I Don't Have Time to Write Anymore

After a lot of thought and hours of discussion, I decided to take the plunge and open an eBay store. The decision wasn't easy for me because I knew it would require changes and sacrifices. Sacrificing stuff isn't always a hard thing for me, but it's a hard thing for me to impose sacrifice on others, like my family.

For years I've wanted to write, and so I wrote. I wrote children's books, I wrote blogs, I wrote website content, business junk and all manner of social networking posts. I rewrote and rewrote and submitted my little gems to editors. My stack of rejections is my trophy and I grudgingly display said trophy in the third drawer down of the Hon filing cabinet wedged somewhere between Mortgage and Taxes. Although it would seem more fitting wedged between Blood and Sweat/Tears.

Opening an eBay store meant I would have to abandon a silly little dream (I had) of publishing any of my work, because there just aren't enough hours in a day to run an eBay store, work a 3-day week at the Big Insurance Company, parent, grandparent, wife (wife is sometimes a verb -- like parent, btw) and maintain all the other important tasks for which I owned responsibility. In one fell swoop with a wee click of the mouse, life changed. Writing ceased. I thought.

I don't write books, content and articles anymore. Instead, I write listings. Tons of eBay listings including descriptions of all sorts and such. Also, the photography that I love is integral to the store. I snap hundreds of pictures a month, which I very enjoy. Also, I never EVER rewrite, tweek,  rephrase  slash or stash. I never reach for the thesaurus. I'm content enough doing the real writing in my personal journals.

Almost every week, my family and I load up the SUV and  head to auction where I purchase most of my eBay wares. When we return home and unpack the bins, bursting with wonderful treasures, the family is as excited as I am and we ooooh, ahhhhh and ogle over all the unique pieces. We are far more engaged than we were when I was holed up in the office night and day pumping out page after page of would be reject Hon trophy material.

I didn't shed a tear that day when I set my writing aspirations on the shelf above my desk between the Mojolica figurals and the Depression Glass (that I won at auction). I felt far more useful and validated - like my B.A. in  English (which I recently proudly acquired at all manner of great cost) meant something more than a student loan payment every month. eBaying earns me more some weeks than writing did in a year.

On a recent road trip to auction, Hubs mentioned that I might want to hang on to all of the eBay images of sold items to use in conjunction with a book I could write about business and eBay. The lights, albeit still very dim, turned on again . . . just enough to spy the writing resource books. I have yet to blow off the dust.

I guess my whole point here is that life is all about adjustments. As in writing when we tweek sentences and sweat over transitions, we really do the same thing every day in our lives. We have to. Although I wanted my writing to be successful, I didn't know what needed adjusted to make it happen. Perhaps all the tweeking I've done over the years on paper, which mostly resulted in rejection (I know I already mentioned that), gave me the extra tenacity and courage to take bigger risks. Maybe I'll write about business and eBay. For certain, it's not a topic that topped my list of fav genres ten years ago. Though I'd rather publish one of my already finished, tweaked, polished children's books, I might use eBay as a possible window of opportunity because it could land me closer to the "welcome" mat at the Child Editor door.

In the meantime, I have a ton of images to crop and listings to post on eBay. I don't have time to write.