My hubs said something really interesting to me the other day. He said that running a business or pursuing a passion - such as writing books - takes an extraordinary amount of effort. Way more effort and grit than raising a real human baby.
Now, keep in mind we are currently still child free so this sentiment should be taken with a grain of salt. I guess in time we will find out if this is actually true. In the interim his logic is sound. It went something like this:
Once you give birth to a baby, the baby is here. Like it exists and it demands attention and it has really clear requirements. In a way it’s not an “effort” to keep it alive because it is a physical tangible existence that is in this world.
A business, a dream, a passion, a pursuit - on the other hand - is not the same. That is, it is often times ethereal but more importantly it’s existence is so fragile. This is especially so when you are in the beginning stages of setting it up. If you let up even for an instant, all that effort just vaporizes.
The thing is, the beginning stages of setting up your business or chasing your dreams can stretch on for decades. It can stretch on forever really. Because, when is it that one can say they’ve “made it”? This is like when the monk says to the billionaire: you may have everything but I have something you won’t ever have. I have enough.
Watching my hubs pour his energy into his business makes me feel this on a really deep level because it is the same as me trying to make something happen with my books. It is a bottomless black hole. An endless energy suck. A pit that you will never finish digging. A church that you will never stop building (see Sagrada Familia.. haha).
A human child grows up and eventually goes out into the world. I guess the work there is never done either but really at some point you say to yourself - well it has a life of it’s own now.
If you’re lucky, your part or passion or business will grow and mature and take a form of it’s own outside of you. But that may also never happen - or at least take literally forever.
I started my writing journey in earnest in 2013 when I left my corporate law job. It’s now 2022 and I still feel like I am at the very beginning. Every day it’s a fight to keep at it. The boulder just refuses to budge and I am Sisyphus.
Contracts is up on Amazon Kindle but the listing is a bit messed up. I am going to make it my goal to wrap up the picture books listings for Bankruptcy and Contracts this month so I can move on to finishing Torts in May (currently awaiting comments). Then hopefully June and July will be publishing Torts and finish writing Tax. I just have to keep on pushing, if it’s the last thing I do!!!!