Little to show for it

The year is half over. I don't have much to show for it. I'm still stuck in my church secretary job -- which is fine, actually, except for the low pay and inflexible hours -- and have no prospects for another. I didn't get a literary agent for the book that was basically finished a year ago, and I also didn't start on the next one that's been revving its engine for longer than that. Aside from a lighting trip to Chicago with Cris in November and a similarly short one to Portland in February, I haven't even been outside the Bay Area in a year.

I have little to complain about, on the other hand. What I really need to do is figure out how to get my next book done in my current situation. When I interviewed two weeks ago for a full-time job back in the tech industry -- I didn't get it -- people asked me, "What about your writing? I thought you had this part-time job so you could write more." Yeah, that was the plan. But the fact is, I got my first novel done (not to mention the two books of short stories) while I held a full-time job. I don't think I've gotten the hang of this new schedule yet, even though I've been doing it for a year. So I was actually looking forward to another full-time job so I could get more writing done.

Well, that's not happening. So I need to deal with the way things are now. As I get older, I realize more and more that that's the way I have to approach life: learning to deal with the way things are now, not the way I wish things were.