Full Time !

Yes, the countdown clock is going. I'm officially retired after 34 years of teaching high school. Those last days were hectic and lots of fun. The four younger teachers in my department took my fellow retiree and me out to lunch one day, gave us wonderful cards and gifts. I have a stack of cards and letters from my students, many that choked me up but none that could wipe the grin from my face. On that last day I received lots of calls from my family, hugs from my peers, including the school superintendent, and walked out of that school building with no regrets and lots of plans.

During that last hectic week at school, I also received the (hopefully) last round of edits for First Dragon from my editor at Crescent Moon Press. So between all the smiling and hugging, I worked on those edits, tried to keep up on blogging, facebooking and get in a few new pages on The Queen's Heiress, the follow up book to The Marine's Queen. 

In fact, I spent the last week fulfilling one of my retirement intentions. Keeping multiple projects in the air. And I loved it. Writing easily could have captured more than forty hours during that time. It was wonderful. So edits are done and sent back, 5K done on WIP, and blogs are ready for the week. I have a lot of little things to accomplish but also time for the WIP.

Besides all the in person kindness I received on retirement, Alex Cavanaugh kindly congratulated me on his blog. It was like another hug just to make the day complete. Thanks, Alex.

I know many people will be taking holidays over the  next few months as will I. I'm looking forward to a quick, trip to the Jersey Shore next week. The second week of July, we're heading to Colorado. I'm not sure how much I'll be in touch. Now that I'm a full time writer, I have to wonder when exactly the days off are.

What are your plans for summer vacations? We did stay-cations last year, very cheap. Are you setting some writing goals for the summer months?

A to Z Challenge: D

Thanks for stopping by and being part of the A to Z Blogging Challenge. There are loads of blogs to check out here. I'm keeping with my theme of how I'll be advancing my career as a full time writer after I retire from teaching in June.

D: Dream. Since I penned my very first novel in longhand, I dreamed of being a full time writer. Sure I heard the stats of how few writers earn an actual living wage for their efforts. I heard the phrase, 'don't give up your day job,' constantly when I started out. And I didn't but I still dreamed of being able to write full time and envied those who did.

Truth was, most of the people I knew who didn't have a day job and could write full time had a spouse who had a really good job so they didn't need their writing income. But I dreamed and now I'll be living the dream though it's only because I'll have a pension income. I would starve if I tried to live on my writing income. Take note of the countdown on the right. Soon I won't be dreaming and I hope you don't give up your dreams either. They're great motivators.

Do you dream of being a full time writer? Are you close to obtaining a dream of yours even if it isn't writing?

When I Retire List

If you're a regular follower of this blog, you might get tired of all the times I refer to 'when I retire' throughout this next year. But here's another vow I'm making to myself.

I'm going to be a better follower of my bloggy friends. I try to make sure I comment back to people who comment on my blog. And I have my list of friends on my sidebar so I can easily see when they've updated their blogs and make sure I visit them.

But I follow a lot of other blogs and don't get to them nearly often enough. I love blogfests but then I feel guilty when I don't get to visit everyone participating. And beyond the guilt, I know I'm missing out on lots of interesting and useful posts.

So when I retire and become a full time writer, part of every day will be spent keeping up with all those I've not been giving my fair share of attention to. I'm going to visit all over the place.

And I'm sure between now and then I'll discover even more blogs. I hope those new friends make it easy to follow them by putting their follow buttons near the top of their blog if they're using blogger. I hope they turn off word verification to make it easy to comment.

When I retire.....

So is it just me or are those word verification scrambles getting harder to read? It nearly always takes me two tries to get it right. Do you make it easy for someone to follow your blog?