Hoping and Knowing (And a Beagle!)

2013 has been pretty quiet on the writing side.  When you play the At This Time Last Year I Was (Fill In The Blank) Game, it’s pretty bad.  Basically, you don’t wanna play that game unless you’re on an UPSWING.  If you’re not on a career upswing, it’s a bummer.

I’m not on a career upswing currently.  Considering that for the past two years, people have been paying me to write things, sometimes for not much, sometimes for more than I thought, and here we are in 2013, and nobody is paying me anything to write anything.

This is nothing new.  Every writer’s life has upswings and downswings, of course.  Months of activity followed by long stretches of inactivity.  I have plenty of friends I can look to for examples. 

And I remind myself that when all of this started with the Magic Phone Call in 2011, that it was a call I couldn’t possibly have foreseen, I didn’t know to work for it, to even pray for it.  God was working behind the scenes in ways I didn’t know to work for, or even how to pray for.

So I tell myself that the same thing could be happening here:  that God is once again the Grand Tinkerer, fiddling with cosmic knobs, dials, building doors to roads He wants me to go down, and if I just hold on, if I just sit and wait on His timing, that more will be revealed.

Sure, I have plenty of times where I start thinking flutter anxiety bird thoughts of it’s a lie!  A lie!  2011 – 2012 was a complete aberration!  We now return you to your regularly scheduled life of Always Trying and Rarely Succeeding When It Comes To Writing!  Happy Trails!

And then I have to remind myself - Patience, patience patience.  I can say that I know God is moving behind the scenes, cooking up something, and being all Grand Tinkerer-like, but the truth of the matter is that I’m HOPING He does. 

It’s a very very thin line between KNOWING and HOPING, and I tend to fall on the side of HOPING more often than I should, these days.

Because the common fear is what if what I KNOW turns out to be not true?  That what I was telling myself was me KNOWING, was me just HOPING?

Then you go back and tailor your Hopes.

So instead of I Hope God Is Preparing The Next Writing Opportunity For Me, it’s…

I Know God Will Never Leave Me.

Instead of I Hope God Will Lead Me To A Future Where I’m A Professional Writer And I Move Into A Place That Has A Bathtub, it’s…

I Know God Has A Plan For Me.

Maybe that plan involves writing.  Maybe that plan even involves getting paid for my writing again.

Regardless, I have to take comfort in what I Know.

And continue to wait.

And here is a picture of Bella Beagle.  Just because.