Why I’ve Given Up on Making a Career Out of Writing
In 2013, I was sitting in my bedroom in my apartment in East Harlem when I had an epiphany about what I finally wanted to be when I grew up (For the record, that was after I had already graduated college). I decided then and there that I wanted to be a Writer. From that epiphany blossomed many things — my Wordpress blog, my Medium account, and many articles that were published on a variety of online publications.
Over the course of the past seven years, I devoted countless hours towards writing and supporting my writing. I promoted myself and my articles on social media, created a Facebook page to showcase my writing, and established myself as a Writer to the public. However, despite all of these efforts, the largest income that I ever really made in a single tax year was about two thousand dollars. That’s hardly even enough to consider it a part-time job.
So, because of this less-than-ideal sum of money, I never got around to quitting my full-time job because, well, how could I? How could I make a living from writing when my annual income from writing could barely make a dent in my cable bill, let alone my student loan debt? How could I support myself? Over time, the idea of making a career out of writing became less and less realistic. Eventually, I stopped trying so hard towards becoming a full-time Writer. But, despite these setbacks, I still continued to write and am still writing to this day — I even just published two articles within the past week. And yes, my partner summary on Medium hardly surpasses fifty dollars in a month, yet still I’m writing.
Why, you might ask?
Why am I still continuing to write even though my goal was to make a career out of it, but I’m making virtually no money? The simple answer is this…
I’m still writing because I honestly just love it.
I love writing even without making from it money and I’d of course love it if I were making money. Regardless, writing is what brings me joy whether or not a profit is involved. And just because I haven’t fulfilled my goal of doing it for a living doesn’t mean that I have to stop completely.
Yes, the extra money would be wonderful, but that’s not really the goal for me anymore. And even though I’ve given up on trying to make a career out of writing, I’m not discouraged or distraught. I’m glad and grateful that I even tried. I’m proud of how far I’ve come and what I’ve been able to accomplish during the time that I tried. Of course, who knows what the future holds? After all, just because it hasn’t happened for me yet doesn’t mean it won’t happen ever. So, I guess I’ll have to keep doing what I’m doing and just wait and see what awaits me further down the road.
