I’m sitting at one of my few writing spots at home, drinking a thermos of herbal tea, reminding myself that I’m still kicking ass on not needing to drink more than one cup of coffee. So that’s a win right there to start! Small victories, am I right?

A few days ago, my wife, out of the blue, said, “I saw your story that you wrote recently, and I thought it was really good,” as she was prepping the few days of salad we’ll have. She’s aware of my blog and where I post my stories, but I never thought she was following them. I figured it was more of a, “That’s great, honey,” and then carries on with her day, type of support. But no, she still keeps up with what I do, and that was the boost in confidence I needed and a great feeling; I then felt as though I wanted to find something else to write about.

The 3 A.M. Epiphany

No, this was not me waking up at 3:00 A.M. with an epiphany. Usually, at that time, I’m too tired to even think about anything. It’s a book I own that I’ve wanted to crack open for some time now. The 3 A.M. Epiphany, by Brian Kiteley, is a collection of writing exercises to help fiction writers practice writing and inspire creativity.

I bought this book back in March 2023 to help myself find the creative writing and inspiration to keep going. The idea was to write stories from the exercises in the book and then share them online with everyone, the good and the bad. Fully edited, at least. I’m not sure publishing first drafts would be a good idea for people to read that are full of spelling and grammatical errors.

It would be fun to do since it’s full of ideas and would help me in the long run—a win-win if you ask me.

Fast-forward to Christmas 2024. My wife gave me a set of writing dice to spark creativity. The dice contain options for character dimensions, time, place, theme, etc. Its goal is for you to roll one, a few, or all and go with what the results are with helping you write something out. I’ve used them a few times, but I want to include them more in my stories to help find my creativity. I can use them if required to create something on the spot.

Create a Website

I’m a full-time web developer. My day-to-day tasks involve working on our company’s customer-facing or internal websites, including fixing bugs, adding enhancements to the site, or upgrading to the latest version of add-ons or style guides. It’s an entire week’s worth of work here, so outside of work, I like to spend my free time writing or something that doesn’t involve any more coding. However, I have thought about creating a project to migrate this site away from WordPress and host it myself. So basically, do some more coding outside of work hours.

There’s also the harsh reality that my writing isn’t going to take over as my full-time job anytime soon. Or ever. To be transparent — I haven’t made any money from writing here or submitting stories to publishers. And that’s ok. Most advice that I read or saw was to not quit your day job when starting out writing. I can’t afford to be doing that anyway; not in this economy, that’s for sure.

So, why not work on my day job and write at the same time, then?

My idea at this time is to go on a journey with building a website, and write all about it. The kick here is to build a site using a coding language I’m unfamiliar with, like React (for example). This is to put something else on my tech resume, all while keeping up with my writing, and share my journey with the readers.

The caveat is that even though I’m currently obsessed with my iPad, I won’t be coding on it. I will do all of this on my laptop, just because I’m familiar with Windows’s coding software, and I would rather keep it that way.

There’s also my gripe with other coders and their egos. Not all, but I know some like to shove their big heads into little spaces and make tactless remarks like, ” That’s bad coding,” before even making any suggestions. This field is a measuring contest on who knows more, and I just don’t care for it.

I will build it how I want it, the way I want it.

Final Thoughts

The problem with these ideas is that I also like to contradict them with the truth. “You don’t have the time,” or “What about your other project?” And to that, they’re right. I’m working on a fantasy novel, which I’m only four chapters into, but I am still working on it. Then, my after-hours and weekends are typically shot most of the time, so how can I squeeze in building a website or doing some writing exercises for myself?

But I love that I have these ideas, because you never know. What if building a site and writing about the journey of it becomes a new thing for me that I have an absolute blast doing? I try new things to find out more about myself and what I am truly passionate about. To find my niche, the piece I feel like I’m searching for every day, while I watch others with envy that seem to have found that for themselves. Jerks…

I will keep writing more ideas and find more failure to launch things for myself, hoping it will stick this time. I’m still young, so why not? Am I right?