In the house across the street from mine lives a small family—a mother, a father, and maybe two or three kids. They have a swingset in their yard, and now that the weather is warm and beautiful, you often see one or two girls swinging away. It reminds me of how much I loved to swing when I was a kid—well, I still love swinging, to be honest. When I was little, I’d spend hours, HOURS, on the swingset in our backyard. I used to bring my little portable CD player out with me and listen to music and swing until either A) a bee would come by and scare me back inside, or B) my mom would call me in for dinner.

Now, I am thirty-one years old. My hair is turning white, one long, wispy strand at a time. I am a mother, a wife, a college instructor. Strange though it seems, I am a grown-up. I’m not sure when that happened, but somewhere along the line, when I was looking the other way, I guess, I passed through childhood, through young adulthood, and ended up here.

As you may have noticed from last week’s post, I’ve been feeling a bit depressed lately about my prospects as a writer/college instructor. These things didn’t bother me that much before I had a baby, but now, at times, I’m completely consumed by my desire to publish more, land a decent job, and generally find a bit of stability for myself and my family. I feel frustrated that my daughter won’t get to grow up with a nice backyard and a swingset, like I did. I feel frustrated that every summer, we don’t even make enough money to cover our basic living expenses (true story: the summer I signed my book contract, we DESPERATELY needed the money I got for my advance. I honestly don’t know what we would have done if that bit of luck hadn’t happened at just the right time. We would have emptied out our savings account well before the end of the summer).

I think to some extent, having published my first book a little over a year ago adds to these feelings. When I first found out I was getting the book published, I thought it was going to create a sort of domino effect for my career. I imagined I could use the fact that I was getting one book published as leverage to get an agent and publish another. Then, with two published books and an agent, I would go out and land myself a full time job, which would afford me a stable enough income that I could write more and more books without the distraction of worrying about money all the time or having to work during the summer.

Of course, that isn’t what happened. It’s hard to say whether having a book published already made any difference when I was querying agents last time around. It may have—at least one agent told me my credentials were “impressive”—but I probably got about the same average of manuscript requests as I did when I was querying agents without a published book under my belt, and,  just like before, all of those still ended in eventual rejection.

And the more time that passes since my book’s publication date, the more I think prospective agents, editors, and employers alike are going to ask, “Alright, but what have you done lately?” I have this overwhelming fear that if I don’t publish another book in the next couple of years, having published a book won’t really matter at all anymore—in terms of being a stepping stone for my career, anyway. If you don’t keep steadily climbing higher on the ladder, the rungs get too slippery and you fall clear off.

But who knows? Maybe I’ll be able to pull myself back onto the ladder. I haven’t fallen off yet, I don’t think. Right now, I’m just sort of dangling, looking down and up and back down again, trying to find some way to regain my purchase. I’ve been writing again, and that’s a good first step. I’ve started submitting again, too: ten submissions a month, just like I used to do. I’m very, very seriously considering applying for PhD programs, and I’m even thinking about trying to get a seat in a graduate level workshop at Ohio University (since Damien’s an employee, I can take classes for half-tuition). Whatever happens, I’m going to try not to let these feelings of failure get the better of me. There is still hope, isn’t there? There is always still hope.