Life Update Part Deux: I’m (Still!) in Maryland

In which: Maggie laughs at herself for yet again changing all of her commitments in the midst of her quarter-life crisis (and then commits to a thing she actually spent money on, so like — this is real, people!).

It’s that time of year again! The weeks leading up to Black Friday and Cyber Monday (BFCM, if you’re in the industry) are by far the WORST time to work in marketing. But hey! I’ve promised myself that this year is the last year I will deal with Black Friday as a marketing professional. I’m donezo, y’all!

What does that mean, exactly?

The whole reason I started this blog ten thousand years ago (okay, one and a half) is because I am shifting my focus away from surviving my life and into living it. And for me, that means making writing my top professional priority.

It’s been too long, honestly. I fell into marketing by accident when I was barely twenty-one and fresh out of college, frantic to make money to fuel my concert ticket addiction and prove that I was tough sh*t in the adulty world of adulting. But here’s the thing — money doesn’t make me happy. Eventually, I became reliant on that hefty paycheck to fund an increasingly difficult and more expensive lifestyle. And eventually, that caught up with me.

I’ve talked before about how I landed in $31,054.08 in debt. It was a mix of bad decisions, keeping up with the Joneses, and royally screwing up my taxes the first year I went from cushy corporate job to self-employed daily terror. (Man, I won’t miss these days.) And I know I’m not the only one, but when the pandemic hit, my life changed in a thousand ways.

I forced myself to take stock of a lot of things: my lifestyle, my relationships, the trajectory of my professional and personal life, the goals that had sat dusty on the floor for way, way, way, way, way too long. Chief among them was writing: and that’s what brings me to where I am today.

I spent seventeen grueling months paying off the entire $31,054.08 (a number I will remember forever), moved to Florida, then Utah, then another short stint in Florida, and now back to my home state of Maryland — funnily enough, just a hop, skip, and jump away from the town and job that made me put down my writing dreams in exchange for a marketing paycheck.

But those! Days! Are! Done!

And I mean it this time! Now that I’m out of bad-decision debt (I bought a car in October, but that was well-researched and saved up for, so neener neener, it doesn’t count), my life options have opened up significantly. And that means that I’m officially — officially — going to focus on the things that are important to me.

I’ve tried self-paced, aggressive programs before. What has happened time after time is that I bite off more than I can chew, get sucker-punched by work and depression and chaos in my personal life, and then drop all my dreams and goals in favor of, y’know, surviving the moment. And that’s totally okay! Over the last few years I’ve had to make a lot of tough decisions just to keep one foot in front of the other, but ever since that New Year’s Day in 2021 when I sat down, really took a hard look at my finances, and swore to myself I’d get myself out of that mess, I’ve known that it was time to start living my life the way I want to live it.

It’s taken longer than I expected. I applied to grad school in a year where everybody and their brother was finishing a round of soul-searching and applying for grad school too, and got rejected from all but one program — a low-residency MFA program that would have cost more than $60,000 to complete. I simply couldn’t convince myself to do it. I couldn’t rationalize going into that much debt (remember — combined with the debt I already had, that would’ve been nearly $100,000) for a degree I technically didn’t need.

Cue soul-searching, laying on the floor, and eating a lot of sour cream and onion chips.

I can’t believe it’s been nearly two entire years since I came up with the number $31,054.08. But here I am, debt-free (minus the car — again, doesn’t count, bite me), staring my job change in the face, and getting ready to start a massive writing undertaking that is actually going to stick this time because I’ll finally have the accountability and mentorship I need to make it happen.

And here’s the other thing — for the last month or so, I’ve been writing nearly every day. For the longest time, my argument for “not writing” was that I didn’t have the time. And when I had the time, I didn’t have the energy. And when I had the energy, I didn’t have the discipline. But I came up with a solution recently, in preparation for the program I’m starting in January, that involves writing for Just Five Minutes A Day. I can’t argue that I don’t have time for that when I spend way more than five minutes dicking around on Buzzfeed or Reddit in the middle of my workday. Five minutes won’t change my workday at all, even if I’m glued to the wall by deadlines (hello, Black Friday), and ready to cry about it.

It’s Just Five Minutes.

And it’s working. Since starting that goal, I’ve stuck to it probably four out of five workdays in the last month. It’s not much, maybe a max of 250 words at a stretch, but I’m doing it. I have an almost-daily writing practice for the first time since college! And even though it isn’t much, that sh*t adds up. I’ve written more than 5,000 words since I started my five-minute daily scribbles.

And that’s 5,000 more words than I’d have if I didn’t do anything at all.

The last few years have been tumultuous and awful and difficult for so many reasons, 99% of which I won’t get into on this blog because, honestly, I’ve spent enough time journaling about and obsessing over them and I really don’t want this to be a space for more of that. But the important thing is that these last few years have forced me to refocus on what’s truly important to me — it’s been a lot of hard work, mentally, physically, and financially, but I can see the light at the end of the tunnel.

2023 is going to be my year, by Grohl. And even if things don’t work out the way I want them to, I’ll still keep putting one foot in front of the other and setting reasonable expectations for myself — and hitting them — and I’ll be carving out the life I actually want to live one tiny spoon-dig at a time.

It’s pretty cool what happens when you start giving a f*ck.

Over the next couple weeks, I’ll be updating this site a lot more with the details of the program I’m taking on in January. (And I’ll wait to set this post live until I’m actually registered, because I’m a tiny bit terrified the spots are going to fill up in a fingersnap and I might not get in. But I mean, I’m gonna be refreshing the page every two minutes until 10am CT, so if I don’t get in, I’m having an issue upstairs.)

After that, I’ll keep using this blog as a space for accountability, rants, and writing plans I need to think out outside of the cohort.

If you’ve been with me this long (all 23 of you Instagram followers), thanks for sticking around.

Let’s take this show on the road.

(For real this time. 😉)

Quick P.S. — I’m registered! Ya bean is officially a member of the Year-Long Writing Project 2023 online cohort!! Wahooooooooo! (Goodbye, money!)