Megalomania
My mother thinks that with the right marketing plan, I could make a lot of money doing this writing thing. It’s all about the volume, the number of people paying, she tells me on the phone. You need to learn how to sell yourself.
All I need to do to sell myself, to have the chutzpah to push my work, I respond, is to become a megalomaniac and all I need to become a megalomaniac is a coke habit. It’s simple. This gets the laugh I wanted, but still she persists. A marketing plan.
My mother doesn’t read the blog (I’ve asked her not to and she’s also afraid to read it, which is fine with me), but she is my mother and as such has absolute confidence in my abilities. The confidence is nice, but perhaps misplaced. Not because I am a lousy writer, but because I can’t imagine who would pay for this stuff. I can't imagine who would pay me for anything.
It’s been six and a half years since I quit my job to go to cooking school and almost five and half since my son arrived on the scene. Though I worked part-time at a library when I was pregnant, I haven’t occupied the library universe for a while and I’m not sure I want to go back anyway. As for the culinary life, I don't have enough hustle for professional kitchens or enough desire to make the food career work. Really, I'm doing what I want to do: writing, on my terms. It's a luxurious position to be in, to be able to spend my weekdays wasting, getting lost in narratives about the past and present, but it also keeps me somewhat isolated and financially dependent. I drift along, pump out blog posts, and respond to prompts. (Oh, and I also parent the kid, take care of the animals, clean the house, wash the clothes, make the meals, and intermittently garden. Let's not forget those tasks.) The result is a whole lot of words that don't add up to much, or so it feels on my off days.
One of the things that was so terrifying about quitting my congressional library job was my worry that once I cut the tethers from the organized salaried world I would drift along without ambition or urge, that I would never return to a normal workaday life. Turns out that worry was valid. I don’t want to return to a life where my mind was held hostage for 40 – 50 hours a week, where my off hours were spent in a post-work recovery haze, where my parenting would be affected by the petty irritations of office life. Maybe that last job imprinted me forever, the small open reference room with seven other librarians, being constantly on, the lack of privacy, the constant interaction mixed in with a control-freak boss. Or maybe it's something else, in my nature, this desire to be on the other side of imposition.
The desire to be on the other side of imposition, to not have to answer to coworkers and bosses and office politics, imposes its own limitations, financial dependence, being defined by a very inwardly focused role, that of mother and wife. I've given up one regime for another. But at least this contained world is mine. I can write about what I want. I have the time and freedom to follow my thoughts.
And, of course, I have ambitions. I want readers, I want to be good at what I do, I want to take the particular details of my life and make them universal. I'm willing to work hard to do it right. But I have no idea how to “market” the version of myself I put out here. This blog has a very limited scope: me. While I am willing to expand my scope – while I have to expand my scope – I still wonder how to make it all fit together, to have the professional life I need, the satisfaction of writing what resonates for me, and maybe a little money, not much, but enough.
My mother says she'll help. I'm also open to suggestions, to ideas on how to make this a more professional life, ones that are outside the realm of megalomania. Step one: complete and submit my pieces.
Or maybe I need a dose of reality, a confirmation that this is not a paying gig, that I'm lucky enough to be able to do it and if I expect cash flow, I have to look elsewhere.
Image: Me, of course.