Hey everyone,
Years ago I used to read a blog that was written by an illustrator whose work I adore. This woman was very much like me—ambitious, goal-oriented, and desperate to prove herself. She was everything I was, just a few years ahead, and like me, she loved working for newspapers and magazines, illustrating for The New York Times, The Washington Post, Oprah magazine, and many others.
Then she had a child and slowly, her work started taking a backseat. It’s not that she didn’t have the same goals, it’s that… where the hell was the time and the mental bandwidth and the space? Like me, she moved every two years, and this took up her time, energy, and money. Like me, she started working on more personal projects, doing corporate assignments for better pay. Like me, she prioritized her family and her work suffered. Like mine, her husband had creative dreams of his own and together they made space for them.
Needless to say, all this resonates with me because it is the trajectory of my career for the last few years. I had a successful freelancing career as a journalist but as our expenses grew and my time became more and more limited, I had to find different ways to fulfil my creative and financial needs. Journalism took a backseat.
Until now. My son is now eight years old. From September, if schools reopen, he’ll actually have a longer school day than I do a work day. Even though from the outside it may not look like I’ve done much in the last eight years, I’ve actually built a really solid foundation for myself and my family, one that allows me to go back to taking risks and trying new things, especially with my writing.
So, of course, I’ve been blog-hopping once more, seeking out the people I once looked up to and who have served as inspirations for me and I discovered, much to my delight, that this illustrator I followed many years ago is back to doing what she most loved. She took those five, seven, nine years prioritizing something else in her life but is now back to kicking ass with her editorial work.
I have to admit, finding her blog calmed my nerves.
No one told me that my career and life would change so drastically once I had a family. Of course I’m beyond grateful for a husband I adore and a child I couldn’t love more if I tried, for a personal life that gives me perspective, for a family that holds me up when I’m falling down, but let’s not lie about it either—there has been sacrifice on the professional side involved, both for Sam and for me. Money did become a priority. Turning down assignments so that I wouldn’t have to be away from my baby was the right thing to do (for me). Still, Sam has turned down high-paying jobs in other countries and this has set him back. I have been offered ghostwriting projects that became New York Times bestsellers and walked away from story ideas that were groundbreaking once published. I cannot honestly tell you that I do not rethink these decisions, that I do not wonder if it would have been easier had we stayed in India, that I’ve left too much of a gap in my portfolio to be able to make up those years.
And yet, I know, even as I think these thoughts, that this is foolishness. Eight years means nothing in a long-term career. It is less than a decade of life and I can pick up where I left off. That I have written two novels, eight nonfiction books, and built a successful business in the last five years, a business that has helped hundreds of writers amass thousands of bylines and make a living with their own work. That even if I temporarily halted my career as a journalist, I have built up skills and abilities that serve me now that I’ve returned. That changing my focus allowed me to move to a city that I love, send my kid to a school we all adore, and create passive income that allows me to take risks with my art and my journalism that weren’t possible for me before.
This is the conversation of a creative mind, of course, which is why I share it. I know that many of you reading this are not strangers to these thoughts, no matter your gender, your marital status or the number of children you have or don’t. We make decisions and we question them.
It is the anxiety of choice, of compromise, of decision-making.
If I had to go back in time, I probably wouldn’t have done anything differently. Though, knowing what I do now, maybe I might have done it more confidently, with less self loathing, with more enjoyment.
I am picking up where I left off, just like that illustrator I so love. She’s right back on that horse, letting her ambition carry her forward and if you met her today, for the first time, you wouldn’t know or care that she’d taken a break, that for a little while in the middle, she’d stopped doing this.
I’m the same. And so are you.
You may be faced with years of having to stop the work that you were speeding ahead with because you’ve given birth, because you have a child or children with special needs, because you’re grieving, because of illness or disability, because of mental health, because you’re taking care of a sick relative, because you’re recovering from a life-threatening illness, because you had to go make money to provide for your family, because you lost your home, because your business went bankrupt, because you took time off to travel, because you lost the passion… whatever.
It doesn’t matter that you left.
Because here’s the thing about the writing life: You can always come back.
You can pick up where you left off.
No one else will care or even notice.
The game is here, right where you left it. All you have to do is play.
My little reminder to you, if you needed it today.
Cheers,
Natasha