Living the Dream: Take a Moment to Appreciate How Far You’ve Come

A few days ago I realized that I am literally living my dream.

I had a really rough week where I wasn’t finding any gigs to even apply for, my Fiverr account got permanently disabled (don’t ask), I had my first day without any page reads on Amazon, and the substitute teaching jobs were all getting snatched up within literal seconds.

I started thinking that maybe I wasn’t good enough to freelance. It was too uncertain. If I wanted to reach my goals I was going to need to suck it up and get a “real” job again.

But just a few days later, I had a bunch of sales on my stories, multiple substituting shifts, and two more beta-reading gigs. I’m doing just fine.

And what’s more– I’m living the kind of life I’ve admired for years.

How many memoirs and travel books have I read about people who bought a one way ticket and just… figured it out? They didn’t do everything “right”, they didn’t have tens of thousands of dollars saved, they didn’t budget every penny to the best of their ability. They just stayed open to opportunities and did whatever it took to keep their dream alive.

That’s the spirit I started this journey in. That’s the mindset I always wanted to emulate. And now that’s the path that I’m walking.

If I got the chance to tell myself even 3 years ago that I would soon be living on the opposite of the world– that I would make most of my money through reading and writing, and that I would be training for my next circus performance, I would think that I had the perfect life.

So yes, money is stressful, the highs and lows of freelancing are hard, but you have to choose your hard. And mine looks like this. A literal dream come true.

I’ll take work days that look like lingering over my current WIP with a beer in the garden any day of the week.