Lately, I’ve been seeing a lot of posts and memes about being brave. They center around doing what you love and taking stress out of your life. Sometimes they talk about quitting your job or getting rid of negative people. I find them inspirational.
For the last few weeks, I’ve been thinking about what I would do if I was brave. One thing I would absolutely love to do is quit my day job and become a full-time writer. Technically, at my day job, I am a full-time writer, and I enjoy what I do, but I often think about how much faster I would get my books done if I donated all my time to them. I think about how much research I would be able to accomplish. I think about how much more time I would have to promote them. What scares me is that I wouldn’t have the money to do what I really wanted to do.
I keep telling myself that one day I’ll get to that point. One day, I’ll be able to write full time, and it will be the most glorious day ever. I hold on to that dream. Until then, I’ll continue to do what I have to do to make things work for me.
It’s not exactly being brave. It’s not taking that leap of faith and throwing my all into my dreams. I wish I could be like that. I wish I could stand up and walk out of my job, but that would cause me way more stress. I would worry about how I was going to pay the bills and put food on the table. I would worry about making things hard on my kids.
As much as I want to be, I’m not that brave. But I’m a dreamer, and as long as I have those, I’m happy. Like I said, I’m hoping one day my dream will come true, and every day I work to make it a reality. I find ways to promote myself and get out into the world. I send libraries information about the workshops I do, I try to have a presence online and promote my books as best as I can. But having time to do so much more would be awesome.
If you could be brave, what would you do? What shackles would you throw off to live the life you want to live?
