“That’s what Stephen King did,” I’m often told. “So why can’t you?”
Hey there. I'm a writer who works to live, not the other way around. I worry about how much time I've lost to work and recovering from hard workdays, especially recently, as one of my coworkers retired and I feel like my workload is sort of piling up. Since I work in healthcare, I deal with a lot of unhappy/angry people who take their medical and insurance issues out on me. It wears me down. In my free time, all I want to do is park my brain or sleep. I'm almost 29. When I was a teenager, I thought I'd be published by now. That illusion shattered fast.
I've been told by my therapist and my husband to practice self-care, but I feel like the ultimate self-care would be to just not show up to work anymore. I'm getting worn down by people taking things that are out of my control (like insurance or billing-related issues) out on me just because I'm the one who picks up the phone.
I am far from the first person to have this problem, and I'm trying so hard to be consistently creative and add to my project more often and do it all without complaining, but I feel like all my energy is being diverted to work and making time around work. Work makes me so anxious. And I am sad.