 |
| Image credit: Photo by jamesjordan on Flickr |
When my son was born, the decision to quit my job was an easy one. I imagine I would still have left a job I loved very much in order to be there for that vulnerable little baby, who seemed to be telling me so desperately that he needed me, but the fact that I wasn't passionate about my career made things all the easier. In fact, I've never held a job that I wouldn't quit the instant my winning lottery number flashed on screen. I've had jobs I liked: jobs where I worked with interesting people, completed projects I was proud of, used some of my creativity and helped others a bit. But in the end, I've done them all for money, and when they stopped being worth the money, I left.
The thing was, I did have something I was passionate about: the kind of writing I do here. But the chances that I could make a living at it were so slim, that I didn't even bother. My husband and I, my brother and his wife, we all grew up in families with parents who dreamed big of being artists, musicians, TV stars. And we all saw that led to a life of run-ins with the IRS, no electricity, no health insurance and a feast-or-famine life of odd jobs. Be a writer? Write the kinds of things I wanted? Nuh uh. No way. I was taking the safe path: the one with benefits and a regular salary and a cubicle with a picture of my well fed, well insured, well cared for family on the desk.
It's closing in on eight years now since I left my last full time job. And in taking up blogging I've finally gotten a taste of my dream job: the one where I get to write what I want to write, where I can connect with and help other people, where I can think and inspire others to think, where I learn and grow as a person, where I spend plenty of time with my family, where I'm my boss so I only have to do what pleases me, where my office isn't a cubicle but my laptop and the world. This is the job I'd keep doing even if that winning lottery number did flash on the screen.
And my AdSense ads -- those ads that paid me pennies an hour for my writing -- they showed me that I could actually get paid to do what I love. They gave me hope. But when Google pulled my ads a few weeks ago, I found that those ads gave me more than a dollar here and there, more even than hope I could do more one day: they gave me a justification for pouring my time into this room of mine.
You see, we stay-at-home mamas, and especially we mamas of special needs kids, often feel guilty for taking time for ourselves. It feels selfish. In spite of the fact that I'm on call 24/7 and working nearly all the time, I feel guilty doing this for fun, doing it for me. When the kids are at school or asleep shouldn't I still be working? When the kids are (as they are now) playing sweetly together, shouldn't I still be working? Shouldn't I spend every last waking moment, every ounce of available energy, scrubbing the bathtub or planning fun educational events for them or badgering the school district for services or making tonight's nutritious dinner? Am I really allowed to do this? Write, just write, just because I enjoy it? And do that at the expense of that time I should be spending somewhere else? (The laundry is not folding itself as I type right now, people.)
That was the beauty of the ad revenue. It didn't matter that the ad money I made in a month of daily posts wouldn't pay for a tank of gas (especially not at these prices), forget making a dent in paying for the mortgage or groceries. What mattered was that I was bringing in something. That money said "I'm not 'just' a stay-at-home mama. I'm not Mr. Manager's wife. I'm a writer. And my writing makes a contribution to this world. My writing has value to people." I could grab my laptop and instead of saying "I'm going to go goof off now," I could say, "I'm going to go get some work done."
This blog, my friends (and you all know it) is a labor of love. (After all, the ads are gone, people, and I'm still cranking out the good stuff for the denizens of the Internet free of charge.) But somewhere along the line, I learned that labors of love aren't "real" work. They're hobbies. They're fun. They're frivolous. They're selfish. And as a good, responsible mama, I'm not allowed to do that. Or (with a mischievous smile) am I?
28 comments: