On Being Proud of You.
When people ask what I do for a living I should just point people to my Instagram profile…
I’m an author, and a writer.
I originally started writing my first book five years ago when I was at home with my youngest son. I’d just finished a marketing contract, and I was exhausted, both mentally and physically. I decided to stay at home and write and decide what I wanted to do when he was a bit older.
So I carried on, and while the boys were little people didn’t take much notice – that, combined with my blog was just a creative outlet, which at the time I suppose it was. I never thought it could turn into anything else.
As the boys got older, suggestions for ‘proper’ jobs became more forthcoming, and I felt like I wasn’t contributing to the household as much as I should. I felt that people thought I was lazy. So I took on more work from home marketing contracts,
In the last five years, I’ve broken up (and got back together) with marketing about twelve times.
My theory being that perhaps the next contract would light my fire like a good old chat on brand exposure used to. It did for a while, but not for long, because it turns out all I really wanted to do was write.
Plus, so many people struggle to see how you can make any money from home, it didn’t satisfy my uneasy feeling that people thought I wasn’t contributing. I would lie awake at night working out how I could ease into the conversation what my hourly rate was.
How much I was worth.
I didn’t even realise it until I read an article by Lisa Owens on The Pool the other day. The intro went something like this…
Asking author Lisa Owens “What do you do?” can bring on an identity crisis and a total evaluation of self-worth. Perhaps let’s just not, she says
…and you can read the whole thing here.
I read that article, and it struck a chord, it made me realise that I wasn’t fully able to commit to writing because I felt the need to justify my monetary worth with something people had heard of.
But really should I be feeding those who chose to endorse that we’re only worth what our financial contribution is, or should we be encouraging people to take in the bigger picture.
Because here’s the deal, I’m a wife, mother and a writer. I write about parenting and being a woman and a mum, I write for myself and other people. I speak on the radio sometimes, and most importantly I have written real life books.
Look – I even made my kids HOLD THEM.
I love what I do. Sometimes I doubt my own self worth – usually after being foolish enough to compare my rankings to Sophie Kinsella’s. But I’m only just beginning, and actually when I say out loud what I’ve done, I’m pretty proud.
I have gone for my dream (admittedly with eyes closed and holding my breath) and today I realised that I’m more proud of myself as a writer, than I ever was as a marketer.
It might not be a career people know and understand. They might not realise what I do during the day, and they will definitely make assumptions about how I actually earn my living, but I shouldn’t care.
Because when I look at the list of words under my instagram, I think it’s got me covered.