Yes, that’s deliberate - adieu, not au revoir. I left my day job at a wonderful marketing agency on February 1 and haven’t looked back since.

It is simply delicious not working full time for someone else.

For the first time in six years, I’m determining what I do with each moment of my day. I map out my own plans, stick to them or not, and pat myself on the back - or not. When I feel inspired to do something out of the ordinary, often as not I can go ahead and do it. Need to watch Pride and Prejudice for the fifteenth time at 3pm on a Wednesday afternoon? Go for it. Want to exercise at eleven in the morning? Hell, yes. Create a new recipe and cook it at 4pm? Sure!

Not to say work doesn’t come into it. I have a schedule - first revisions on my work-in-progress Panty Snatch, then writing a draft of my next manuscript (tentative title = Booby Trap). All in a few months, which means long hours and almost no time off.  Sometimes keeping my ass in the Aeron (yes, I bought myself an Aeron, I’m so not used to being poor yet) takes more willpower than Weight Watchers. I get discouraged and tired and fear I’ll never get published. Or worse, I’m afraid I’ll get published with a book so execrable I’m ashamed to tell anyone I wrote it.

But it’s all worth it. This is something I’m doing for me. I’m opening channels in parts of my brain that haven’t been used since college, as as those channels get cleared of the muck and dead animals  accumulated over all the years of non-use, the creativity will flow faster and faster like shit shooting through the sewers of my brain. Right out onto the page.

Now who wouldn’t want to do that for themselves? I ask you.