Sword(s) of Damocles

I've got two swords, both pointing down and taking me with them

Hey y’all, it’s KimBoo! I’m an author and a podcaster who is also a librarian, text technology historian, and former I.T. project manager. I write about a lot of interesting things, I hope you agree! Please consider supporting me (and my dog!) so I can keep throwing errata & etcetera into the Scriptorium!

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It’s time for your feed to get swamped with “2024 Writing Plan!” posts, which this post is absolutely not.

I’m not crowing about my big plans for the upcoming year because I’ve been misfiring on my “big plans” for several years now. You might call it being gun shy, and you would not be wrong.

But that doesn’t mean I don’t have some decisions to make about the year ahead. In fact, one major decision…one major commitment. One that I keep not-really-committing to and side-stepping out of fear.

Recently, my friend Lydia, who gives amazingly insightful tarot readings, pulled the two of swords inverted during one of our sessions. We talked about it and she proposed that it represents “two bad choices.”

Did that mean that either choice I make will be a bad one? No. She explained that in the context of the other cards she pulled, it suggested that the choice I have to make would result in sacrifices either way, but not making a choice at all would worse…or, more accurately, more of the same regrets and disappointment as I live with now. Both options have aspects that pull at me and keep me holding them tight in my hands, pointed toward the ground as I free-fall, unwilling to let either option go even though I must in order to save myself.

ooopsie doodle i’m fallllllllling

I thought I had already made that choice when I first quit my job in higher education in early 2022. I did so under mental health duress, believing that working for myself would improve my overall well being. The university position was not a job I had ever really wanted in the first place, and took it out of desperation in 2014. It was good enough for a while, but after a number of disappointing departmental shake ups and then the pandemic lock down, by 2021 I was facing a mental health crisis. My superiors did not give a damn. No surprise there! But the result was that I felt backed into a corner, or more accurately, backed up to the edge of a cliff.

To save my life, I had to walk away.

Fortunately, I had about a 18 months worth of living expenses between my savings and my retirement accounts, which was not ideal but all I had. I also had a couple of business ideas, one I had already launched in 2018, and hoped that if managed to succeed as a “digital entrepreneur,” then I could lean on passive income to finally, finally focus on my writing career.

I just needed one of those business ideas to click.

Nothing clicked.

A year of hard work later, I realized I was in a difficult position. I had not-quite-a-year of savings left, and time was running out to spin up an income. I started exploring subscription models for authors, and that eventually changed my focus again…well, shifted it a little. I decided I should make my fiction writing career my full time priority in 2023…but as a “backup” I still planned to do creativity and productivity coaching full time too. Because after all, that was how I was going to make all the monies, right??!?!??!

So…

Did I actually make my fiction writing my priority in 2023?

No, I did not.

There is a conglomerate of reasons why the year went down the way it did, but among the standouts is “living in survival mode.”

I keep telling myself that I have to focus on “ways to make money” first, before the writing. Even when I theoretically committed to the writing, I still spent most of my time on the (thus far unsuccessful) businesses. Because money, amirite?!?!??!

This is not a new situation, though. Everything I’ve done for the past twenty years, including graduate school, has always been qualified with the phrase “then I’ll make enough money so that I can focus on my writing!” But that has never, not once, worked out for me.

Nonetheless, I have tried over and over and over again. Quitting my “day job” in order to create my own version of a “day job” was not the step forward I imagined it would be. Turned out that it was no different from how I previously made myself miserable in a variety of jobs that never get me to where I wanted to be…because where I want to be is a full-time storyteller.

I can’t not want that. That ambition dogs my steps and the harder I work to survive and make some money so that one day (someday) I can return to being a writer the worse my life gets. Every. Single. Time.

I don’t want to be a full time ___________; I want to be a full-time storyteller.

Which brings us back around to the two of swords inverted, and the choice I have to make, because I can only wield one sword at a time. Carrying two leads to self-destruction because I cannot successfully use either.

I am only able to commit to one full-time ambition at a time.

The choice is that I can be a full time _____________ (and keep writing as a hobby, maybe, if my mental health holds together), or I can be a full-time storyteller.

I can’t do both.

If I could, I would have succeeded at it by now. I think that’s pretty clear by this point.

But am I ready to give up on my writing career? Can I just work at a non-writing job and feel fulfilled? No. That’s also pretty clear by this point.

Time to choose a sword, and I as terrifying as it is, the one I need to learn to wield better is the one I’ve always dreamed of mastering.

I need to drop the “smart business goals” I have endlessly, fruitlessly pursued for years. That sword that is a heavy, dull blade which has damaged me as I swung it around, making no progress through the wilderness no matter how hard I hacked at the obstacles in front of me.

Whatever my plans for 2024 become, my fiction writing must be my priority. It means trusting in my writing and my creativity to be the sharpest sword, the one that leads me to victory.

We’ll see how well it cuts.

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