… and back to the beginning?

I was a columnist for a long time.

My DIY column, My Handmade Home, ran for five years and 11 months before getting canned in the earliest days of the ‘Vid. (Newspaper, yo, we were hit hard.)

My parenting column, The Mom Scene, ran for seven years and seven months before I chose to stop writing it to preserve my kids’ privacy.

(Shout-out to my LinkedIn profile for providing me with such exact dates. If it weren’t for reading about my own job experience on LinkedIn, everything would be a blur of “two thousand and something” and “before kids” or just … blank confusion.)

I was a freelancer for a long time.

It was my livelihood for a decade — living from one assignment to the next, chasing down interviewees, juggling different deadlines, and hoping I’d get paid before I was really strapped for the cash from a particular invoice.

I’m still a freelancer, in theory, but only for a handful of clients I just can’t quit. I’m now also a full-time content marketing manager, which means I get a guarenteed paycheque direct deposited in my bank account every two weeks like clockwork, and I must say, WOW, it’s pretty amazing after 10 years of never knowing when I was getting paid. I still marvel at it, almost a year in.

The last time I was a full-time employee was when I went on maternity leave with D. Twelve years ago. TWELVE!

When I started this blog in January of 2009, my life was weirdly similar to how it is today.

I was working full-time.

I was getting up early to write/edit novels.

I was sending out pitches (and collecting rejection letters).

I dreamed of being an author.

I had a small brown dog.

I was weirdly obsessed with chicken wraps and Twilight soundtrack. (Holds up.)

Oh, and Michael also had a buzzcut.

Of course, a lot is different now, too.

We own a house in the country, instead of a condo in the city.

We have two amazing kids (something I blogged about wanting, desperately, back in 2009)

We have two vehicles. (Ironically, lately I’m missing the Jeep we had back in 2009. Don’t tell my husband*** because he’s been pestering me to talk about trading vehicles or something, and I just don’t have the bandwidth for that kind of discussion now … or ever.)

***No worries about him reading here because the goof doesn’t even read my Instagram posts, which are way shorter than this, lol.

My life is different than it was in 2009, but also kind of the same.

My goal in 2009 was to have beautiful babies — check! check! — and have a house I could decorate and organize to my heart’s content — check!

My goal in 2009 was to make a living with my writing, and I did! I’ve made a living with my writing ever since my maternity leave in 2010, actually, and now I make a living on my writing but also the related skills that come with that — like editing and magangement.

My goal in 2009 was to be a published author, and that’s still my goal. 2021 is drawing to a close in a couple of months, but hey, there’s always 2022.

If not, maybe twelve years from now, I’ll be writing another post about how 2033 Heather also weirdly likes the playlists, red lipstick and Smoky Bacon chips of 2021 Heather. 😉