Everything Comes at a Price

If it were easy to make choices, everyone would do it

Lisa Dexter
4 min readJan 25, 2022
Photo by Sudarshan Bhat on Unsplash

It’s been too long since I published anything. Weeks seemed to disappear in minutes until over a month had vanished. My plans didn’t stand a chance against reality.

Best laid plans

I had it all mapped out last fall. I would continue to homeschool my daughter Amelia, try to ramp up my online writing time with an eye toward breaking into markets that paid better than what I could earn collecting cans on the highway, and work on getting healthier so I could have a knee operation. I figured I could balance it all while dealing with household responsibilities and an energy-zapping chronic illness by compartmentalizing each task and leaving pockets of rest time. Life wasn’t perfect, but I was limping along — no pun intended.

I abandoned my seemingly futile job search to put my work-related energy toward freelance writing. I started publishing on my website and other sites that offered negligible pay at best but let me flex my writing muscles, and I planned to find my way to paying clients, but I stalled out. I’d begun to harbor doubts about my ability to successfully break into freelancing when I received an email from someone who’d seen a recommendation my former boss posted about me. He needed a writer and editor on a…

--

--

Lisa Dexter

I am a freelance writer from the Chicago area. I have one awesome child, one sweet husband, one clingy cat, and one website: www.thinkingwhiletyping.com.