A Year of Freedom, A Year of Confusion

It's been a little over a year since I quit the day job to be a full-time writer and self-publisher. I really didn't know what that meant at the time and I'm still not entirely sure. I've come a long way, though I still feel like I'm traveling mostly in circles. Ditching the day job has not been what I had expected.
For one thing, I had originally planned to have all of the bills paid by my husband's job. Even knowing that it might be too much to expect, I certainly didn't guess that he'd decide to leave his job for self-employment. For another, I expected to get a lot more work done with the hours of free time I imagined. Who knew that he could get a lease on a truck and lose money consistently for four months? That it would take another three months to find another paying job? Who knew that I'd have to spend everything I made and half of my retirement fund just to keep the bills paid?  Sadly, I didn't know. I would never have guessed. How could I be so blind?

Now that things are back to "normal" and I can afford to be home writing again, I feel guilty for not earning enough. I feel guilty for staying home on days when I might be able to get a teaching assignment and miserable on days when I teach all day and don't have any energy left to write. I am back doing the two job lifestyle that had me so burned out before. I don't feel like I'm accomplishing anything anywhere.

Even on days when I don't teach, I have trouble getting much writing done. I sit by the phone in case my husband needs to talk--so I end up listening to stories about bad drivers and tourist traps that are part of his life, but not mine. And I feel guilty if I'm not paying attention and I feel guilty about not writing and  I feel guilty all the time.

OK, step one: I need to make a plan to do some writing on a scheduled basis and to let everyone know that during certain hours, I am available for emergency only.
Step two: I need to find ways to get the word out about my books to get more cash coming in to my account.
Step three: I need to separate out the money from books and keep that for my personal expenses so I don't feel guilty about spending money that isn't my own.

Fear of Flying

I guess I should be calling this fear of trucking, but that doesn’t have such a nice ring to it. My husband is all signed up for truck driver training. He is going to get some training, get a license, and get a good job so that I can quit my day job and work on writing.

To those who believe that being self-centered is part of the bipolar disorder, take note—it may be part of some episodes, but it is not a constant for people with bipolar. If your partner is always selfish, it’s not the disorder, you’ve hooked up with a jerk.

Ok, so the thing is that he has passed the DOT physical for the license and got the doctor to sign off that his bipolar will not affect his ability to drive safely, but I am worried that potential employers will see that he has been on disability for mental illness for the last several years and decide that they don’t want to hire someone with a serious mental illness on his record.

Of course he doesn’t want to believe that it will be a problem. Neither do I, but I know that stigma and prejudice are out there and with so many people looking for work, employers may find reasons to hire people who are physically and mentally healthy over someone who has been hospitalized within the past year for mental illness. He might not be able to get health insurance through an employer because of his history.

Because between my paycheck and his disability we are earning too much money, he doesn’t qualify for financial aid, so we will be taking out a loan for the full amount of his tuition, fees, books, etc. which means that instead of getting ahead and being able to quit my job, we may be in debt and I may have to continue to work even after I’d be able to retire in order to make up enough money to pay the debt off.

Maybe the books will do well enough that I will be able to use that money to pay the student loans. Maybe I’m crazy to be worried and he will find a job when he finishes his class and he will be able to pay the bills and the student loan and allow me to quit my day job.

Whatever happens, we are trusting God and I’m not going to panic. In case I forget and panic, please remind me.

Up and Running

My schedule for the bipolar spouse project has everything up and running by now, but the only thing really running is me and I seem to be running in circles. This is a lot more time consuming than I remember. Of course last time around I started with a captive audience at Prodigy and I didn't have Facebook and Twitter and Blogspot to worry about. I just had a simple website with maybe a couple dozen articles, the class, the discussion list and the newsletter.

The good news--or the bad news, depending on how it turns out--is that I am seriously looking for ways to quit my day job. In the past this wouldn't have helped much because I have a husband home on disability who wants my attention every two minutes when I'm at home. But if he's not home to distract me I can actually get some work done.

My husband is getting manic about truck driving again, something he did for a couple years about 15 years ago, and if he can actually get his act together and do it we will have a reliable income that is sufficient to support us, and I will have whole weeks of uninterrupted time.

Not sure I can handle that--been known to sit at the keyboard and work on a book project for days on end when not interrupted by something--but if I set a schedule for myself if just might work.

Thanks to a "social networking for authors" class by Kai Wilson, I will probably have a whole "to-do" list and a marketing plan to work with. I'm not sure I can keep up with the class right now, but I'm doing the assignments on my days off and taking notes. I will probably be tweeting about my blog posts before she's done with me and I don't even know what that means now.

I'm not sure how I feel about the truck driving thing. It is probably a good fit for my husband because he enjoys almost everything about it. He has a good driving record. He is stable on his medication and stir crazy at home. He needs a job where he is pretty much on his own because he doesn't get along well with most people if they spend a lot of time together. That's his big issue with the bipolar disorder--he doesn't play well with others and he's prone to telling the boss exactly what he thinks, which isn't usually complimentary. Not a lot of jobs out there where you don't have to deal with people on a daily basis. He's not prone to road rage--thank goodness, he can tolerate "stupid people" (his term) in other vehicles. He just can't stand to share a room with someone who isn't aware of his opinions.

Still, will he drop out before he he finishes the training? Will he finish the training and be unemployable because of his illness? Will he be employable, but uninsurable because of his illness? Will he quit or get fired a couple months in?

Life is full of risks. This one could pay off big or put us into debt for a long long time. Gotta love that manic energy. We're swinging for the bleachers here.