I’m sitting here in my own house with pup snoring somewhere down the hallway and my day is completely my own. I can write, I can sit out on the porch and read a book. I’m in good (enough) health.  I have plenty of food in the fridge.  Money in the bank to pay my bills.  Good friends. Family is doing well.  The nasty stress that used to feel like a hundred-pound weight pressing down on my shoulders is a distant memory.  I’m on track to have my best month ever self-publishing.

And yet…

I’m dissatisfied.

I want more.

I want to know that my writing will pay my bills. That I can keep doing this for years and be successful at it.  I want to know that I’ll be able to keep this house long-term.  I don’t want to have to return to that world that I did well in but that felt like wearing one of those Medieval hair shirts.

I should be happy right now.  I’m making forward progress towards my dreams.

But I want to write a book that people adore.  That they tell their friends about and re-read over and over again because it’s just that good.  And a book that I love, too.  Not something I write to appeal to the masses, but something I write because I love it and I find the people who feel the same way.

I sit here, overwhelmed with so many ideas and so many possible paths and no way to know which one leads to where I want to be.

I’m grateful for everything I have.  I am. I have been so so fortunate to do what I’ve done the last seven years since I left my day job.  I just…I want more. And I’m beginning to fear that that’s always how I’ll be.  That there will be moments of happiness or contentment, but that they’ll be gone within a day or a week.  That I will always see what more life could be and never truly be able to settle into the moment and enjoy it for what it is…