I Have a Serious Question for You: How the F*ck Have You Been Doing This For so Long?

I'm three and a half weeks into my first ever 9 to 6, Monday to Friday job. And I am exhausted.

The job is great! The people, greater! And the lifestyle: everything that I'm not used to.

I've been a freelance or part-time writer for five years now and one of my favourite perks of the job - other than storytelling for a living - was the freedom to choose my working hours verses living hours. If Ben was off from work on a Wednesday, I'd tell my old boss, "gonna get the work done this evening/at the weekend because it's Ben's day off and we're going camping."

No questions asked.

I always got the work done. I also always managed to manage my time well because it was my time, not company time and time has forever, and will forever be an infinitely larger priority to me than a salary.

The slow life is the dream life

I'm a slow liver (that doesn't mean I process alcohol poorly) and the slow life has always been my ideal lifestyle.

Waking up knowing I can start work in an hour or two after reading a couple chapters of my newest fantasy book whilst I cradle my soulmate's sleeping head against my heart. Milling about the day knowing that I can stop to go for a coffee with my mom should she spontaneously pop round, because I can come back and finish the work when I get home. Existing in every day, in every moment, and not living solely for the weekend and for three weeks of 52 in which to finally relax.

But now that's exactly what I'm doing. I've gone from being who I am, who I'm meant to be, to the very opposite of that.

I literally have the word "today" tattooed onto my wrist as a reminder that every today is the only day we've got, yet nowadays I find myself pining for the first five today's of every week to blur across my path like a time tumbleweed and deliver the weekend straight into my palms.

Now I'm scouring my work calendar and salivating at the sight of my 2 week upcoming camping trip in France, an excitement that is coupled with bread (aka pain - get it?) knowing that already, I've run out of holiday. Leaving me locked in to living for the weekend, and only the weekend. for the rest of the year.

Suddenly I'm the antithesis of mindfulness - I'm stuck in the grindfulness.

Worse still, I've become a Grumpy Girl™

With only an hours lunch to cram in food shopping, actually eating and more head-heart holding of my Ben, I've become increasingly impatient.

I get moody when I clock off at 6 and then check the clock five minutes later and suddenly it's 9.

I get antsy knowing that the weekend is only 2 days long and way too short.

And I get sad when I finish, exhausted from staring at a screen for 8 hours, knowing that the very thing I want to do most (have always wanted to do most) is get back to the writing I love to write, my stories, my book, even my journal at times - but I'm too tired to do any of it.

I have always lived by the philosophy that time is the most important currency we have. We live in a society that regards money as power, as though the more you have, the longer you'll live and the larger quantity of those that will love you. But time, when spent right, trumps that belief entirely.

The more time you spend with loved ones, the more fulfilled you'll be. The more time spent doing what you love, the healthier your heart, body and mind. The more time experiencing and exploring and existing  -  the lifeier your life.

Slaving away for 40 hours a week strips you of that. And just like that, work takes over your life until your life feels like hard work.

So what do I do? What do YOU do? How have you been doing this for so long?

I'm 27 and this is my first full-time experience of this feeling. I know how lucky I am to have not had to stop drop and roll into this lifestyle at the unwitting age of 16, straight out of school regimes and directly into working ones. But that doesn't mean I want to settle for it, either.

There are those out there doing what they love for a living. Working hours of their own choosing in places calling them home. As the tattoo on my dad's arm would say,

"They're the architect of their own fortunes."

And as my dad regularly reminds me,

"There are two types of people in this world, Smiler. Followers and leaders. Be the latter. Forge your own path."

That's what I want to do. That's what I'm going to do. Be an architect. Be a leader. Be a full-time Em.

If that's what you do - how do you do it? I'd really like to know.