So~ I applied to college! And~ I got accepted!
I’m taking a life pivot and pursuing a Clinical Mental Health Therapy degree/career. I mentioned considering this in a previous post and I have certainly gotten the ball rolling since then. I don’t have every duck in its line yet, but I’m getting things sorted.
It feels sudden at times, and at other times it feels like a loooong time coming. I’m sort of bridging two of my identities, though at first it felt like I was giving up on being a writer. No, I’m not, as far as I know.
In a way, it’s reminding me of when I realized one of my characters was autistic. Before, I had thought she was complete, but there wasn’t much to her character that made her interesting or real to me. Then when I started giving her intentionally autistic traits, I realized her character felt more complete, more realistic, and more unique. I didn’t erase anything that she was before, but rather added to her and fleshed out traits she already had. Things made a lot more sense.
For me, my first career choice was counseling. I always had people coming to me for advice and I loved talking about emotions and guiding people through social problems. I thought I could be a counselor, and then took a psychology course freshman year of high school and got scared away by all the brain science involved. 😅
Freshman year of high school was also when I started writing the Selenia Ki series and became obsessed with that. So I gave up the counseling idea and took on a full identity of “I’m a writer: It’s what I do.” But, like, I never really stopped loving mental health advocacy and counseling. I still jumped at opportunities to listen and share mental health stories with others, finding ways to uplift people, and weaving therapy into my books through character interactions and healing role models for readers to (hopefully) love.
So, I tell my inner writer self, “No, I’m not leaving you behind. I’m not giving up on you. I’m adding to us.” I’m making myself a more complete character. Writing has given me so many closed doors. I’m still working on book 1 after receiving ~40 or more (I stopped counting) form rejections to query letters over the past eight years. I’ve applied to internships and entry level positions to agencies, publishing companies, and book review jobs, etc, and received only rejections.
The most damaging rejection to my self confidence lately was when I applied to a library clerk position in the same school district as the school I work at. Guys, I work in an alternative high school as a library clerk. I applied to an elementary school so I could have more interaction with the kids and actual library tasks since my high school has so little engagement. I’d worked in an elementary school before in this same district and only left due to Covid 19 issues.
My point is that I already knew the library system (it’s the same district wide), I had experience with kids and was great with them, my mom worked in a different elementary school with the same job and is a literal icon. I thought I was a shoo-in for the job. Nope! They didn’t even interview me. I had to email them weeks after applying and sending in a cover letter to find out they’d already interviewed everyone they were considering and hired a person. I wasn’t even a top choice??
So, yeah. I got accepted to college to pursue mental health therapy and well, when every other door slams shut, you walk through the door that finally opened.
It’s time for me to find new wings.
What does that mean for this website? What does that mean for my writing career? I don’t know yet. Probably nothing drastic. I may have to officially pause things while I’m in college, or maybe college will give me fresh inspiration and time to write creatively. I’m still beta reading and I still love doing that. I need time to focus on fixing pacing issues in my book one and figure out how to make new book 2 a full book 2. I still adore my characters and want to share their stories with the world (and all my DnD friends). So, I don’t think it’s right for me or anyone else to think I’m changing my interests entirely. I’ll still be a writer. 🙂
Anyway, thanks to anyone who has stuck around and read any of my silly nonsense on this author page that I made in 2017ish. I’m proud of how it’s developed despite having no real news like I’d hoped for (getting published and sharing actual news and updates from the other side of that fence), and I’m intrigued to see where I go from here. I don’t know if I’ll do much in the way of updates over the summer.
So yeah. Thanks for being here. ❤ Stay well and make sure to give yourself love, water, and sleep. *hugs!*
N. K. Valek: Author 