My eyes open and three centimeters from my face is a wet black nose. I want to complain. I’m not ready to wake up yet. I ask for five more minutes. The high pitch of a whine comes from his throat. I sit up reminiscing about the days I was able to move slowly in the morning when I was at my father’s house. Now I open my eyes and I have five minutes to get up, change clothes, brush my teeth and get leashes attached to my furry bundles of joy.

Outside as I’m pulled towards the dog park, I’m thinking about the soft life videos I’ve watched on YouTube. I make a snarling noise and roll my eyes. “This can’t be it. Can it? I just need coffee and my complaining will stop. I hope.”

This is the new life for me. My last contract ended four months ago. I’ve had several conversations with my maker asking what do I do now? I’m a writer so, write. “Right?”

Shifting is not as easy as I thought. I’m so used to having someone tell me what to do, where to do it at and for how long. Now I’m responsible for myself. I used AI to help me come up with a schedule. It gave me a really good one, but I haven’t incorporated it. It is sitting in my Notes app wondering why I bothered. Then there is the countless hours of watching productivity videos, and not just soft life influencers, so that I can learn to command my day. Instead, I learned that Gen Z’ers talks really fast. I did write down some really good pointers and signed up for the newsletter.

I finally closed the app, and sat down at my computer and did what I do best; I plotted a story. I realized that was my zone of genius. That’s when all the other thoughts come together. It takes me somewhere and I seem to turn into the woman that has all the answers. I’m not scattered and looking for direction from others, but from within.

I attempted to do some decluttering. My oldest complains about how many pieces of paper I have around the house. I came across some old notebooks and saw I had some really good ideas written down in them. All those days I said I didn’t have time, well, I’ve got a whole 24 hours now to put those ideas into action. Sorta. I do have to stop and play fetch and rub bellies with the fur babies. But most of the 24 is mine. And I’m not so much as trying to command them as I am trying to harness them.

According to my well created schedule, between the hours of 10am to 11am, I’m suppose to be doing skill development or preparation. From 11am to 1:30pm, novel writing. And then from 1:30pm to 3pm, job search. These are my productive hours. Do I follow this? Eh. However, I’ve traded skill development for creating social media content and job search is down to 30 minutes allowing more time for writing. The 3pm to 4pm for networking and follow up turned into me writing an article and posting it on LinkedIn. That reminds me, I need to come up with another one.

I think this is how you answer the question of what’s next. It’s the things that come naturally. I’ve been writing for years now, but not really broadcasting it. It’s time to share. It’s time to do the thing that makes me cringe: marketing. Will I wake up a year from now and have a 100K followers? I don’t know. That would actually scare introvert me, but I will still be writing.

If you are wondering what’s next, then stop for a minute. What comes natural? What makes you feel like a genius? That’s the thing. Keep doing it. Hold onto it like a dog with bone. (or a ball)

I’ll see you on the other side of it!

-Portia Leivette