Photo by Smaragdin

I've been thinking a lot about my creative path to success and realized I'm not exactly where I intended to be.

In a counseling session many moons ago I was instructed to create a life map. It could be any medium, so I literally drew a map with winding roads and I put a car at the beginning of the road and its first stop was college. I wanted to finish college with a bachelor's degree, maybe a masters or MFA if I was feeling particularly ambitious. The next stop was a job I would enjoy and a job that would further my career in the publishing world. I drew two options for places I would find this job. Palm trees for California. Skyscrapers for New York. I was not going to stay in Texas past my college graduation. That was just out of the question.

I can't remember where the winding road led. I think it trailed off the paper to happily ever after.

But here's the thing. A) I fell in love at age 20. That certainly wasn't on the life map. Up until that point I thought boys hated me. I thought I'd be single forever. No man to tie me down. Fortunately, it did happen. There were some bumps along the way (some very bumpy bumps), but here we are almost 5 years later.

B) I finished college and took a job at a local magazine, but I hated it! It probably didn't help that I was working for a magazine whose theme didn't interest me in the least bit, but I am grateful for the experience.

C) Bills, bills, bills, and all the extra stuff life throws at you that costs mucho dinero. I quit my job at the magazine to be with my boyfriend in "small town" Florida. Lack of jobs, for sure. I had to get something before my savings ran out. I didn't have time to think about whether or not this or that job would further my writing career. When you have to pay the bills and there aren't a lot of job options, you take what you can get! Of course my family and boyfriend helped me and I did get a rather interesting job at a funeral home, so again, I'm grateful.

D) Must go where the money is. It's true that my boyfriend chose a lucrative career in the computer world and he'll probably always make more money than me. That's why we moved to Tennessee. I didn't have to follow him. I could've decided to go at it single and move to New York and live in a box and maybe get a job as an editorial assistant, but I didn't. There's love again.

So...I didn't go completely off the life path. I graduated college, got a job in publishing, and moved out of state, but things didn't go exactly as planned. Do they ever?

I'm not unhappy and I don't regret anything. I'm grateful for all the experiences, but I have been thinking...and it's always the same thing. When will I be able to do something I half care about? If I had it my way, I'd stay home and write. Not worry about a full-time job, but that's not possible at this time. I have bills. My boyfriend has bills. There's money, but not enough to go around.

And it's not that I dread going to work everyday. My job is all right. But I don't care about any part of it and I hate that feeling. I know I won't put my all into anything I do because my heart isn't in it. And it doesn't seem like there are a lot of options for me in this neck of the woods.

The good thing is I can go home, leave work at work, and continue working on the things I do love and care about. I can be a writer wherever I am in life.