Very pretty, and the lemon flower is sweet; but the fruit of the poor lemon is impossible to eat.

Sometimes, my brain decides to set me up for major life change when I’m not looking.   It sneaks around when I’m busy dealing with other things, and then…  Whamo!  I get really large amounts of change handed to me.

My original plan had been to retire from having to work retail in ten years.  Yeah, that was taking too long.  So, my brain high-jacked my mouth, and now here I am with no employment but what I make for myself.  Exciting times.

I’m looking at a part time job, with a full time self employed career doing freelance writing.  A certain New York Times bestselling author thinks I could do well at that.  And, I’ve been giving this some thought, with more apparently going on in the back of the consciousness than I’d been aware of.

I spent today trying to get foodstamps out of my gubment.  (Thirty days.  I guess I’ll be on a diet for a while.)  I also put in an application at a non-clothing retail place.  Mayby I can work in the garden center.  I’d like that, for a while at least.

And then I hung out with some friends, all writers, of course, who gave me great advice, and pointed out some very obvious things.  There’s a certain personality around here, locally well known (or at least infamous), who I’ll call ‘Folksinger’.  Don’t worry, he doesn’t sing.  Anyway, it was pointed out to me that I could be Folksinger, or I could be someone cool and neat, and actually do something with my life, and follow my dreams, and…  yeah.

So.  It’s start a cult of personality and sit back in a haze of could-have-beens, or actually do it.

This is so incredibly scary, I don’t have words for it.  So, naturally, I have to talk about it for several paragraphs.  I know what all the negatives are.  Or, I think I know where all the negatives are.  I’m sure there are some I haven’t forseen, waiting like a rake in tall grass to rise up under the unwary tread of the novice writer.  I’m not looking forward to the lumps, or the embarrassing stories about how I got that spectacular bruise.   But, hey, I’m always telling people cautionary tales drawn from my own experience.

So, new plan!  Get part time job to pay bills until full time self-employment takes off.  Then, quit part time job.  Write as freelancer to make money.  Write fiction for fun (and money).  Write poetry to win Pulitzer.  Become famous, attend various cons and acquire gaggle of fan boys and girls to fan me with palm fronds.

I think it’s doable.  I will, naturally, be spending a couple of days plumbing my unconscious to see if there are any other fun surprises lurking in there, and making sure this is not another fun and educational attempt at self sabotage.  It doesn’t feel like it, it feels like I’m ready.  Gods, that’s scary to think, and even scarier to type out.

Look out world, here I come.