The Why

The past four weeks at work have been long and hard. The Christmas season has hardly begun in my mind because I've spent eleven to twelve hours a day at my day job. It leaves precious little time for anything else when I've got Kempo and writing groups going on. Not to mention the seasonal choir and orchestra concerts as well as all of the other great things that come along in December.

But that's not my point.

My point is that the project I had on my desk at work today was supposed to be the last difficult thing for me to finish up before the end of the year. The last “sorry it's late into your department, but please rush it out as soon as you can get it finished . . . and we needed it yesterday.”

Yeah, yeah. Sure, sure. Okay. I'm on it.

After four weeks of this, I guess my little heart was pretty set on this being the last one. No more. Easy, catch up stuff for the next week and a half. Yay!

I didn't realize how much it meant to me until the shop manager slapped another project on my desk just before I finished up the “last” one.

Well, let me point out that this newer project is actually an old one that got messed up out in the shop at the time it was built. The powers that be have spent weeks trying to fix the initial problem, which was caused by someone who didn't understand that grinding metal out of small crevasses is not effective.

So not only is it yet another difficult project for me to complete (six to eight hours, which is a long time when they need it five minutes ago) but I've done it once already!!! I absolutely abhor doing things twice. It just about kills me when it's my fault, but when someone else messes it up I have to breathe and count to ten. And when the powers that messed it up in the first place decide they want to change the whole thing, pretty much negating the eight hours I already put into it, I get downright grumpy.

And today grumpy doesn't even come close to describing my mood.

As I sat at my desk, finishing up the now next to last project, and fuming (there might have been smoke) my mind snapped.

No, not that snap. The snap that told me that I'd give just about anything to be at home writing. My current project is, if nothing else, amusing. It makes me laugh, and I love it. I love writing. It makes me happy in a way that drawing lights never can.

Yes, when I'm well into the third draft of a novel I might have a pity party or two, but the drive is there to fix it. My drive to draw lights isn't nearly as intense as it used to be. I won't call it nonexistent, because I do enjoy figuring out how things are going to work, but the level has diminished. More than I can say. And my desire to write has skyrocketed. Even though the last year has been a pretty steep learning curve, and even though my query attempts have been (thus far) in vain, it doesn't matter. I like it. I love writing. I just hope that someday it will pay off in more than just the making me feel better way.