Writing and Publishing: What is Your Vortex?

 Here is one of the definitions of Vortex according to the Merriam-Webster dictionary:


                 Vortex ˈvȯr-tə-ˌsēz: something that resembles a whirlpool


I don’t know about you, but in my life, there are  a lot of vortexes (yes, this is a word, I checked). A vortex to me is, like the definition above says, a whirlpool that takes your time and flushes it down the drain. There are several things that suck the life out of me (or time) and I am going to talk about mine.


Not everybody’s vortexes are the same. You may have some in common with your neighbor and some are only and exclusively your own.


I am going to talk about mine, because I think that one way of getting away from them is to identify them and then you can start swimming as hard as you can to get out of their pull.


First of all, I will say that the point of getting rid of them is to get more time to write (and to do constructive things that get me a job or money in some way for delivering a service or good). But, basically write.


I stopped being part of the work-force in Novermber 2016. No, I am not proud of it, and even when some people may say that that being a full-time mom is a full-time job, I think that there is a lot of range for improvement. Especially when your kids are a certain age. Although, once I got out of the profession that drained me of my time (teaching), I couldn’t decide what it was I wanted to do for a living. I couldn’t decide what I was good at or how to get good at something to get hired.


Granted, I have some restrictions, the main one to work part time to still take care of my family the way we want (my husband and I) our family to be taken cared of, but I still needed to do something.


There were several things that sprang to mind to improve my professional life:
1. Learn to code (because apparently there’s people who still think I have a good brain)
2. Learn something about finance (because I like numbers and patterns and are good at them)
3. Write (because I have written since college, have plenty of stories that need revising and have always wanted to publish them)


And that’s basically it. So, I started to learn to code (and still failing at it) and write. Once I finished revising and editing the first book I wanted to publish I came to realization that no one read it. I was an unknown, yada-yada-yada, and I needed to do something about it. Research then showed me that being active in social media could help, so I set up a writing blog and a mom blog with the hopes of getting people to get to know me (I am not only introverted, I have social anxiety). The problem with that was that I began to spend a whole bunch of time writing the blogs that I didn’t have time for anything else! It was so time consuming… so, it became a vortex.


VORTEX #1: Blogs!




If that weren’t enough, every night and every weekend I was so tired of mommy-ing and blogging that all I wanted to do was either watch TV with my family/husband…

VORTEX #2: TV!

… or playing videogames. Especifically: Zelda – Breath of the Wild. I played so much between March 3rd and May 31st, that by the time I finished the game I had spent 170 hours playing. Do you know how much I could have written/learned to code in that time! It’s crazy! 


VORTEX #3: Zelda, Breath of the Wild

Then, there’s the wonderful Facebook. Don’t think I’m hooked to Facebook, but I am more drawn to it with my books starting to see the light of day because, well, first of all I have an author page and that needs to be maintained. Then I have a twitter account, and guess what? That needs to be looked after, too! That said:


VORTEX #4: Facebook and Twitter

Sure, there are other things I like to do, but I wouldn’t call spending time with my family a vortex. NEVER! Nor would I call reading a vortex, I couldn’t! So, there you have it… now you know what drains my time to be a more constructive and creative being.