I Stopped Writing Because I Want to Make Money
10 months ago I declared to the world (okay, my 800 Facebook friends), that I want to be a writer. I was intent on being intentional about writing too. With my still new-found freedom of not working full-time, I even dedicated Mondays as my writing day. There was nothing preventing me from writing what I wanted and for the most part, when I wanted.
I started writing on Medium, trying to publish something once a week, maybe bi-weekly. For a while, I was going back and forth about what to write about. Leadership and slowing down seemed to be the two topics that emerged the most frequently. Then, before the end of 2021, I began to embark on a writing project about a topic very close to my heart. I decided that I wanted to write a book.
My attention moved away from Medium to research, writing a book outline, and actually beginning to write book chapters. I’m not ready to share what it’s about, by the way. That’ll be a post all of its own, I’m sure.
Then something changed. While my commitment to writing was dulling, the amount of time I spent involved in paid work began to increase. When I left my full-time job as a nonprofit executive director in May 2021, I started doing some independent consulting work. When I say some, I mean that I was striving to work for pay 10 hours a week.