One of the topics of conversation within my circle of friends the past weekend is hard work, and how hard work doesn’t always yield results.
I have to remind myself about this lately. Writing triggers joint and muscle pains for me, so when I’m curled up in pain after writing 2.5 epic fantasy novels within the year while looking at the KDP chart (Zero sales today! Zero KU reads!), impatience is almost a given. Writing so much my whole life (about 24 years by my count) has taken its toll on my body. It’s only going to get worse from here.
But I’ve managed expectations my whole life.
Yesterday, my mom was just telling the story about how we didn’t have running water in the slums so we had to get water every week from the pump. My dad was an overseas worker during that time, so it was just me and her and a cart full of water containers. And the wheel broke and people started laughing at us instead of helping us.
She also reminded me of how I used to dodge traffic at Edsa to get to school. I had to Google Edsa and was surprised to realize this was a TEN LANE highway, and I crossed this once a day every day for at least a couple of years. Also, in the Philippines, they tend to want to run you over instead of stopping for some reason. I think people think this will make you get out of their way faster. Seriously, if you ever take a vacation there, never expect drivers to wait for you to cross.
I’ve had relatives die from curable diseases. If you can’t afford medical bills, you just learn to accept that you’re going to lose them.
I don’t tell these stories to get sympathy. I say them to remind myself of how far I’ve come and why something like lack of results is very much a “first world problem.”
I mean, almost everything uncomfortable these days is. Here in Canada, we live beside the forest, so during the winter we get a lot of power outages because of falling branches and so on. So for maybe about a day we may not have electricity, and we have to huddle together as a family in the dining table and play board games by the candle light. Oh, and we also occasionally check our cellphones for updates on when BC Hydro will fix the power lines. “Crew on site, expect power in half an hour!” It’s so wonderful.
When I was little, we’d have power outages that go on for God knows how long, which meant being stuck inside a dark little house trying not to boil in your own sweat and reading the same handful of books over and over again. And the water…BC water is about the best tasting water in the world (it’s even better if you go up the mountains and have it fresh from a cold stream) and I don’t forget to thank the universe every time I drink it. Cold, chlorinated water is awful, but it’s even worse when it’s lingered for days in the heat and you can’t stick it in the fridge to improve the taste. I used to suck on a menthol candy before drinking–it was that awful.
So I work. If I have to do it covered in Ben-Gay and stretchy support bandages, so be it. Word counts have to be met. Schedules have to be kept. Books have to be written. And if I don’t get anything out of them today, so what? The world will still turn, and I’m in this for the long haul.
