Mother’s Day was weeks ago but the job of being a mother never ends. It’s not a one-day-a-year job. It’s a 24/7 job that starts the day she knows she’s pregnant until the day she passes away. Doesn’t matter how old her children are, they will always be her children and she will always worry about them.

I worried about our son when, after college, he took a job in south Florida. He had to drive his then new-to-him pick-up truck all the way there while pulling a trailer. He’d never pulled a load like that before. I worried about him when Hurricane Irma barreled down on them last year.

I worried about our daughter when she decided to make a much needed change and took a job in another state, in a city she’d never visited before. I worried about her when she did a couple contracts as a men’s maximum security prison nurse.

I worried about them when love relationships fell apart and they called because they thought their entire world was falling apart and only their mother could help. I worried about their jobs and what would happen if (you fill in the blank). I worried about them when they were sick or injured and too far away for me to do anything except listen and pray.

At the same time, I feel tremendous pride in their confidence, their sense of adventure. I could never have packed all my things and moved all by myself to somewhere I’d never been before. I was married when we moved half way across country. Our daughter is coming to visit next week and she’s making the very long drive alone. She’s done this before and all went well, but that doesn’t mean I won’t worry about her the entire day she’s traveling here, and then again the entire day she’s traveling back home.

Being a mother is not for the faint of heart. It’s not an easy job. It’s not a job to take lightly. But it is a job that pays in happiness much greater than the sorrows and I wouldn’t do it differently for anything in the world.

Writers write, and that’s something I haven’t been doing a lot of lately. My calendar has been pretty full for the last couple months; plus, I admit, I fell into a bit of a discouraged phase where I found it difficult to force myself back into the habit. So I turned to my wonderful writer friends for example and encouragement.

My WisRWA friends are the best! They’re always right there when someone needs a suggestion or just a little pick-me-up.

Writing is a tough business. You can pen a brilliant novel and have trouble selling it. Publishers are, of course, all about making money and your great American novel might not be what’s selling at the moment. Or, maybe they just bought a similar work from a name they know will sell on recognition alone. Again, you may have offered them the best book they’ve read in the last decade but if no one knows your name they might have trouble selling enough copies to clear their bottom line. It’s all in the timing, who you know, and who knows you. That’s where conferences come into play. You get to schmooze with editors and agents, pitch your novel, get your name and face out there.

But before a writer can get to the point of even worrying about such things…a writer has to write. I’m in between these two stages of my career. I have one completed novel I think is really good and another where I’m struggling to write that elusive first draft. It can be hard to work on the latter when the attempts to sell the former leave you questioning why you’re doing this to yourself in the first place.

I’m also finding my creative juices drained by my weekly search for a blog topic. With that in mind, I’m going to change from posting every week to every other week. I hope no one is too disappointed, but I figure it’s a win/win situation. You get better, more interesting, blog content and I get a steady flow of new chapters for my work-in-progress.