After a few bouts of severe depression (worst its been in a loooooong time), some roommate troubles (which may or may not be related to said depression), a week of vacation time, and more than a few false starts, I’m happy to say I’m back to writing. Which will hopefully include updating this blog.
Right now, since it’s 10:30pm as I’m working on this and I get up for work every day at 5:45am or earlier, I don’t have time for much. I might try smaller blog posts in general, so some feedback on content is always appreciated in the comments.
Tonight, I started thinking about what it’d be like to be a professional writer. Typically, I think about this in terms of having more time to dedicate to my craft every day. I think of how awesome it would be to never again sacrifice sleep to get anything done and how great it’d feel to get into an exercise routine I could keep up while writing. Right now, writing and proper exercise don’t mix too well since writing requires sleeping less and exercise requires sleeping more.
No, tonight I was thinking about whether or not I’d be able to write candles off as a business expense on a tax return. I like to work at night in as dim lighting as possible. I’ve tried a variety of programs to dim/change the light on my monitors (f.lux is my favorite since it cuts down on the headaches I get from looking at a computer screen too much), but eventually I always feel like I am getting stabbed in the eyes if I work in pitch darkness. I hate fluorescent lighting with an undying passion and haven’t found a dim incandescent light bulb I like, so I tend to lean toward candles.
Looks nice, yeah? WAY better than light bulbs.
Unfortunately, light bulbs are WAY cheaper than candles. I’ve yet to find a good deal on bulk pillar candles (tapers aren’t worth the bother), so that means occasionally going to target and dropping $50+ on candles I can only really expect to last a month of writing sessions. At most. And those are just plain, white, unscented candles. If I actually wanted them to smell like anything, that price could easily double.
When you’re living on a budget that’s kept tight for maximum student loan payment, its REALLY hard to justify $50 in candles. It’d be way easier to justify if I got something back for them when it came to filing my taxes.
This may be a problem that’ll only need an answer when I’m a successful novelist and, since I’ll likely have the money (and eccentricity) to just circumvent the entire issue by making my own candles, the answer is likely to be irrelevant by the time I’ve got it. Keeping bees has always sounded like fun to me. It’d give me something to do when I can’t write. Then, when I’m trying to sell a book to a publisher, I can advertise my “honeyed words” and laugh my ass off when I mail a manuscript whose pages are stuck together using the other by-product of bee-keepership.