Working Alone
Being your own boss. Working from home. Setting your own schedule. It’s the dream, right? In many ways, absolutely. Who doesn’t want the freedom to stop and clean the house if you need to, or take a long coffee break, or go grocery shopping in the middle of the day? Being in charge offers all kinds of perks. It can also offer many challenges, as I’m discovering.
When I worked at a table full of lively, entertaining people, I felt like I belonged somewhere. I was a part of something bigger than myself. Now, I am the only one occupying a chair in my workspace. It’s quiet, except for occasional canine outbursts. Quiet is good for writing. In fact, it’s one of the requirements.
I spend a couple of hours with my husband when he gets up, which is something I couldn’t do before. He works the night shift, and I’ve always been a day shift person. Now, I actually get to see him through the week instead of having to wait until the weekend. It’s nice. We eat together. I make his lunch. We talk. Then he leaves, and I work from sometime after 4 p.m. until about midnight. It suits me, because nights are silent. The dogs snore a little while I write, but it’s like white noise to me.
The biggest challenge so far is all the alone time. Except for occasional weekend outings, which were very few and far between, work was my social life. My coworkers and I talked about what we dreamed the night before, what we ate for supper, what our weekend plans were. We joked, laughed, pranked, and sometimes even planned to go to dinner together. I wouldn’t trade the situation I now have for anything, but it is startling to go from a group work setting to solitude.
Sometimes I ask myself what I’m doing wrong. Part of me wants to find things to do with humans, a group to join, or maybe a class to take. People are made to interact, after all. I can’t help but crave connection. But the other part of me, the one that usually wins, can only relax in solitude, wants to be at home alone, fears failing in a social situation so much that she talks herself out of joining things.
One of the main things I struggle with now that I’m self-employed is a feeling of uselessness. If I’m not spending every spare second doing something, I panic. You’d be amazed at how little downtime I’ve allowed myself since taking this leap. Of course, I am working on making a career of writing novels, so it makes sense that I’d want to devote all of my resources to that goal. Yet even I know I’ve got to lighten up on me. I’m stressing me out!
At this time, I am waiting impatiently on the company that is putting together my audiobook to go ahead and release it, already! See, I have a problem with waiting. The bigger the thing I’m anticipating, the worse it is. I’m even impatient with myself for not having more than 30,000 words written by now in the novel I’ve been working on since January. I’ve done other things. I’ve spent a lot of time painting. I’ve cleaned house a lot, but with four animals, that has to be done often. But I almost never spend a full eight hours a day on my book. There are too many other things demanding my attention. On a good day, I get in maybe a six-hour session.
I am holding out hope that maybe the audiobook will take off and do wonders for me. Yet I’m also a realist. I know that the author gets a very small percentage of the total sale. I don’t expect to make a living off of one audiobook, but if it could just inject new life into my collection of work and encourage listeners to become readers, that would be worth a lot. I am also hoping that my new book, when I finally finish it (hopefully this spring), will boost interest in my other books.
I feel alone yet loved. I feel the incredible weight of responsibility for my career, yet I also know God is in control. I can’t make readers; I can only hope to create characters interesting enough to attract them. I feel sad at times, yet also incredibly happy to be doing what I love, even at the baseline where I can only see how much I’ve written and not how it is received by others.
I’ve begun to settle it in my heart that maybe this is just where God has me right now. I must need this season of solitude and struggle in order to grow. Perhaps He’s bringing me to a place where I can fully trust in Him instead of in my own abilities, which will always come up short. I’m going to lean into it. Thank you all for reading.