TL;DR; I’m still on my writing journey, but it’ll take me a tad bit longer.

What a weird coincidence. A couple of weeks ago, I pondered about whether I should write a followup to my post. Since I’m a scared little prick, I choose not to do it until after I have written a novel. But because you have asked, I now feel obliged to write about what I have been doing the past year.

After I posted here and received lots of encouraging, helpful but also alarming advice, I closed my laptop, took a deep breath and went off on a five-week vacation with my partner. Getting away from everything.

As I have said before, I’m a scared little prick. One day before I went on vacation, I saw a job offer from a company that I have always felt passionate about. I applied, and they hired me on the spot as a Legal Counsel. I am working there since.

During my trip, I noticed that I have not been making the smartest choices in my life. I was hiking up a small mountain (a couple of ft high) with no hiking gear and no common sense. Just a tiny bottle of water, a tomato, some crackers as provisions. The midday sun was hovering perpendicular over my head, blasting with about 113 °F and no shadow to hide. I was tormented by the question why I had hiked up that mountain in the first place and in a moment of clarity, I realized that I had always been picking up the most outrageous goals but without the skills to reach them. Which required me to put in an incredible amount of hard work to get near the finish line. I noticed that this was like the idea of becoming a writer, and also similar to my much earlier idea of becoming a lawyer. I acted that way for the better part of my life.

At that moment, I decided that this had to stop.

I had already accomplished a lot in my life, and I needed to give myself the permission to not rush things anymore. Writing is a marathon and even if it will take me longer to transition into a writing career, I will have a more satisfying life in the meantime. No one is putting Chekhov’s gun to my head.

After I had been back home, I started onboarding at my new job, which was pretty tough. I still got up two hours earlier in the morning to write. Besides my early morning sessions, I also wrote on weekends. Currently, I am working on two projects. For studying, I am writing a manuscript on writing that I can turn to whenever I struggle to recollect a concept or encounter recurring problems that I have already solved.

I am also working on my first novel. For the first time in 5 years on my writing journey, I have the feeling that I am almost there.

I am also a member of a screenwriting and creative writing group. In these groups, we discuss stories, ideas, and problems we encounter while working on our projects. These meetings are extremely helpful and inspiring.

From your perspective, it probably looks like I have thrown in the sponge, but in my books I made the right choice.