My New "Job"

Here I sit on a cold rainy Monday afternoon, wrapped in a soft cotton blanket in the safe, comfortable familiarity of my own house and I am, for all intents and purposes, at work. In a modest-sized room in the back of my rented single-level farm house that I've turned into my office and sanctuary, I sit at my laptop, working. This is my "job" now. Some may argue that until some power-that-be is cutting me a check for the time I put into my work, I do not have myself a job- merely a hobby. Fair enough. Some days I whole-heartedly agree with those people. Then there are days that I would argue that point.

I am drawn out of bed every morning by that intangible "boss" that exists somewhere in my brain, even on the frequent mornings that I would rather sleep in, because, hey, I don't have a job to get to. That voice shakes me awake and pushes my warm feet out from under the fluffy down comforter onto the cold hard floor. I stumble into the even colder kitchen and fumble my way through the mandatory coffee making process. After eating breakfast and nursing a cup of fresh coffee, letting it begin to warm my sleepy body and shake the cobwebs out of the rest of my brain that's trying to convince me to pull a throw blanket over myself and turn on the TV, my "boss" makes me head for the office. It's about eight steps from my couch, which at least makes the commute easier. And there's my computer; my appendage for the foreseeable future.

Some mornings it eagerly awaits me and my prolific brain. We work well together; my little laptop and I. My fingers click effortlessly across the keys and I see the words, sentences, paragraphs begin to accumulate and it sends this incredible wave of satisfaction through every fragment of my being. I lose all awareness of time and sometimes space; every thought aside from the subject I'm writing about or the story I'm telling floats out of my mind and into the atmosphere around me, waiting patiently to be collected later. Eventually I'm rattled from my trance by a phone call, my husband getting home from work, or the feeling that I'm about to faint atop my keyboard because I haven't eaten in six hours. I like these days.

Then there are days my little laptop is my mortal enemy. It taunts me with a blank screen. There are no words and the computer knows it. I will stare...and stare...and stare, yet nothing appears on the screen. This is when I begin to wish I could throw my sweet little laptop out the f'ing window and forget all this "inherent calling to be a writer" bullshit and go and get a "real job". But the truth is I don't have a choice. I have come to the inescapable realization that I can't not do this (please excuse the double negative; I never claimed to be a technical writer, OK?). This is who I am- sometimes it's liberating and sometimes I truly wish I had never figured it out.

Either way it goes, this sure feels like a job to me. Maybe one day the powers-that-be will like what they see and compensate me for my hard work- maybe not. But for now I answer that "boss" every morning that draws me to this place where I sit, doing something I love for no money.