A couple of months back, I spent a good few days researching my company’s flexible working policy in great detail. Needless to say, it was boring as hell but I did learn a fair amount of things (and vow to always read work policies from now on. Seriously, go read your own; you may find you’ve got an awful lot of privileges that your place of work has mysteriously failed to tell you about).
In my next one to one with my line manager, I announced to her that I wanted to start working compressed hours so I had more time to write. Amazingly, she said yes.
I had to fill out an application form and wait for it to go through several people and drift around HR’s inbox for a while but eventually I got the go ahead, and this week I’ve worked longer hours every day so that, when Friday hit, I could log-off at midday.
MIDDAY.
And now I’m sat in Costa with my laptop and my thoughts and absolutely no work emails whatsoever and I am TERRIFIED.
I have wanted this moment for so long. Because all I’ve wanted for a long time is more time to write. And since moving to St Albans, every day I’ve walked past cafes (cos lol I swear this place births another one every week) and imagined myself sat in one of them with my laptop and just writing, with no restrictions and no other obligations.
And, in my own small way, I’ve made it happen. I know one small afternoon a week doesn’t sound like a lot. But that’s a whole six hours I didn’t have before. A whole six hours to myself that I can dedicate to purely writing.
I’m filled with this intense thrill at the thought. But I am also shitting myself. Because there’s nowhere to hide now. There’s been a lot of fantasising and not a lot of doing when it’s come to writing in the last couple of years (a result of the reality that is post-graduate life), hence why I put in the compressed hours request. So now I’ve got to actually do it. To write regularly again; to see if this is absolutely what I want my main focus to be and then plan my life around it.
And I’m scared. Scared that it won’t be as good as I imagined. Or that this desperate need I feel may turn out to be me clinging on to writing because it’s the only thing I’ve ever known. Or that I’ll find I can’t do it anymore.
And I’m excited. Excited that it might be exactly how I imagined. That these ideas and thoughts and characters that are whirring around my head might be put on paper and actually exist outside my own head. That this may be the start of the next chapter.
I don’t entirely know how to end this post so I’m just gonna note that I’m still so happy I did this despite the fact that I’ve realised my laptop battery is not equipped for several hours in Costa without being plugged in, and a child just screamed loud enough to make me change my mind about having children. Oh and there is a lack of seats and a guy just tried to sit at my table with me. Um, no hun. Nuh uh.
Kay bye.
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