As of this month, we’re back to being a two-income household and while it’s too late for all my grey hair to turn black again, I am honestly so relieved that we’re no longer exclusively dependent on a freelance income to pay our bills that I could sing.
The last few weeks and months, however, have had me thinking of all the plans and schedules we make for ourselves and how, almost always, life happens and they get thrown by the wayside.
I’m currently writing this editorial from our lovely new home in London, in an office that overlooks the garden. My husband, Sam, has moved here and my two-year-old and I will be traveling around Europe for the next six months until we can get my residency requirements met and sorted out. After living and working around the world for over a decade and vowing never to move back to the UK, my husband happily packed his bags and moved to a house that is less than a five-minute drive from the hospital where he was born. After vowing that we were done with journalism and just couldn’t stand the industry any more, Sam was more than thrilled to accept a dream job in journalism and move countries for it.
I found, too, that while I don’t want to be focusing exclusively on journalism and want to diversify a bit more, I wouldn’t be happy unless I had some sort of journalism work in my life.
The writing life is full of surprises, some of them good, and some of them upsetting. You plan for one thing and a completely different thing happens. These are not necessarily bad things—some of them are fantastic—but you can’t always plan for them or anticipate their happening. This requires you to push yourself, to be flexible, to know when it’s worth giving in and when it’s time to try harder.
I planned to make six-figures this year because I knew that I was at a level in my career where I could. But I hadn’t factored in a big move, of course. I hadn’t factored in that I’d become a full-time parent for over a month, that we’d shut down our business, or that settling in to a new community, making new friends, and getting my child and my animals happily settled in would take priority over writing one more chapter. I didn’t know that after spending a small fortune bringing my cat and dog over from India, the cat would settle in happily and then go out exploring only to not return and that I would spend the first week of my life in London posting up fliers in the park, visiting vets and rescue centers, and walking through the empty streets at night calling out the little idiot’s name.
I could be disappointed that my goals have changed completely midway through the year but I’ve also been doing this long enough to know that this happens pretty much every year. I could be disappointed by the change in plans (and let’s be honest, sometimes I am), but I could also choose to see the new opportunity in changed circumstances.
I’m thrilled to be in London—I spent a part of my childhood here and it’s where I first became a writer—and I can’t wait to explore the new opportunities that it promises to bring. I have time again to focus on personal projects without worrying about whether they’ll pay off. I have the freedom once more to take risks without worrying, every time, whether it will mean a missed household bill or payment. My six-figure goal seems unlikely to be met this year but suddenly, it’s more likely that I’ll finish my novel, write and self-publish that e-book, and finally get around to making my niche site a success.
My writing life has changed midway through the year and it’s likely that yours has, too, though perhaps not quite as dramatically. The trick to keep your sanity as you continue to push towards your goals is to keep reevaluating what you’re doing, what it means for your life, and whether you’re still happy with the goals you set for yourself and continue to want to achieve them.
Don’t give up, keep on pushing, and make small strides every day towards your goals, be they old or new. You may end up achieving different things than you had anticipated at the beginning of the year, but it’ll be an achievement nonetheless.
Have your goals changed as you’ve progressed through 2014? Are you doing anything about it?