My career has not gone well. Whenever I seem to get some sort of traction under me, I’m always caught in the “we can make this department more effective by cutting hours, freezing pay, and expecting more” mantra of new managers. Three jobs later and I don’t have any sense of accomplishment anymore. My escape is writing.

I posted a couple of stories here eight years ago and thought back then that I was just wasting people's time. Looking back at them, I can say for certain that they were awful, and I definitely was. I’m so sorry for anyone who read them. However, a bunch of personal stories later, I got to a point that I felt like I wasn’t posting junk. Probably still was and it was terrifying, but as hard as it was, I felt more for them than anything I had done to further my career.

What made me get serious? I survived the first round of making my department more effective in my current job only to get hit by the second round last summer. The difference this time is I had paid off my student loans. I hate my job. It stopped being a career back then. So if that’s just a job without any path forward, why not do something I like? Now I wake up early and write or try and write on my days off instead of voluntarily doing stuff for work. I think I’m up to about eighty stories, two of which I turned into serials for a bit. They aren’t all that great, but they are mine, and no one other than my husband knows about them in real life. It has made my sense of pride entirely my own.

Round three of nonsense just happened at work and I burnt out hard because of it. I’m definitely recovering faster this time and I’ll probably start posting again some time in the next week or two.

As always, thank you to the community and the mods for making this space so inviting. I have something to look forward to because of it.