Often what is most encouraged in the unemployed is to volunteer, and other than the writing group hosting I am committed to another set of learners, a tutoring organization in the Mission called 826 Valencia. I've written of them before.
Skip ahead to a fund-raising event for them last Friday called "826 Day Write-A-Thon." I had three sponsors and two cheerleaders who told me I had the chops and the talent to finish this, and finish it strong. And that I did. I sat down and hashed out two pages for the Healer, five pages for a fellow blogger, and ongoing support for a fellow writer. I wrote a couple of pages for me, a love letter in the name of my mother, and walked around the Mission, finding another branch of the library for the first time, delivering sponsorships to my kids, and then having dinner with friends that night to cap things off.
I went through the day feeling that I deserve to live.
This is the recurring theme: I'm single, childless, and unemployed. When I complete a calling and present it to the needed party, I feel as though there is a point to my existence. But dammit, I have to keep looking outside myself to find it.
The volunteering is a great way to do that. I'm not saying everyone should be a volunteer. But I'm saying that if you feeling like hanging it all up, there's always giving to those who won't expect any more from you than you can give and are grateful for what they can get.
And that goes for my writing groups as well. I finally have a balance there. I'm in Carlsbad right now writing this because I have a supportive family and because there's a network of writers who understand that Wonder Woman overcommitted and needs to share. So someone is subbing for me this week, someone is MY back-up, which is something always new and strange to me from my assistant manager experience. When I return next week I will have a reduced meeting schedule--and as of October I will have an even greater reduced one. That means more time to find a job that contributes to my existence and to sit down and finally do what is ultimately scaring me but won't leave me alone: write a novel. I want to have the rough draft completed by opening day for the Giants, 2012.
See, it's a baseball novel...
More details to come.
Meantime...
Big thanks to my support system, wherever it can be found. Here's to you.
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