It's hard to believe but it's been a month since I left my full-time job, so here's a quick update on how things are going now.
1st month reflections - writing, creativity, income, health
Generally, I'm absolutely loving being able to immerse myself in my own work and have my own schedule. In fact, I wonder how I even had time to work before. I've been feeling more detached from my last job quicker than I would have expected. I found out about a problem last week that had arisen since I left that normally it would have been my job to fix it, and I would have been stressing over it. And I was able to just acknowledge that that was now someone else's problem and move on.
I was expecting that I'd keep feeling like I was on leave all the time, but so far that hasn't really happened. I am losing track of what day it is though, without that Monday to Friday schedule. I had a road trip in my first week (from Victoria back up to NSW to see my parents) and I'm glad things worked out that way - it gave a good break between my old schedule and my new life. On the Sunday night of my first week, I did catch myself thinking, "Oh, I've got to get ready for work tomorrow," but that hasn't really happened too much since. I have started traveling again though, so whether that will change now that I'm not staying at my parents', we'll soon see.
I do need to find balance. I've been focusing on getting the first draft of the novel finished to the exclusion of pretty much everything else, particularly exercise. So I need to get into more of a balance and take time to exercise, work, and also to refill my creative well.
I'm definitely sleeping better. In my first week, I was still waking up through the night thinking, "Oh, I have to do X, Y, and Z tomorrow," and really stressing over it. Now at least if I do wake up thinking about things that I need to do, I don't have the same stress and dread that was previously associated with it.
According to my Fitbit, my resting heart rate has gone down since I finished work, so that's a good thing. I haven't really been walking; that's one thing I will need to start doing more now that I'm back on the road. However, I have been trying to get into the habit of doing just little micro movements, for example doing an incline pushup set while I'm waiting for the kettle to boil etc.
As far as the creativity and work and income is going, as I mentioned in my last blog post, I finished my first draft of the 3rd Hope Creek novel and I've started working on the second draft or the edits. I've actually written about 20,000 words just in this month, which is amazing. So that goes to the editor in September, and I'm hoping to release that in October.
I do seem to be slowly attracting an audience on my new author YouTube channel. I keep trying different things, and I think my skills are slowly improving, so I'll just keep working on it.
I am settling into some sort of routine, but I do need to find a balance between YouTube and the writing. It's so much easier to focus on YouTube because there's more of an immediate feedback, so I do have to stop myself from focusing on that rather than the writing. (Productive procrastination!)
I do have the occasional panic moments where I'm wondering what on Earth I'm doing and whether I'll ever make enough money before I run out of savings. That particularly happened when my last pay went in the bank and I was budgeting that out and working out how long I could sustain living off my savings for. But I just keep reminding myself to take it one day at a time and to keep working on growing my income.
Plans for next month
So all in all, I've really enjoyed my first month. Next month will be a little bit different. I'm going to be doing a fair bit of traveling. I'm currently traveling back from New South Wales back down to Victoria, then I'll be heading over to South Australia to Adelaide to the Romance Writers of Australia conference in mid-August and then traveling back to Victoria.
While I'm traveling, I also need to get my second draft completed so that I can send off to my editor for September. But I also need to focus on my health. I need to focus on losing weight, so getting out for more walks and also eating more healthily, and probably tracking what I'm eating as well.
I also have my first major assignment for my uni subject for this trimester coming up in August, so I'll need to spend some time on that. And I have a travel writing course that I have purchased that I want to start looking at in the hopes that that can also be an income stream for me. Since I am traveling and I like to write, I may as well combine the two if I can and earn some income from it.
Wish me luck!
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