On Life – Adriana Kantcheva

Corona, writing, and everything else…

Oh, has it been a year since my last post? Yes, it has. Of course, it has. And this silence is, not surprisingly, SARS-CoV-2 related.

Things in my life were just starting to look better. I had a short story, “Bread and Iron,” published with Short Édition, my son finally adjusted to our new home, and my two girls were just starting in day care. I was looking forward to returning to a regular writing routine and a bit of time for myself after a year of being entirely focused on my twin daughters. I was tired. I was so tired. But I knew that now life would slowly return back to normal for me.

And then, the shit hit the fan.

On happiness, parenting, and ambition…and, of course, writing.

I’m six months into being a mother of three. My son is now four years old, and my twin baby girls are six months old. I won’t lie, it hasn’t been easy. Not only because of the amount of work (diapers, soiled clothes, spoon feeding etc.), but because I find it difficult to put my life on hold for a year until the girls start in the nursery.

I have written posts on how becoming a parent finally made me realize the value of time and that it pays off to work 15 min a day. And I still stand by what I said in these posts. The trouble is that this time around, I don’t need to relearn these lessons. I still remember them. I have learned not to procrastinate, and I value my time. These days, I’m trying my best to squeeze in a bit of querying and editing (writing is a luxury) in the little time between the kids being finally asleep and my brain switching off.

Is it worth it to write only 15 minutes a day?

A while ago, I had a conversation with a friend of mine about time management. Like so many others, she too was struggling to carve out time for her creative work. She was wondering if she would make any progress with her novel if she only had 15 minutes a day to write.

This made me think back to the time when I had just had my son (now 4 years ago) and was afflicted by a sudden change in perspective on what it meant not to have time.

Finding that voice.

On November 30^th this year, I reached a milestone: my short story, “Clara,” appeared in the November issue of Electric Spec magazine. This is the first time that a short story of mine got published. I can’t explain what this means to me. It’s been a long road.

I took the decision to live my dream rather than dream my dream in the beginning of 2016. Before that, I had always wanted to but had never taken any real steps to live the life of a writer. But finally, two decades of wishful thinking culminated in me having had enough of dabbling. By Christmas that same year, I completed the rough draft of my fantasy trilogy, and in January 2017, I gave in my two-months resignation notice from my day job. This was not a spontaneous decision. In that faithful spring of 2016, a slow transformation began inside me, ending with me finally breaking through the thick wall of fear that had hitherto held me back.

Finding balance in life is not a balancing act.

There has been a lot of hype around the concept of finding balance in life: work-life balance, balancing social life vs me-time, a balanced healthy life, balanced parenting…you name it.

Lately, I have been struggling a little bit with this. For example, I love to exercise, but I’ve also had plenty of couch-potato moments. I like being among people, but I also love being on my own. I love spending a day reading, but I also love binge watching Star Trek: The Next Generation. Most years, I have been wobbling through my life, feeling pulled in all sorts of directions, wondering when I will finally find balance.

Taking the plunge into writing full time (and a word on citizen’s basic income).

A few weeks ago, I quit my researcher job to focus on my writing. And now that the mental and physical fatigue, which this decision brought about, are finally starting to abate, I’d like to talk about how I took this monumental step.

What I found out while pondering my options is that I will never stop feeling apprehensive about stepping away from the well-trodden path. Not unless I had a huge advance from a three-book-deal in the bank. But how to get to that point with a day job that eats away a considerable number of hours and creative capacity?