#InkRiples: Writing as a career or hobby

By: Meradeth Houston on 4:00 AM

#InkRipples is a themed meme hosted by Mary Waibel, Katie L. Carroll, and Kai Strand. We post on the first Monday of every month. If you would like to participate compose your own post regarding the theme of the month, include any of the images displayed on this page, and link back to their three blogs. Feel free to post whenever you want during the month, but be sure to include #inkripples when you promote so readers can find you. The idea is that we toss a word or idea into the inkwell and each post is a new ripple. There is no wrong interpretation.

Okay, so it may be almost the last Monday of October (ummm, where has this month gone??), but I'm still managing to get this post in. There's a good reason for that: this is a topic that's been on my mind quite a bit lately. Is my writing a hobby? Is it more than that? Could it be more than that? See, here's the thing, I have a career. One that's been blossoming lately and really taking over my life (often in a way that I am exhausted by--I struggle deeply with a work-life balance, especially as I work for a university that keeps demanding more and giving less). In a nutshell, I sequence dead people's DNA from dead people that are really, really dead, often for hundreds or thousands of years. And I love what I do. I absolutely adore my labs and my teaching, and my students. My university...well it could

Me, in the lab :)

go find itself a steep cliff, but oh wait, it's already doing that by strangling any hope and happiness amongst its faculty and employees...

Off topic. Sorry. I could rant about work frustrations for hours, but won't bore you.

So, yeah, I have an awesome career, one I've worked incredible hard for. One I love. But writing is a part of me, too. I've been writing for nearly my whole life and it's a part of my soul. And yet, yet...sigh. It's one that I often let slip by. I eek out time for words on the weekends, on evenings when I'm not too exhausted (which lately have been fewer and farther between), and when I just can't ignore the characters any longer. But I wish for more; I wish I could make a career out of writing. But, I'm nothing if not practical. I know that I couldn't afford to live off my writing. If I hit the NYT bestseller list, maybe, but I know that's not in the cards for me. I'm not that good, and I don't have the time now to devote to getting better. 

So, yeah, writing has become a hobby. And a little piece of my soul dies when I think of it that way. But, I can't magically get more hours in the day, nor can I clone myself yet, and I certainly can't expect my university to fund a few more graduate students to help ease my load a little. So, I'll write when I can. I'll make the most of my hobby. And enjoy what I do of it so that someday, I'll be able to have a little more time and maybe be able to say that at the very least, I have two thriving careers.

A girl can dream, can't she?

What about you? Career or hobby? Or maybe a bit of both?