What If Our Baby Grows Up To Be Prime Minister?
Personally, I find politics very frustrating and unappealing. Don't get me wrong: I think politicians are important people, and we need to have good people out there who aspire to be great politicians. For myself, though, I find the partisanship, hostility, and negative campaigning tactics really exhausting.
But if our baby decides to go into politics, then I'm going to do everything I can to help him be a good politician and to become Prime Minister! Because if our baby grows up to be Prime Minister, I'll probably get to meet lots of famous people, and that's always fun.
I'll help our baby run straightforward election campaigns and never stoop to smearing his opponents or trying to dig up their personal histories to make them look bad, like all the other politicians out there do. I'll advise our Prime Minister baby to do what he knows is good and right, regardless of the public outcry.
Then I'll get him to declare my birthday a national holiday, of course. Hooray!
A Declaration of Intent: The Grocery Fund
My Dream
For a long time I've downplayed, shrugged off, or even been embarrassed about my dream to be a full-time author. I've convinced myself that it's just a fantasy, one of those pointless thought exercises, like "What would I do with a million dollars?"
I've made a conscious decision now. It isn't a fantasy, it isn't pie in the sky. My writing is no longer just a hobby. It's a mission.
My Pursuit
Every person I know of who has built a career out of a creative pursuit has made it to where they are through a combination of both talent and time investment. I think I have the talent to be a professional author, but I know I'm going to need to invest a lot of time--probably years' worth of time--into seeing that talent bear fruit. What I'm saying today is that I'm ready and willing to invest that time.
Today, I am writing full-time while I search for a job in my field (sociology). In addition to working on two ongoing series (Special People and Losing Freight), I'm putting out a short story every Monday, maintaining my 50-Word Stories site, and trying to make headway on a novel. I'm honing my skills, improving my storytelling, and taking the creative side of things very seriously.
Of course, I have to take the financial side of life seriously, too. It's important to be realistic: right now my writing is not paying the bills. I hope it will some day, and that's what I'm working towards, but I'm not there yet.
It's going to take a lot of time and a lot of hard work to get where I want to go with my writing. I'm going to have to accomplish a lot of smaller goals along the way. I'm declaring one of those "stepping stone" goals today, by setting up the Grocery Fund. I want to sell enough of my self-published writing to pay my family's grocery bills each month. That's about $300.
The Grocery Fund is a pretty ambitious goal for me, and it may take some time to get there, but I know I already have a great base of friends and fans who support me, and I'm confident it's an achievable target.
How You Can Help
If you enjoy my writing and want to help me pursue my dream, there are two main things you can do: you can support me with a dollar, or with a minute.
With a Dollar
- Check out my Store and pick up a book or a short story. I'm putting up new stories, collections, and books all the time! Everything is Creative Commons licensed and DRM-free and comes in a wide variety of file formats to make it easy for you to read and share.
- Support me directly with a tip or a donation. I put out a lot of content for free, so I'm relying on your generosity to see a return on my time investment.
With a Minute
- Share one of my stories or one of my sites with your friends, online or in person. Every conversation, tweet, and Facebook post is a big help!
- If you've read one of my stories or books, leave a quick review/rating for it on Amazon. Reviews only take a minute or two to write, but they go a long way towards bringing in more eyes and more customers.
- Say hi to me on Twitter, Facebook, or Google+. It's a big encouragement to hear from all of you, and encouragement is currency to a creative person like me. Don't be shy!
The Grocery Fund is not intended to be a request for charity. It's a call to action for my friends and fans. This is your opportunity to invest in me and my writing.
You'll be able to track my progress day-to-day, month-to-month, on the Grocery Fund page.
Keep checking back in on my blog as I continue to release more of my writing, put up more products in the Store, and document my triumphs and my struggles along the path to my dream. It's going to be a bumpy ride, I'm sure, but I hope you take the journey with me.
Thanks,
Tim Sevenhuysen
Surprise Baby Shower
While Larissa and I were on the mainland last week visiting with family (on both her side and mine), Larissa's family surprised us with a baby shower. The "surprise" portion of this was no small feat: Larissa is notoriously difficult to surprise.
The closest I've come to surprising Larissa was when I gave her an antique secretary desk as a Christmas present a year ago. She had no idea until Christmas Eve, when she followed me downstairs at my parents' house and found me putting the finishing touches on it.
The way the family managed the surprise this time around was pretty ingenious. Larissa had contacted her cousin, Kristal, asking if she and her husband wanted to get together while we were on the mainland. Kristal invited us over for dinner.
A couple of days later, Kristal mentioned our dinner date to her mom. Aunt Anneliese suggested that they could jump on that opportunity and turn it into a baby shower. Pretty much all of the female sisters, cousins, and in-laws were able to make it work. So we went over on Thursday and had dinner with Shaun and Kristal, and about fifteen minutes after we'd eaten there was a knock on the door and the house flooded with women!
(Larissa cried! It was cute and sweet.)
I spent the evening with Shaun, watching sports highlights and talking about music, books, and movies. In the meantime, Larissa was being showered generously with gifts. Along with all kinds of newborn diapers, toys, and clothes, we also received a brand new car seat! So that's one of the Baby Fund items crossed off the list. We've been taken care of so well that I think the Baby Fund is more or less fully funded at this point. I may have to direct future writing profits towards something else! :)
Thanks so much to our extended family for the baby shower and all of the wonderful gifts.
For more pictures and another write-up of the evening, check out Aunt Anneliese's blog post. She also has a tutorial on how to build your own Diaper Cake, like the one featured in the picture above.




