably won’t make me a better writer and if anything, it’ll probably make me even less inclined to write even when I do have the spare time.
Silly or not, I firmly believe that things will happen for you if they are truly meant to be. I know there is a school of thought that says that you must go out and really fight for what you want. I tend to think that opportunities will arise when they are meant to and when the time is right for you to pursue them. Until my circumstances change or unless I win big on the lottery, I am content to be a part-time writer, but one with their eyes firmly set on one day making my hobby a full-time career.
Trials of a wanna-be-published writer 
Boy, this is the story of my life!
Here’s a helpful tip: GIVE UP SLEEPING! 😄
Actually, as both know, that really isn’t a helpful tip, but I sometimes wish I didn’t require sleep – and too often have a deficit. Too often I say to myself, ‘I will just get one more thing done and then I will turn off the light and go to sleep.’ I am trying to break that habit because it isn’t a good one.
Commuting, work schedules, home chores and family responsibilities and activities really dig into the available hours in a day. It is a crazy and sometimes demoralizing juggle. I am always amazed at all the things you manage to get done – and still Skype with me! 💜
In the end, all things do come together – somehow! xx
As much as I would like to give up sleeping, I think it’s the one thing that is actually keeping me functioning lately! 🙂
My days are so long and tiring that I just don’t have the energy to do much in the way of writing Monday to Friday, which means most of my weekends are spent trying to catch up with lost writing time as well as visiting with family and getting all of my chores done.
I’ve started to write myself lists of things that need doing each day and I’m not sure if it’s helping or making the situation worse. The more I look at the list and see all the jobs I still have to get done, the more stressed it makes me feel! 🙂
Do you have a scheduler. Maybe that will help, especially since you’re new to being in your own place with all the chores that go with it. That commute is a killer. Do you have to drive or do you use public transportation?
I drive to work and sometimes the driving can be more draining than my job is. I am in London twice next week which will mean another 2 hours of commuting on public transport each way on each day, which is tiring in itself.
I have started writing lists of tasks that I need to accomplish at the weekends but I think that is adding to the pressure I already feel under. I think I just need three or four days of nothing but sleeping to help me get my head straight 🙂
Try not to make the schedules so tight, at least at the beginning. Try with the BIG things first for a couple of weeks and see how that goes, and then add a few slowly along the way.–always a task or two you can manage, 😮
Thanks for the excellent advice! 🙂
Oh my, that is a long commute to work. I would go nuts. You spend three hours a day in the car? Wow. I love what Kate said: “Give up sleep”. I just wish there were maybe another 8 hours in a day. If only we didn’t need sleep eh.
🙂
Yep, I spend three hours in my car each day, and that’s on a GOOD day. If I hit traffic I can sometimes double the length of my commute on any given day.
I think sleep is the only thing keeping me sane at the moment and I sure ain’t getting a whole lot of that at the moment…. 🙂
Wow! I think I would go nuts. Sometimes double that? Oh my.
🙂
Yep. 🙂
Am writing this response on train at London Waterloo after spending almost an hour battling delays and diversions on the London Underground. This is approximately the tenth time I’ve been to London in the last six months or so. Ah, the perks of promotion eh? 🙂
Oh wow. Hat’s off to you girl. As for me, I can’t tolerate much stress at all. Seriously. I go nuts.
🙂
I almost cried when I got home yesterday, such was the relief! 🙂
Ohhhhhh. Well, it’s the weekend now. Kick back, sleep in, have a glass of wine, relax. At least you’ve already got your Christmas shopping done, right?
🙂 ❤
Yep, that’s true!
In fact, I am so organised that my mother has asked me to help wrap some of her presents too! 🙂
Hahahaha. At least you can do it without stress.
🙂