Last year my husband was laid off and out of work for ten months. I was homeschooling at the time, but I put the kids in school and decided to finally start a business I had been daydreaming about for a few years, to do with property management in our little part of coastal Maine. I wanted to be part of showcasing how amazing my adopted home is, because though we are coastal Maine, we’re one of the most impoverished counties in the nation.

I jumped in, listening to your podcasts and with some help from a coach friend, and things started moving. Around about the same time I decided to try writing for our local newspaper, because I’ve wanted to be a writer since the fourth grade, but hadn’t overcome my fears. I started with a small column, moved onto articles, and now I’m the editor of the paper and have been published in four other papers so far this year.

I like being a part of framing how both locals and tourists see this little slice of Maine. I like kicking off the dialogue, being part of the dialogue, and if you’ll forgive the overused term, “curating” our community, mirroring it back to itself. In this sense, one passion (for my community) materialized in two different ways.

In the midst of this, my husband took a job requiring him to be out of state 2/3rds of the time, and we have two sons at home (14 & 9). I’m also the president of my library board, and leading a seven-figure capital campaign we started this January.

My friend and I call ourselves “plate spinners” but there may be a serious lack of constraint here as well. 🙂

I’m in a great place with my position as the editor, and I am passionate about this library work. But I also want to earn more money. I don’t see how that is going to happen with journalism. I had decided to close up shop on the property business because it feels so hard to go in two directions, esp. when there is breaking news (unpredictable) and customer issues (also unpredictable). But then last night someone asked me to take their business and it has me sort of wondering, am I looking at this wrong, and there’s a way to do it all? Or should I constrain to one paid job, one major volunteer job, and go deep?

Thank you!