Day 92 - "Stuck in the Middle With You"

I feel like I'm stuck.

An example of my day: get up before the buttcrack of dawn, go to work. Work my butt off for decent pay given the job, but deal with more crap than I'm getting paid for. Go home. Write what's left of my butt off. Crash on the couch until I'm told that I might sleep better in my own bed.

Lather. Rinse. Repeat.

On the weekends, I basically write. Write, write, write, type, type, type. I feel like I'm getting nowhere with this, too. It's not the money; I never expected to make much money from writing right out of college. Heck, even some of the most famous writers in history were broke for most of their lives. Their works helped their children and grandchildren financially, while the writers themselves lived in their time's version of a cardboard box.

I don't know why I'm feeling like this. I've always loved to write. I have composition book upon composition book upon flashdrive of all of my writings dating back to the fourth grade. That's when I was old enough to realize that I should start writing my stories down. That, and I think I read something about an author who had saved everything she had ever written, and I decided to do that too in case I became famous someday and my early writings would become priceless artifacts.

Who was I kidding? Well, no one yet, because I was only nine or ten at the time. I had no understanding of what it took to dedicate your life to the arts.

But at the same time, I love what I do. I love seeing my words realize themselves in front of someone's eyes, putting a world in various lenses and seeing what comes of it. I love the rush, the release, of what comes out of my pen and out of my fingers. It's amazing, because I don't remember when I figured out that I had this talent. I just started doing it one day.

And then I wrote a story about Santa Claus going on vacation with his last name spelled like the part of a sentence. Then, in sixth grade, I set the record for the dictation portion of the state's gifted and talented exam. Then, I decided to write one short story after another, until those turned into novellas, then novels, then the memoir that was my college creative writing thesis.

Maybe it's that I've been writing too much for money and not enough for me lately. This 30 articles in 30 days challenge has been killing my creative streak, or whatever streak is trying to wade through search engine optimization and keywords and subheadings. Maybe, after I finish this challenge, I just need to take time to myself to sit down and explore the world in my head. Or finish the fiction novel that's been sitting on my flashdrive since the summer between my sophomore and junior years of college.

I think I just needed to get that out. Is feeling trapped a part of adult life? In some ways, I feel like it is just a part of life in general. Knowing what you want, but having to wait for life to take its course and for just the right moment to occur when everything falls into place.

On the other hand, I think it's just me. I've always been the type that gets bored easily and needs something to keep me occupied. I think I just need a change of scenery, a change of pace, and once I'm done challenging how much paid material I can crank out, hopefully I can change the scene of my flashdrive.

-AA