Whelp, it’s a gorgeous Sunday in Wellington. I spent the morning down at Princess Bay throwing the rugby ball around with Paul and reading some hilarious yet insightful essays by David Foster Wallace on the beach. Ate a seafood pie for lunch, and let pastry and creamy chunks of crab and mussels drip down my esophagus and congeal in the pit of stomach (and it was totally worth it).

And now I am back inside writing cover letters and updating my objectives on CVs, writing things to hiring managers and HR head honchos like: “I am delighted to submit my cover letting and CV for your review.”

And I kind of want to vomit. And it isn’t the pie talking.

My boyfriend is a musician. He loves his guitar more than anything in this world (including me, I am certain). And he’s really good at it. Like really, really good at it. But he spends forty hours a week in an office building in the CBD of Wellington working for a government department as a business designer. He’s good at that too, but it’s not music. In between his job, spending time with yours truly, and his many other hobbies and interests, he fits music into his free space.

I have no freaking idea how he does it.

Paul is always telling me that I have to find time to write. I should get up early before work and write. I should come home after work and write. I should spend chunks of my weekend doing what I love to do most – which is to write.

But I don’t really work that way. Maybe I am lazy. Maybe I have to brush up on my time management skills (as Paul recently offered up as advice after one of my whining ramblings in Ho Chi Minh City). But maybe working full-time in an office, whether it’s a job I enjoy or not, sucks out any creative juices I might have.

I never wanted my writing to feel like a chore, especially since so much of the rest of my life feels likes like series of tasks I must accomplish in order to make money, fit into society, make other people happy, work towards a “better future”, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera…

I know what you eternal optimists are thinking right now. If you love something, it shouldn’t feel like work.

Well, that is a fantastic point of view, but so incredibly unreasonable in my eyes that I want to smack anyone who sincerely suggests this to me across the face.

Ask a mother (or father) who works a full time job whether her children ever exhaust her. Sure, she loves them with her entirety and would never take back motherhood. But dammit, I am certain there are very real moments when her kids feel like they are sucking the very soul out of her.

I recently came across a sarcastic, yet this-is-totally-true article in the Onion by David Ferguson entitled: “Find the thing you’re most passionate about, then do it on nights and weekends for the rest of your life”.

First, I read it and laughed. When I read it again, I wanted to weep. And then, I decided that David’s words might just be enough (for now) to help me pull my head in, refocus on what I want, where I am in life, and how I can actually make (or at least try to make) things happen for me.

I am young. I am childless. I am mortgage-free. I don’t care about having fast cars (actually I don’t have any car at all) or nice things. I am totally okay with having chickpeas or omelets for dinner.

But I won’t be in this position for the rest of my life.

I am just back from a life-changing trip to Vietnam that was so jam packed full of crazy stories that they are starting to fight their way out of me.

If now is not the time to really “go for it”, I’m not sure when will be.