How I Feel After Publishing my First Medium Article

So, I did it. I’m sat in the bottom corner of my garden as its the only spot that gets the sun this late in the year, I’m surrounded by dying wasps and too near the composter for my liking but I couldn’t be happier. The sun is shining, its a beautiful day (and we make the most of them here in the North East of England), I’m surrounded by the leaves turning golden, my daughters bike and my incredibly handsome husband who is doing his own work in the shade, which is a good job as I don’t think we’d both fit in this tiny sun spot and I did it, I finally did it!!

I’m looking at the big waste of money and space in our garden, the trampoline!! Bought at the beginning at lockdown for our eight year olds birthday, she’s barely been on it and I’ve discovered that I really need to work on my pelvic floor muscles before attempting again without tena lady. But even that cant bring me down today.

Today I’ve even taken a selfie, something I never do, and you know what? I don’t hate myself in it because today I have achieved, I feel proud, I feel motivated and I feel like the life I’m trying to create for my family is beginning.

As a previously very busy freelance personal safety trainer, I have worked the equivalent of 3 days since March when lockdown began. It taught me that I needed more sources of income, it taught me that I love my work but I love being at home with my family more. I’d love to earn what I was before but I need to look at different ways to do that than sometimes travelling and having long days away from my family. My work is picking up again but all online so no travelling which is great, although I miss the actual interaction with people and I talk with my hands and body a lot so I find it very difficult to sit down and deliver training, but I can adapt.

The writing though, that’s for me. I started doing it as a way to get things off my chest, I have pages of very brief notes that I still have to figure out where I was going with them and expand. Then I discovered Medium and I love reading about what everyone else thinks and knows so I did it, I pressed the button on my very first piece after months of deliberating and procrastinating. I’ll admit, its probably not a great piece, it might remain unread forever, but it’s so much more than that for me, its a start. And it feels amazing!! Everything else I’ve done today I’ve done with more enthusiasm and joy because of that sense of achievement I feel from now being able to call myself a writer!