I'll admit that I enjoy writing. I can't wait to get up, sit down and start furiously bashing away at the keyboard. After I've dressed my son, readied him for school and done some housework of course. I'm not THAT lazy. Yet I get up in the morning to write; I feel it, it flows throw my veins like a fire, waiting, feeling to put my thoughts into words. I've came to that point in life where I'm truly doing what I love. People mocked me at the start, "get a proper job" they'd say, and for the most part of my time writing it's been tough, I'll agree.
That's just their insecurity talking though.
People don't focus on their passion because it's damn tough. It's not something where you can start and earn straight away. It takes time to build an empire, and a good amount of money to invest into growing such a thing. It's not a wham, bam, thank you mam situation. That's why people opt for paid, solid work because it's the easy option, the safe go to option, a place where they can work and not worry about money constantly. I've only recently become a risk taker, perhaps since I first started working for myself. I initially realised that I couldn't live in a safe place anymore, I was going to have to take some risks to get ahead in life.
All through my life I've always felt that I was destined for something better, something more than cleaning the plates of fat aristocratic businessmen, or handing over unemployment cheques to people that you just knew would benefit more from a system of support rather than money thrown in their face to keep them quiet. I've always had the feeling that I was meant to sit on top of something and ROAR like a lion, it's an inside feeling I've always had, always destined to have an audience. It's probably why I'm a performer, because that's what I am essentially. I write to an audience. I'll admit I get off on it. I'm finally doing my true calling.
Yet doing this all day, every day, with no boss, no-one to kick me up the arse when I slack, a kid that constantly wants my attention and a wife that needs me to help her around the house is hard. I could easily just jack it in and go back to working for an organisation again. Yet what keeps me every time is that knowing that nothing worth having in this world ever came easy. I highly doubt Bill Gates posted one meme one day and made his fortune. I have my eyes set on a long-term plan. I have a website that I'm slowly building up, a Steemit profile I'm positioning for the long term and a network of friends that I'm slowly gathering. I couldn't imagine myself doing anything else.
It was tough finding that focus though. Only five years ago I had very little focus and was starting jobs and not finishing them constantly. Getting ideas, running away with them in my head and just not finishing them. I was a burden on myself at times and would often be left embarrassed when I'd say I would do something and ultimately, I would end up half completing it, or not completing it all. I wasn't the go to person for focus and drive on what I had been tasked to do.
I realised what it was, finally, in the end. It was because my focus was elsewhere. Whilst everyone else was focusing on their jobs at hand I was thinking about where my next drink was going to come from and if I had enough money to get it. I didn't care what I was doing, I was only working so that I could get alcohol and be in a better state than I was at the time. Being sober and natural means that I had to face myself, put up with myself, be with myself. Alcohol solved that for me and it was all that I thought about or cared about. I worked with a good man a few years back. He didn't realise that I was an ex-alcoholic. He had a wife that was a recovering alcoholic that relapsed, and he was telling me that alcoholics (or let's just say people with substance and gambling addictions) were the most selfish people in the world, they would literally sell their kids to get their next hit. Perhaps his thinking was extreme but the basis is there. I was incredibly selfish, I only cared about my next hit to the point that it was affecting my life. I would have rather bought a bottle of vodka than help one of my friends out.
I worked out though, that through these addictions that I had, I was able to summon an incredible amount of focus. I mean everything in my life was geared around finding my next drink. Since I had become sober I had no focus anymore. It left a time in my life where I spent an entire year watching TV and doing nothing after work; it left a gaping hole that was once filled with drive and enthusiasm to get my next hit, and now, there was nothing. I can understand why addicts go back easily; it's why I say you need to fill up that hole really quick with something to do. It's why I finally found some hobbies. Photography and art. I love photography but have neglected it this year, perhaps next when we're far more settled. I filled my gaping hole with a love for all things arty, and thus I shifted focus, I began to find a drive again.
This is how I took to writing. It's always been the case for me; when I was drunk in the bar I'd always get up and make a scene in some form, I was always destined for an audience. Writing is how I achieved it. I was always incredibly focused, I just had to be shown how to switch that focus from something harmful into something positive.
That is how you see two really good pieces from me per day.
I am incredibly focused, and I expect you are too! :)
Thanks for reading! :)