My life is not glamorous.

As I am writing this I’m laughing as I wonder who on earth would ever look at me and think, “How fabulous her life must be.” But I think there is a misconception in our society that a person must have life figured out, at least somewhat, based solely on the fact that they are pursuing their dream…even someone like me.

Me, a 29-year-old cat mom with framed renaissance paintings of both of her fur babies hanging in her dining room. Me, the co-founder of her university’s Quidditch team. Me, the girl who still ugly cries every time Meg Ryan tells Tom Hanks that she wanted it to be him so badly at the end of You’ve Got Mail. 

I am a writer. Those words still feel strange coming out of my mouth or, in this case, my fingers. I have waited my whole life to say them and it’s still nearly impossible for me to accept them as true.

I finished my first book when I was 24. I had just moved to Nashville and was between jobs…and social lives. I didn’t know a soul or have any idea what I was doing with myself or my life. So I took advantage of that space I had unwittingly created for myself and sat down and finally finished the story I had been picking up and putting down again in a cyclical pattern since freshman year of college. That was five years ago; five years since I finished my first full-length book and still I have never referred to myself as a writer. I have taken on many other names- manager, marketer, wife…but not writer.

I have asked myself time and time again why this is the case, and I think it boils down to my mistaken belief that I have to reach a certain level of success before I am worthy of that name. I have told myself that one book does not a writer make, and that I cannot claim that title until I have a published book. I am confident that I will someday reach this goal, mostly because even if I knock my head against the wall of the traditional publishing world for years to no avail, there is always the option to self-publish. But in the meantime, while I continue to knock my head against that wall with my first book and devote the hours I once gave to my “day job” to finishing my second book, I remind myself daily of the truth that what I am doing with my life is writing.

I recently walked away from a stable job with a company I’d been part of for three years. It was terrifying. Maybe it shouldn’t have been- after all, I’ve made far scarier leaps of faith in my life than going from a two-income household to a single-income household, especially since the remaining income happens to come from a job my husband both excels at and adores.

From the outside in, I suppose my life looks like the southern girl’s version of the ‘American Dream.’ We recently bought our own home in a little suburb on the outskirts of Nashville. We don’t have a white picket fence, or any fence for that matter, but we do have a yard with a small garden. We don’t have kids yet, but we do have two fur babies that I absolutely adore. And I don’t have a commute or a “day job” anymore, but I still get up each morning with my husband, sit down at my computer, and write. In the afternoons, I go grocery shopping, cook, clean, do the laundry, and go to the gym. What’s not to love?

Ok, don’t get me wrong, I do love my life. I have a wonderful, supportive, and devoted husband who works hard every day to provide for our family so that I can do what I love. He always helps with the dishes and, on the weekends, he puts his amazing chef skills to work and whips up delicious meals. I love my house, my garden, my cats, and my home office. And I love, love, love the fact that I get to sit down every single day and write. But is it glamorous? Ha. No.

I have a clearly-outlined standing schedule for each day of the week. It runs from 7:00am-6:00pm and covers everything from writing and exercise to playing with my cats. There is a time for everything, and everything in its time. A notification pops up on my phone telling me when it’s time to move to the next thing: break for lunch, commute to the gym, clean the house, have dinner on the table… Some days those notifications serve as a pat on the back when I am right on track for the day; when I pop up out of bed 15 minutes before my alarm, make breakfast, and have 3,000 words written by lunchtime. But other days, not so much.

Some days, like today, I toss and turn all night and sleep through my alarm in the morning. When I finally wake up, I am an hour and a half behind schedule. I scarf down a bowl of cheerios while listening to a motivational audiobook, because even people like me, who live for the feeling of holding a real book in their hands (I will admit to being a book sniffer), don’t always have time to sit and read a book. Then I realize how cluttered my kitchen has become and spend the next half hour cleaning and doing dishes because I don’t want my husband to come home to a dirty house after working a 9-hour day at the office. By the time I’m finished, 30 minutes is now an hour and the kitchen has turned into the entire downstairs. Suddenly it’s lunchtime and I have one hour left before I have to leave to meet a friend who I haven’t seen for at least a month for coffee. I know that if I try to fill that hour with writing, I will end up staring at the page until I go cross-eyed because I am still recovering from my sleepless night. So instead I read a book my father sent me about becoming a published author because this seems like a better use of my time at this point. My coffee date is wonderful and life-giving because I spend my days in my own head and it is important to weigh these thoughts and fears against the wisdom of the people who I trust to speak into my life. And then it’s the grocery store, home, feed the cats, eat dinner, and realize that I haven’t written a single word today. At least not for my book. And as I sit here writing this I am wearing lime green eye masks to try to combat the bags and dark circles that have taken up permanent residence under my eyes in recent weeks. Before that was the K-Beauty sheet mask because my skin has decided that at 29 years of age it still wants to produce clusters of acne at the most random times because, sure, why not?

And I am not alone in this. The first person that comes to mind is a friend of mine who is an amazing artist. She hustles harder than anyone I’ve ever met, and she has been instrumental in giving me tips and advice on how to navigate working from home in a non-traditional and creative field. Her work is phenomenal and sometimes she works 12-hour days between Instagram, YouTube, Twitch, and Patreon pieces, not to mention the time it takes her to box and ship everything out. From where I stand, this girl is a total boss who is killing it with her work. But I know that’s not always what she sees. I know from deep conversations over wine and face masks that she struggles with a lot of the same things I do; that deep pervasive feeling that no matter how hard you work it’s never enough. The crushing guilt that comes from the days where you feel like you accomplished nothing at all, while staring at a to-do list that is a mile long. The fear that what you are creating isn’t good enough.

This is where grace comes in. In the five weeks since I left my job, this has been the one constant. Not a day has gone by where I did not need to offer myself grace. Grace to accept and believe the fact that I am enough. Grace to celebrate the good days and to dust myself off on the days that I feel like I am riding the struggle bus all the way to the station which, honestly, is a lot of them. Even when I get my word count and my workout in, when the house is spotless, and dinner is on the table by 5:00, I still often feel like I have no idea what I’m doing. On days when the rejection letters come from agents: “I’m sorry, but your story does not fit what we are looking for at the moment.” On days when I face writers block or when the pages I’ve written don’t read as well as I would like. But I keep on going. I keep on writing. Why? Because I am a writer.