Friends, I’ve been blog­ging on and off for years and have NOTHING to show for it.  It’s like I’m jour­nal­ing for fun yet I’m spend­ing hours brain­storm­ing, research­ing, writ­ing, edit­ing, and shar­ing.  I’m also feel­ing old AF, well, I’m not old, but I am cer­tain­ly far from mil­len­ni­al and it freaks me the F out because I find myself think­ing that cer­tain career paths might be too late for me.  Please tell me I’m not alone here.

“Mis­ery loves com­pa­ny.”

From time to time, I find myself dwelling over where I am and where I could have been had I remained con­sis­tent, for exam­ple, with my YouTube chan­nel 8–9 years ago or my blog.

I start­ed blog­ging in 2007 using Type­pad, who remem­bers them?  I then got fan­cy and cre­at­ed my own web­site using GoDad­dy’s tem­plates and start­ed blog­ging, using images I had found on the web.  This was around 2009.  Soon after I got a cease and desist let­ter from Get­ty Images.  I had no idea who they were.  All I knew was that I owed them thou­sands of dol­lars for shar­ing one pho­to.  Yikes! I had no idea I was infring­ing on their intel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty.  Soon after (2010) I moved on to this blog you’re see­ing and I’ve been here since then writ­ing along and mak­ing zero dol­lars!

Here’s the thing: I love to write.  I have been writ­ing my whole life.  I used to write “acti­vat­ed” sto­ries when I was in mid­dle school, but like many things in my life, I sad­ly nev­er went “all the way.” When MySpace was around, I would write these month­ly long, deep and dra­mat­ic posts and share them for any­one who cared to read.  One day a friend said, “what is this the Med­i­na Times?” And so the Med­i­na Times arrived on time and on sched­ule for every­one to judge.

“She burned all her bridges behind, leav­ing no pos­si­ble way of retreat. She stood by her desire until it became the dom­i­nat­ing obses­sion of her life…” Irís Med­i­na-Elston

So here I am today, Jan­u­ary 2019, nine years after this blog was cre­at­ed and if my heels could kick my ass, they would.  Actu­al­ly, my heels can kick my ass and I learned this by doing butt kicks with Shaun T of Insan­i­ty!  But I do kick my ass every day for not remain­ing con­sis­tent with so many things in life.  Some­one wise once said, “You can pay now or pay lat­er, but either way, you’re going to pay.”  Today I am pay­ing for not stick­ing with it.  I have left hun­dreds of thou­sands of dol­lars on the table, per­haps even mil­lions by not fol­low­ing through.

I am grate­ful for my job.  I appre­ci­ate being able to work from home, hav­ing my two chil­dren (one is human, the oth­er licks, has four legs and lots of hair) to see all day long while I work hard mak­ing oth­er peo­ple rich.  A few years ago I declared that I would get a high-pay­ing job work­ing 100% remote­ly and I got it.  I should have asked for more.

So here I am think­ing out loud: I want to work entire­ly for myself doing some­thing that adds life to my years all while enjoy­ing my fam­i­ly.  I’ve inter­viewed a cou­ple of care­givers and I end up going back to the same thought: I want to be the only one rais­ing my child.  I don’t want to miss a thing.  I want to be the one to wit­ness every mir­a­cle –every mile­stone.  I don’t want to hear about it.  So yes, though I appre­ci­ate my cur­rent sit­u­a­tion, I want more.  I want a dif­fer­ent life.  So who’s with me?  Who here is fed the F up?

No more spend­ing hours edit­ing and look­ing for the per­fect pic­ture.  No more sec­ond-guess­ing.  I’m going to write and pub­lish.  This post took lit­er­al­ly 45 mins to write ver­sus all the oth­ers I spent hours per­fect­ing.

Like you, I have a unique sto­ry.  For years I have been told that I can do so much through coach­ing and writ­ing.  So here I am.  And here’s a frac­tion of my sto­ry.

I sure hope you stick around, grab a cof­fee and invite your friends along to tune in because this pro­tag­o­nist is on fire.  I will try and be gen­tle with my key­board (typ­ing furi­ous­ly).

Xoxo,

Irís