There’s a lot of good reasons to not panic when a job ends – no matter what vocation you work in. Quite often we’re too worried, scared or concerned to remember that, “when one door closes, another door opens”.
But I am here to tell you, it’s absolutely true.
And it’s absolutely true that often it is up to us to make that happen.
Before the job of caring for my 40-year friend Frank was done, I had a great deal of time on my enforced hiatus (7 weeks worth) and enough of a financial buffer to be only mildly concerned that I could get through it relatively unscathed. The security of that feeling bought me the most precious gift you could imagine.
The gift of Calm and Focus.
In fact, the phrase, “Stay Calm and Focused”, is part of a simple, three-phrase mantra that I keep on my desk. Whenever I feel concerned beause something unexpected hits, I look at it until I can feel myself rebalance back into calm, directed sanity once again.
It is so important that I remember this short mantra, that I keep a copy of it in my car so I can look at whenever I am away from the house.
Yes, it is just that important.
It is something relatively new I am trying in my life at this stage in the age game when Corporate America tends to look down on our Baby Boomer demographic, (ages 58-77). Corporations on the whole, have basically used us up and spit us out, convincing us along the way that trading the want of money for our health was actually worthwhile. More often than not many, many of us realize now, way too late, that the fruits of that way of thinking only brought us the opposite. That when you trade your health for wealth, in the end, you always trade your wealth for health!
And let’s face it – 99% of the Earth’s working population has learned that lesson is a game no one wins.
So what that tells us, is when the advice to, “Do what you love and love what you do,” is ignored in this way, no one – and I repeat NO ONE, wins.
Now back to the enforced hiatus I underwent when my friend’s surgery was done and I faced seven weeks downtime from bringing in a steady paycheck. Once the procedure was over and he had survived, I was able to let go of the concern I’d for my client undergoing such a massive surgery. At the time, without the compounded stress of finances, I began to relax in a way I can quite literally say I had not felt since I was a very, very young child who had the financial security of living at home with a hard-working father who had always provided for me.
It is something of a secret no one talks about, not even on the internet, that such a relaxed state that is brought on by financial security (however fleeting or stable it may be) and a happy, well-balanced home and hearth, will open up the floodgates that lead to one’s creativity. And if one knows already what makes them happy and what they love to do, they can’t wait to wake up in the morning and do what they love! Skip the shower, skip getting dressed and even put off eating as long as you can! So for me, because I know I was born to write, I don’t even wait to get out of bed sometimes, reach for the phone or tablet and get to writing!
So what does all this have to do with getting paid for my writing, you may ask? Everything!
The very day of Frank’s surgery, once we had received the text that he had come through it successfully, I turned to my writing, feeling relieved knowing I could trust that intensive care would take care of him.
As the days and then a week or two or more progressed, I had looked over and rewritten three chapters, improving on what have been penned prior to his surgery.
But it wasn’t until I had written two completely new chapters – Rebirth at the end of May and Ascension, Part 3, at the end of June, that it became very obvious that the quality of my writing had taken a quantum leap. I had noticed it, and shared them with my husband, my FanBrant wanna-be-goddaughter and a friend who personally knows literary giants both living and passed-on. All three readers acknowledged my my improvements as well and were quite amazed at how much better I had gotten.
But enough of that, on to the the actual tale of my newly-found paid work!
Once the shock and the funeral for my dear friend and client were past us (he died a mere 3 weeks and 4 days after being released from rehab), when I had moved past mourning his departure and relaxed enough back into my own life (See? There’s that need to be relaxed and not in a state of financial distress again!), I remembered that another good and long-term friend of ours runs an online radio station – scifi.radio. All it took was my enthusiasm over a newly-released movie for me to write up a review and ask he-who-owns said radio station if he was interested in publishing it. To my delight, he was and voila!, it was published. Immediately upon the heels of that assignment, came a Star Trek episode I have been looking forward to for months, ever since news of it was been leaked out onto Facebook. The review of that one too, went on to be published and here I am, settling into this new, potentially steady income and loving it!
So yeah, guess I’m a pro now. It may not be in story-writing, but it’s a start and that’s all I have ever wanted.
Namaste,
)O( Luna Whoticore
